Today we picked up Dave and Lilka at the airport - yahoo! Ater a great lunch & a few mojitos we took them to their 1st Puerto Rican destination...Costco! Yup...one last big shopping spree before we leave the good ol' USofA, and then finally to the boat. They were immediately at home on Scappatella and began unpacking their giant duffel bags filled stuff for us...coffee, tube socks (for protecting our wine), scotch, misc. crap we forgot, some very nice boat presents, and a rebuilt pump for our watermaker. This was our last "big project" for now, and we were really hoping this new pump would end the hours of diagnostics Louis and I did trying to figure out the source of the problem with our watermaker. Louis installed the pump the next day while Dave stuck his head in the bilge for a while (installing a new float switch for our bilge pump) and there we were...making drinking water out of the salty Caribbean sea - pretty cool!

With all systems a go (sort of) the four of us took off to the little Puerto Rican island of Culebra in the "Spanish Virgin Islands". What an awesome place...very laid back, beautiful, clear water, cool fish, turtles, beautiful beaches, and excellent frozen coconut-lime daiquiris...we all had a fantastic time! Lots of laughs and stories, including a funny/scary moment as Louis and I were snorkeling back to the boat, about � mile away, and this shark-looking thing kept following us. We'd turn and face it, and it would circle around and then come back, getting within a few feet of us each time. A few times I screamed underwater as this thing approached me and scared the @%@# out of me! At some point what was initially a bit nerve-wracking became kind of funny as we realized this thing was pretty easily scared off, although quite persistent! Turns out it was a "shark-sucker"...a parasitic fish that was just trying to catch a ride by sucking on us - ugh! But check out this photo...wouldn't you be scared if this thing was following you?

We spent the last night of Dave & Lilka's visit eating an incredible meal on the boat: bbq'd filet mignon, grilled veggies, and a fine bottle of wine following our Uraguyun Martinis (or was it coco-lime daiquiris?). Dave and Lilka headed off on the ferry bound for San Juan, and then onto San Diego on Christmas Eve - we were very sad! Christmas itself was a pretty lonely affair, but we spent much of the time talking to family back home using Skype - amazing to be anchored in the water with internet connection using your computer to call friends at home...and all for about 2 cents a minute!click for photo