On November 29th Mark and I celebrated our 6th month anniversary (I'll tell you how in a minute). It's a little hard to believe all that we have done in that time. Even though we had been sailing about a year (and 10,000 miles) before we were married our longest passage was our crossing from VA to Puerto Rico, we had rarely been more than a few hundred miles from land, 99% of the places we visited were English speaking, we had rarely been far from a decent grocery store, pretty much always had decent internet, and were never more than a few hours flight back to the US.

Things definitely changed after the wedding. We flew back to the boat exactly one week after and while most people would be enjoying their honeymoon relaxing on an exotic beach loving each other that would have to wait. We had a boat to get painted, provisioning to finish, repairs to do, a canal to cross, and thousands of miles of ocean to sail before we'd make it paradise.

So here we 6 months into our marriage, across an ocean, past 6 countries, and through 20+ islands we can now, hopefully, enjoy a honeymoon. Within the next couple of weeks we will put the boat up somewhere and explore by land. No fixing (lets hope the car doesn't break down), provisioning (other than our camping food), cleaning (except some laundry) - okay so other than that stuff it should be a nice relaxing couple of month (that is until Mark drags me on a couple week hike in the back country). Seriously though this will be a whole other experience and I'm glad we'll be getting a break from the boat. I'm sure by the time we get back we'll be itching to go (or at least the one of us that doesn't get violently seasick will be). We aren't sure where that leg of the trip will be taking us yet. We've been toying with the various options and the obvious, and shortest, may not be the route we take. I guess we have a lot of planning to do even away from the boat.

Now on to our celebration. Mark is not one for the touristy things. I however am. I like to go to all the places you see in pictures except I'm many times to cheap to actually go. Mark surprised me by taking me over to the Skytower and springing for the tickets all the way to the top (I saved us $20 by realizing we have backpackers cards which got us a discount). It was a pretty cool sight from the top. We could see all the stuff we biked to a few days earlier. We got some pictures of Northfork in the harbor. Unfortunately that big blue beast was blocking us. A few hours later we moved over two slips a it would have been the perfect shot. Oh well. If anyone is going up there in the next week or so get another shot for me.

After this we came back to the boat to relax. Mark decided to do some cleaning since we now had access to a hose on the dock and I got some unsupervised shopping time. This rarely happens since we are usually together and we haven't had much time on many of the islands for me to just wander relaxingly through the stores. Mark is a fast shopper - he gets in and gets out. I like to browse so it was nice. I didn't go to many stores just two bookstores where I sat for over an hour just browsing the stacks. It's been so long since I've had a nice big bookstore (one in English anyhow - there was a nice one in Tahiti).

After this I came home and Mark told me to get dressed. I realized we were going somewhere nice when he put on his slacks and needed a belt. We went to the grove. It was the Lonely Planet pick for nice places in town and it was great. Definitely satisfied our desire to have a really good steak which was hard to find out in the islands. Overall a pretty nice day and the last 6 months haven't been so bad either.

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