We survived working the finish line of the ARC. My follow up with the opthamologist went well (what do you mean "no heavy lifting?") and we got away from St Lucia again.

We are now in Grand Anse d'Arlet, arguably one of our favourite anchorages. The swimming and snorkelling here is excellent, without much fear of getting run down by boats, and we can generally get what we need. We have rented a car once to stock up pre-Christmas. The running isn't exciting for me, but I have some options to mix it up, with weather being a contributing factor. And I have been working on more swimming. We save a bunch on gas as we row the dinghy ashore here; this is a bonus as getting fuel requires a car.

The weather wasn't amenable to getting to Dominica for Christmas. We might be accused of being wimps, but we have no interest in beating ourselves up to get somewhere.

We had considered getting up to Dominica for this weekend, but the other morning I discovered a small problem. There is something going on with the control panel of the diesel. I noticed in the half light of the rising sun that the engine lights were on...When the power switch was in the "off" position. Crap. This needs to be dealt with, and Ken has been diligently going over the wiring specs and other info to ascertain if he needs to change the switch or something else. So far, we don't know. We can turn off the power to the diesel at the battery switch, so really, it isn't a massive problem, but I feel better dealing with it here where we can get anything we might need. Ken feels confident that he has everything he needs for the repair. We still aren't leaving until this is rectified.

We might go around to Fort De France for New Year's, or not. At some point we probably could use a decent shop again, and that means take the boat around, or rent a car. We will see how "lazy" we feel.

Christmas dinner had us have visitors on the boat. Wendy, and her adult kids, Peter and Anna, limed with us on the boat, with traditional Christmas ham and christophene au gratin. They are Americans who escaped the cold for a week.

So, in the meantime, we are swimming, snorkelling, I'm running and finding other ways to workout, and we are enjoying just being.

Oh, and we have a castaway. "Speedy" was first seen on the boat in St Lucia, and made a reappearance last week. We have our own little lizard onboard. He's the feature creature in the picture. He's about as long as my pinky, head to tail. He is not a fan of spinach.

So, yeah, not much of anything.