Dawn is breaking in Coral bay on the island of St John where Picaroon sits at anchor in the serene waters guarded on three sides by steep hillsides that rise about 500ft above the bay. There’s a dusky orange glow that hovers over the horizon which lies astern of Picaroon lighting the flat calm Caribbean beyond the entrance to Coral Bay. Scattered clouds of mauve and amber promise a fine morning as the last star disappears swallowed by the gathering light. It’s just after six am, and I’ve had all the sleep I’m going to need as I was in bed before 9pm last night, which seems to be our regular bed time nowadays. Our body clocks have tuned into being sailors, cruisers, old salts.

I’ve been very remiss in getting back to this journal, but it was supposed to be about sailing, and as we spent almost six months holed up in Salinas in Puerto Rico, not going anywhere, there was little to report that came under the heading of “the adventures of Picaroon”. Now we’re finally on the move and back to sailing I’m ready to put pen to paper, once again, or should I say, Querty keyboard to computer screen, but sounds a lot less romantic, so I’ll stick with pen to paper.

I entitled the last set of blogs “Sailors to seadogs” which ended with our return to Salinas in PR last September after our circumnavigation of Hispanola. This is a new chapter in our adventures and I’ve been trying to come up with an appropriate snappy title for the next phase and I’ve finally plumped for “Salts to Sellers”. That should read reluctant sellers but I think I’ll just leave it at salts to sellers as it trips off the tongue better. Let me explain.

First the salt. After relating some of our adventures to the crew of Tulum 3, Rudolf and Elisa, who have become very close friends and cruising buddies, Elisa remarked that we were a lot saltier than we think we are. This coming from a very seasoned sailor made us realize that we were no longer the novices to navigators, or Sailors to seadogs, this life on the ocean waves, has honed and shaped us into quite a formidable team.

We and Picaroon have become a well oiled machine, sensing the weather, the condition of the seas, raising or lowering sails, anticipating the squalls, spilling the wind, balancing the sails, finally mastering the windvane steering, and keeping a watchful eye on the gauges when we have to call on Mr engine Sir.
Jackie has become the master helmsman whilst I man the sheets and sails. We hardly need to talk about the next move as we both seem understand what happens next, which is just as well now that my hard at hearing has become much more profound. Sails go up without the snagging of reefing lines or lazy jack lines and the jib furls without knotting the sheets in an unholy tangle, which used to be a common feature of our beginnings of sailing Picaroon.

Sellers; Picaroon is reluctantly up for sale due to the small fact that we have run out of the sort of funds that it takes to sustain this happy go lucky lifestyle. Now all we have coming in is my UK pension which isn’t going to be adequate if we run into any major repairs on Picaroon. They say the happiest two days in a sailors life is the day you buy the boat and the day you sell the boat, but somehow I don’t think this will be the case with us, we’re just starting to get into our stride.

I bought a hand painted T shirt in Boqueron, Peurto Rico a couple of years ago and that got us thinking that maybe I could try my hand at that. I’ve been painting in water colours for over fifteen years so we bought some acrylic paints and a couple of XXL plain white T shirts to have a practice on. It’s a different technique to paper and water colours but after a few tries they started to look pretty good. In fact my friend Rudolf ordered a dozen with a picture of his boat on the back and the name Tulum 3 on the front.

I’ve also had a couple of commissions for small watercolours of fellow cruisers boats which I managed to get $60 apiece for. If we could get a couple of those a week as well as selling hand painted T shirts we may be able to eek out another few months.

We’ve also heard that if we could make it to St Martin we could maybe find some sort of work as St Martin comes under the jurisdiction of the EU, so we would be legal there. What is a bit rich is that we can’t work legitimately in the British Virgin Islands, or so we’re led to believe, but you never know there maybe some loophole we don’t know about.

It’s my birthday tomorrow, and we’ve decided to celebrate it with a sail to the BVI which is only about fifteen miles from where we are in Coral bay. Coral bay is very pretty, with lots of turquoise and lush plunging hillsides, dotted with posh properties that look impossible to get to. We thought we may spend some time here sprucing up Picaroon but it’s not as sheltered as we imagined so tomorrow we’ll move on to our destination in Trellis bay on Tortola.

After all those long hauls beating our way east from Cuba to Peurto Rico, sailing day and night, night and day it’s a breeze sailing these small islands that make up the Virgin island chain, but a very welcome change, it’s almost like being on holiday.

So that’s where we are, reluctant sellers, and old salts; is this the end of our nautical adventures or is Neptune waiting in the wings to surprise us with way to keep this dream alive.

Watch this space.