A RAINY SUNDAY IN CHARLOTTE AMALIE

Well it was a tough introduction to the cruising life for Carol. After a few quiet days with winds in single digits the reinforced trades, often called the Christmas winds arrived and it is blowing hard and a big surge is causing us to roll at anchor.



So she was feeling queasy and wanted to lay down and get the world to stop moving.



Suddenly there was a load bang and the bung fitted into the toilet outlet hose blew across the small bathroom followed by a load shit, yes that all to common boating disaster a sanitation device failure had occured. It was a really impressive shit spray, it even sprayed the ceiling. We were just lucky yhat there was no one in the small loo at the time.

So lots of cleaning and then headscratching to work out what went wrong and to get a working toilet. It was at this point we heard from the previous owners and discovered that although they had lived aboard and cruised the boat for months at a time, they had never used the plumbing! They used a solar shower pouch to shower and the bucket and chuckit method for the loo. The marine loos were in place and there are 3 shower stations on the boat but they did not use any of them.

Now for some good news, the natives are friendly at least these ones were although we did feel that they begrudged us every mouthfull even the tiny one.



We went out for lunch and this fellow plus his big brother came out to watch us eat, again I felt guilty as these poor starving iguanas needed feeding up.







However there were signs up everywhere saying " Don't feed the iguanas.
















In the bacground we had the Carlos Aquilar match races going on in the harbour.

The teams racing in identical IC 24's were out on the water today and returned soaking wet, it wasn't from the crystal clear waters of Charlotte Amalie, it was from sweating. Everyone is taking this Grade 3 Open event and Grade 1 Women's Match Race very seriously and is practicing their spinnaker sets and take downs with a vengeance.