As we had hoped, we sailed from Caneel Bay, St. John to Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas on January seventh. We had a great sail over on a broad reach tacking down wind doing 6.5 to 7.0 knots most of the way. It didn't start out too well for Pam as I didn't communicate to her what kind of a sail it was going to be. She thought that it was going to be an easy dead down wind run and I chose to tack down wind to avoid ferry traffic. This resulted in her getting doused by a wave early on in the trip. But we got it straightened out and I learned yet another lesson in communication. But did I say we had a great sail!!! In any case we are anchored in Long Bay, Charlotte Amalie where we plan to stay until after the Super Bowl. Yes, we have been listening to the Patriot's playoff games on the internet. Ten years ago we watched the Super Bowl at Caneel Bay Resort. So we called them to see if they were doing anything special for the Super Bowl. They said they were but that they had to take care of their guests first and couldn't guarantee a place for us as outsiders. So we decided that we'd stay here in Charlotte Amailie because earlier that same day we had stopped by the "Fat Turtle" ,which is in Yach Haven Grand, and they described what sounded like it might be a great Super Bow party. We'll see if that works out and have more details later. After the Super Bowl we will beat back to windward and St. John where we hope we will find that more of our packages have arrived at Connections. Besides, St. John is our favorite although we like Charlotte Amalie more this time than we did ten years ago.

While we were in St. John we noted that some things had changed, in Cruz Bay, and some stayed the same. All of the changes appeared to be for the better as far as we were concerned. The park in the center of Cruz Bay's waterfront is all paved with brick walkways around stone platers which are filled with vegatation and the pre-requisite chickens. The presence of the chickens is not new but the stone walkways and planters are. Ten years ago there was vegatation but most of the walking area was dirt. Additionally, the park and Cruz Bay in general seem cleaner. As it did ten years ago the park has its regulars sitting on the benches or just generally hanging around. Some are peddling their wares and some are just hanging around. We noted just a few of them when during our visits. One day, while we were eating a cheeseburger in paradise at JJ's at the edge of the park, we over heard one of the regulars describe baby chicks folling their mother as McNuggets. When it started raining the McNuggets ran like heck after mom for the cover of one of the bushes in the planters. By the way JJ's burgers were great. The Starfish supermarket that we went to ten years ago is still there and it seems to have an even better selection than before. One day we decided to repeat a trip that e had taken several times ten years ago and that was to jump on a ferry from Cruz Bay, St. John to Rehook, St. Thomas. From Redhook we caught a dollar bus, called that because it costs a dollar to ride it, to the Tutu Park Mall. The dollar buses are generally modified pickup trucks with seats under a roof in the trucks bed. The sides have steps at each row of seats for the passengers to get on and off. The Tutu Mall area seemed about the same as ten years ago. The Office Depot is still there along with the Advanced Auto Parts store. Both of which we made a visit to. At the time we were looking for spark plugs for the outboard and a cigarette lighter adapter with two USB ports in it for charging our iPad and iPhone at the same time. We weren't successful on either front but we had to give it a shot. As with stores in the States ou might have to go to more than one before you find what you want. Only difference here in the islands that other store may be on another island, which might even be a different country. This lifestyle is quite different that's for sure. But knowing where to go is half the battle and that is what we have been learning. We have also re-learned our old rule from ten years ago - if you see something that you need buy it, don't think that because it was in the store that day it will be a regularly stocked item, there don't seem to be any regularly stocked items.

Since being here in Charlotte Amalie we have done some food reprovisioning and also went to a new store here on the island - Home Depot. At Home Depot we found the garden sprayer that we have been looking for for the last six months. I have been nursing our garden sprayer along during that time and it has its good days and its bad ones as far as holding air pressure. Thank goodness for silicone grease to soften and replenish those o-rings. Right about now I expect you are saying, "garden sprayer, why do they have a garden sprayer they don't have a garden." We use the garden sprayer to take showers in the cockpit with water that has been heated up by the sun. Most of the water that we use for showers comes from rain water that we have collected supplimented by water from the watermaker when required. We don't use the shower inside the boat because it puts more humidity inside the boat which is not a good thing in the tropics especially in the summer. In any case, we have a back up sprayer now so if the old one rolls over we can still take showers. Gotta love your spare parts.

Parts, that's one of the reasons that we came to the USVI apart from the fact that we love St. John. Since we got here we have gotten replacement block for the one that blew out during our passage up here. I started working on replacing that yesterday. Of course I don't have the right screws for the new block so we have to go ashore today and look for them. We also got replacement 150 amp circuit breakers for our inverter and our windlass. The one on the inverter is a pain to use and as it turned out when I went to replace it I found that one of its connection lugs was cracked. So we are happy now that it is replaced. The breaker for the windlass has lugs that are too small and now that there are breakers with proper sized lugs we are replacing it. We also got our replacement stove top percolator. While in Grenada I unscrewed the glass thing on the top to clean it and it broke. We looked all over Grenada for a stove top percolator but only found electric ones. So, we ordered one when we got to the USVI and it already has come in, thank you Amazon.com for our perked coffee in the morning. Still out there somewhere are our outboard parts, Commandmic for our VHF and a serial to LAN adapter so that we can get AIS information to our iPad. Our old serial data to LAN (local area network) adapter died, who knows when, so we couldn't use the iPad to display AIS information during our trip up here from Grenada. We still were able to display the AIS information on the our PC but the PC just takes longer to come up than the iPad and it also uses more power. This information has become very useful to us as it gives us a idea of what shipping is near us. This electronic stuff is great when it works, but you have to know how to deal with situations without them because everything breaks. After all, I've heard it said more than once, the definition of cruising is fixing things while living in exotic places. Which fits well seems to fit well with my definition of retirement: finding interesting things to do between meals.