We had a wonderful couple of weeks in Culebra before we moved onto the US Virgins and then the BVIs (British Virgin Islands) for Christmas.
Culebra is part of Puerto Rico and the Spanish Virgin Islands, both which are territories of the United States. The Virgin Islands depend entirely on tourism, however the Spanish Virgins are many years behind in development, which makes them delightful for cruising. The locals are happy, friendly people who speak Spanish and some a little English; we quickly learned some of the local lingo and were treated to big smiles everywhere. Culebra is very unspoilt and quaint, and the area quickly charmed us. We would have liked to have spent a few months exploring the islands, funnily we are finding we feel that way with a lot of places we visit. Not enough time to do everything we would like.
We met some wonderful new cruising friends (one set who had been a charter boat skipper for ten years and gave us some fabulous tips on where to go in the BVIs) and also linked up with some others who we had met in St. Martin - always fun to chew the fat with other live aboards.
So too quickly it was onto the BVIs via the US Virgins. A bit of a culture shock, as they are both very busy with tourists, cruise ships and people chartering boats. However, they are gorgeous and one can still find a secluded anchorage - yippee!
We met up with our friends on Ty Dewi and had the kids over for a sleepover the night before Xmas eve - a bit of a memory lane and exhausting, but a lot of fun as they made Xmas special for us. We had Xmas Day ashore at Marina Cay and then in the evening a dozen of us splashed out and had the full Christmas Dinner at the lovely restaurant on the beach. Seemed strange when we knew Vancouver was covered in snow.
After Christmas we went to Road Harbor to stock up for our friends arrival and then went to Peter Island to meet up with our friends. The weather for the last couple of weeks had been pretty windy and at Peter Island we dragged our anchor for the first time since we started sailing, not much fun in a very crowded anchorage with no moon. It seems we anchored close to a ledge and although we were set in hard after a night of gusts up to 40 knots, we must have wiggled ourselves off the ledge into thin air!! It was a great learning curve for us, we managed to not hit anything although a lot of boats had no anchor lights on, however my heart beat a bit too fast a couple of times!!
So everyone knows we drank to our friends and family, a few times, over the holiday season and hope that this blog finds everyone well. Comments as always are much appreciated.