We're back in Frenchtown, St. Thomas, after our trip to Culebra, PR. We rolled out the jib and had a pleasant enough downwind sail. Since it was a Sunday, I looked up the phone number for Customs, to make sure they’d be open when we got there, and discovered that we could do the Small Vessel Reporting System for our entry. I quickly filed a float plan, and called to check in from the anchorage in Dewey, at the head of Ensenada Honda. It saved us having to walk out to the airport to check in!

Anchored near us was an aluminum boat from Leadville, Colorado, with a couple teenagers aboard, flying an OCC burgee. Monday morning, on our way to town, we stopped to say hello. Nice family! Three years ago they bought the boat new, in France, and have been cruising ever since—Europe, Caribbean, through the Panama Canal, Galapagos, Peru, Chile, Falkland Islands, South Georgia, Norway and back to the Caribbean…I know I’m forgetting some of their itinerary, but you get the idea. Christopher and Molly Barnes, and their sons Porter and Jack. Christopher has family on Mt. Desert, so grew up sailing in Maine. We hope to see them there this summer, as they're heading north to do Maine and the Maritimes before starting a new job in California. We didn't learn all of that just by stopping by the boat—we had them over for cocktails and chatting that evening!

We dinghied in to the Dinghy Dock restaurant, and had lunch while taking advantage of their wifi. Then a walk around town, but much of what the guide book recommended had changed. The grocery store was open, but many other shops were either closed for siesta or just plain closed. We found the Culebra Community Library, which offers free wifi on its open air porch connecting the two trailer halves of the building.

Tuesday we moved to one of our favorite places, which we call The Bathtub--the sheltered anchorage behind the reefs at the entrance to Ensenada Honda. Protected from the ocean waves but enjoying the ocean breeze, it's an idyllic place to spend a few days relaxing. There are free moorings provided by the government, so it's understandable that some boats stay there for very extended times. For a couple days we dinghied back to town to go to the library, the market, a frustratingly fruitless attempt to refill our big propane bottle, and some other provisioning, but it was a 30-minute ride each way, and took a toll on our backs. Friday we dropped the mooring, went back to Dewey and anchored, then went ashore to get fresh vegetables at the twice-a-week vegetable market, fresh pastries at the bakery (both real bargains), and some library wifi time. When we got back to The Bathtub we were surprised to find “our” mooring was still available, so we stayed for another couple nights. Sunday we sailed back—upwind in big choppy seas and winds building from low teens to 20+. Not a pleasant ride for me, but of course Tom and Bravo did just fine.

During the week in Culebra we had some phone conversations with daughter Mary, as she and Kyle were house hunting in Colorado. They put money down on a new house being built in Water Valley, in Windsor, CO. The best news is that she and our grandsons will come to Maine to spend some time between movers loading up and their house being ready. Yippee!

Today, Monday April 11, has been busy. We dropped off the laundry, got the propane tank refilled, went to Cost-U-Less for a major reprovisioning (and ran into Clayton Wheatley, the terrific ER doctor who’s taken care of Tom twice—we’re on hugging terms now), had a taxi ride back to Frenchtown that detoured around stalled traffic and took us up and over the island—a route we hadn't experienced before. Tom is now ashore finding an ATM with cash, then we’ll go pick up the laundry (by dinghy—the first time we went there we walked, but it was a long, extremely hot walk). We anticipate heading to St. John tomorrow.