Back in the US

  After 8 months we are finally back in the U.S.  Well, U.S. territory that is.  We made it into Red Hook, St. Thomas early Sunday morning.  It feels really good to be back in the U.S. though. 

When we left St. Martin we noticed that the starboard side starter was going out so when we got into Red Hook we ordered a new one, which is suppose to be here on Friday.  That’s the other good thing about being back in the U.S., you can get parts shipped down at a reasonable rate and time frame.  Wes is still dealing with a couple of other things that are needing his attention while we wait for the starter-the autopilot isn’t working so that made it for a long 99 knots over from St. Martin to St. Thomas being that you had to stay at the helm and steer the whole time.  We left St. Martin at around 9:30 am on Sunday and there was little to no wind so we had to motor the whole way.  It took right around 20 hours to cross over and we got into Red Hook while it was still dark (very dark since there was no moon) but luckily we were familiar with the anchorage and we were able to drop anchor without too much trouble.  We probably should have planned that a little better and left later in the day so we would get in when it was light, but we made it ok. 
We are now in Charlotte Amalie’s bay because Wes was craving Pizza Amore’s pizza since we haven’t had really good pizza in quite some time and boy was it good.  Charlotte Amalie is pretty nice and it is where most of the cruise boats come in so there is quite a bit of shopping and many other conveniences such as a Kmart, big grocery stores, home depot, Wendy’s, Subway and Hooter’s (which will come in handy for watching the Bronco’s on Sunday).  But we plan on hanging around here for a week or so.  

This guy takes his horse for a swim in the bay at Red Hook every morning

Red Hook

The Marina in Charlotte Amalie

Charlotte Amalie Bay

St Martin-2nd time around

We've spent the last couple of weeks in St Martin going back and forth from Grand Case to Marigot. The winds have been incredibly strong and one night when we were in Grand Case a huge gust came up at around 4:30 in the morning and actually flipped the dinghy over, which it's not a good thing to have the engine submerged in salt water. We were able to get it flipped upright and Wes spent two hours the next day trying to get it started. He finally got it running but in the process a throttle part fell in the water and he wasn't able to find it. So we have one on order and it should hopefully be here today. Wes was able to pull a Macgyver and was able to make a piece out of a coat hanger to work for the time being.

Also, the day we were in Deep Bay with Amanda snorkeling the wreck of the Andes we looked up and the boat was moving across the bay right towards some rocks. We raced to get back to the boat which is very difficult with a 6 hp dinghy engine, but we made it back in time. Come to find out the anchor rope broke lose and the anchor was at the bottom somewhere. We all tried to find it using the snorkeles but we couldn't see down very far because the water was so turned up from all the wind. We went back after Amanda left and Wes put on the dive tank and was able to retrieve the anchor. St Martin has some very good boating supplies so we able to purchase 50 ft of new chain and 99 feet of new rope (I know that sounds like a weird amount of rope but it was in meters which was 30 meters)

The winds are supposed to die down tomorrow so hopefully we will have a nice sail over to St Thomas. We decided to skip the Bvi's for now because we will probably go there in April and we need to make sure it is still ok to take the dogs in there without a lot of hassle because they are one of the more difficult islands to bring the dogs.      

We stopped for the night in Barbuda on the way to St. Martin.  Beautiful pink sand beaches there

 

 

Marigot Bay after a bit of rain.  I love how the rainbow ran across the bay