Happy Days are here again, oh …. I feel a song coming on. We are back in the water; which in “boatie” terms is called splashing. It was a tad overdue, but hey I “kindof” suspected that Russell and Adrian might not have got through the “to do” list by the time I arrived a couple of weeks after them. We flew Adrian over to help polish the boat and to have some “boy’ time with Russell. Last time he visited he had a broken foot, this time he fell off a ladder and had to have ten stitches in his elbow, luckily he has insurance ☺. Sadly the polishing went a lot slower than anticipated, but we now have the outside hulls done which look great, the rest we can do while we are in the water.

There is a reason for everything and it has meant that Russ has been able to get most of his “to do on hard” jobs done, including sorting out the new two back rubbing strips. As this is a visual item I am a very happy bunny. It has also meant that I have been able to help him for the last week while not cleaning and …. doing more cleaning. As Adrian says “I love Catamarans, but not when I am having to polish them”. Bless him, I feel the same Ta-b needs a lot of looking after. For sure living on a boat has its pluses and minuses. As you can imagine we are all looking forward to anchoring in a beautiful bay so we can jump in the water and have a much deserved play day.

The good news is that the weather is much, much kinder than it was when we were last here in November. Although it is 30 degrees and sunny, every day we have a cool wind to ease the heat. It has not been a bad thing to be on the hard for an extra week as we could not have left before. We have to wait for a good weather window to sail to Cartegena, a passage which apparently is one of the 5 hardest sails in the world and the toughest in the Caribbean. Friday is looking good. It now will depend on when we can get some new batteries as yesterday we found out that our current ones are on the way out. We hope to ship some to Aruba this week – fingers crossed.

Curacao is an interesting island and part of the Dutch Antilles. The main town of Willemsted has lots of character, with delightful buildings painted pastel colours. The rest of the island is rather barren, but there is a huge tourist industry as like Bonaire the diving and snorkeling are excellent off the coast. There is a lot of African influence, just love their belly laughs, and most people speak either English, Dutch, Spanish or Papiamento their local dialect. In fact it is strange to see so many “English” signs every where. There are 170 species of birds and we have enjoyed their birdsong at dusk and sunrise, however I have not enjoyed their popping on our decks. The national bird is the yellow breasted Oriole, beautiful.

Now looking back at our time in Vancouver seems like a distant past. We had a lot of fun house sitting for Ken while he was in Australia, Otis his dog and two cats Mojo and Charlie were fun to be around. We spent lots of time walking Otis on the beach or through the Endowement lands, a pastime we thoroughly enjoy. In between we spent the month catching up with as many friends as we could, attending appointments, myself enjoying some regular yoga and of course seeing as much of Edwin and Amy as possible given their busy lives. They are a delight and we love their company.

Edwin is still very keen on boarding and photography and is doing well in both. Workwise he is now managing Finest at Sea at Granville Island, looking after his increasing staff and helping the business expand. He also helps out a friend when he can who has an upmarket catering company. He gets paid well and finds it really interesting. When he is not riding up at Whistler or Grouse (he gets a free pass for his photography) he goes off with his friends. Lately he went to Big White and is currently on a road trip to Silver Star, Banff and Revelstoke. At the end of the month he is off again to Reno, we just love the way he is fully enjoying life.

Amy moved from Cactus Club to Lululemon for the holidays; which she loved and I was lucky to enjoy the discounts on their clothes which I adore. 20 May is the big day when Amy will graduate from UBC, she has studied hard while working at the same time. She has liked the combination, although it has taken her a lot longer to get her degree than if she had studied full time. It must be exciting for her to now be able to look ahead as she is wanting to travel, and maybe live in London for a while.

After housesitting we stayed with Kim and Cam for a short time; lots of fun, we get on well especially having crossed the Atlantic together. We have friends currently doing the trip at the moment and our hearts are going out to them. Our trip took 16 days and although tough is nothing like our friends journey. They still have 300 miles to go and are on day 27. They have a monohull and are still in their thermals and wet weather gear at night. Russ is helping them with their weather and we are getting their daily blog, they are still in good spirits.

When Russ left for the boat I set off to Sun Peaks to visit my girlfriend Cathy for five days of ski-ing. I lucked out with the weather as it was sunny for four days and powder for two, with lots of snow on the mountains. We had a wonderful time together and I managed to see many of the friends who we had met two years ago. Sun Peaks is a very special place, certainly it has a huge place in my heart and we plan to visit again this Summer.

Our agenda? Depending on weather (always is when sailing) and batteries, we hope to leave for Cartegena in Colombia by next weekend. Yet again, depending on weather, we will either do day sails or a couple of overnighters. We want to leave the boat in Santa Marta Marina so we can go down the coast and stay in the old city of Cartegena for a few nights. Then if the weather is in our favour we will head for the San Blas Islands off the coast of Panama. Think we will head for Hondurus end of March as the outer islands are supposed to be worth spending some time inbefore we head into the Rio Dulce in Guatemala where we will leave the boat for the hurricane season. Spring is around the corner, enjoy everyone such a fabulous time of the year.