It's been a busy summer, with a trip to Canada to attend my sons wedding and to see friends and family. I came back to the boat in mid September just to check on things while Donna stayed back. After a quick two weeks of completing some minor maintenance items Tradewinds flew me to Guadeloupe to deliver a brand new 59' catamaran to Sint Maarten while Donna flew directly to Sint Maarten from Canada. The next week was full of seminars, team building, meeting the rest of the 150 or so captains and first mates and lots of parties. It was a blast to see all the other people from all the bases Tradewinds has. We also got an eyeful of the great looking yachts.

While there they asked us to go to Belize once again so off we went for a 4 week stint. Having been there once before made it a much more relaxing adventure than our first trip. Belize is truly a beautiful place on earth and the coral is second to none. It was nice to see, once again, the friends we met earlier in the year. The weather this time of year can be a bit iffy and we were caught in a some fantastic thunderstorms a few nights which made things interesting to say the least. Surely the highlight for me was to snorkel the wreck of the old steamer on the outer reef that I have only done twice before. Sea conditions have to ideal to allow us to swim over it...if rough at all there is a danger of the surge pushing the swimmers into the wreckage. The fish around this wreck are phenomenal. This trip had us seeing a Goliath Grouper. At 4' long, 18" high and 12" thick this was only a baby of about 250lbs since full grown they can reach 600-700lbs. It was quite funny to see it try to hide itself by ducking its head behind an obstruction while the rest of it was still in plane view. Unfortunately my underwater camera died when the door didn't close properly while in Grenada so I wasn't able to get a picture.

We did three weeks of straight charters and although sad to leave Belize we were looking forward to getting back to Kathrian and getting on with our own travel plans. We left Belize on Sunday Nov 2nd and by way of Belize to Miami, Miami to Sint Maarten, Sint Maarten to St. Kitts, St. Kitts to Antigua, Antigua to Martinique, Martinique to Barbados, and Barbados to Grenada we finally arrived on Friday Nov 7th (long story). So now we look forward to getting the sails hanked on once again and soon getting underway to islands up north.