Since I have time on my hands with Mary Margaret still in the US visiting her sister and family, I am reviewing our blogs and discovering what a mess of things I have made. I must admit that, at times, it is a challenge to keep up a daily blog and to keep them in order. However, I also thought I was up to that challenge. Reality has shone a different light on that issue. I have discovered that not only did one of our blogs not post while we were making our way to Sint Maarten but that I had dated a number of them incorrectly, resulting in their respective days posting out of order. Furthermore, I posted two blogs with the same date. Thus, today is not day 224 of our 9th cruising season, it is actually day 225. I guess I am just showing my age...

Today on Leu Cat was spent painting. I needed to repaint the area around our window that is near our wet bar in the stern cockpit. It was a simple thing to do and now it looks like it did the day Leu Cat came out of the boatyard 10 years ago.

I also ran over to Island Water World and bought 6 gallons of Petite brand Trinidad antifoul paint. I can get it here cheaper than anywhere else in the Caribbean. We will apply it to our hulls this coming January. It is a hard paint instead of the ablative paint we have on now. Ablative paint is one where the surface wears off over time, exposing the next fresh layer. It is the predominant type of paint used in the Caribbean because most boats here do not sail very many miles over the course of a year or two. Thus, the paint wears off slowly.

However, if you are going to do a major ocean crossing, the ablative paint will be just about gone by the time you reach your destination. Thus, for those boats that do blue water sailing and put on lots of hard passage miles, one needs a hard paint. I was going to buy the International brand of paint, called Ultra. I have used in in the past and it held up pretty well. However, the Trinidad paint weighs considerably more due to its higher copper content. Plus, the manager of the Island Water World chandlery said that he has used both type while sailing the Pacific and the Trinidad paint significantly outperformed the Ultra. With that recommendation, I thought I would give it a try.

I continue today to post photos of our passage to Sint Maarten that we took. The photo attached to this blog is actually a video of some dolphins that ran over to greet us as we sailed from Montserrat to Nevis. I hope you enjoy the video as much as we enjoyed watching these wonderful creatures.