We’ve done a bit of work on the boat as well, but have mostly focused on catching up on tasks like refilling the propane and restocking the larders before heading off to remote Christmas Cove again.

We did get in a lovely hike the other day, heading up the hill from Cruz Bay and across to Caneel Bay.  It was a worthwhile short hike: the late afternoon sunlight was beautiful through the dry tropical forest and the vista of Cruz Bay was stunning.  We saw the craziest vine-like cactus that was kudzu-like in its attack on trees and other vegetation near the path.  The steep hills, however, were much less of a challenge after three weeks of hiking up and down several hills on our way to Val’s villa and Cruz Bay – I can feel my butt firming on a daily basis on this island!!

In other news, we got a new neighbour last week: Capt’n Fatty Goodlander, quite a celebrity in the cruising world, and his wife Carolyn picked up the mooring right next to us!  We had a lovely evening with them, laughing and telling lots of ribald stories, and today we’re headed up to the north shore to Francis Bay for Fatty’s birthday party on the beach.  I made the Caribbean black cake/figgy pudding that I made for Christmas again — it was such a hit the last time!

We’ll stay there for a night or two before heading to Christmas Cove, where we will meet up with Hannah and Paddy before our trip to St. Barts, a 70-mile beat to windward that neither of us is relishing.   We hope that buddy-boating will make it a bit less onerous.

Our first night in Charlotte Amalie harbor, the night the motorcycle rally was blasting from shore, we were also treated to a fly-by from this obnoxious party barge, blasting incredibly loud music at midnight. Seriously, I was afraid for the eardrums of the people on the barge. The next night, we high-tailed it to a more remote harbor off Honeymoon Beach -- where we were treated once again to a fly by -- at least it was at sunset, not in the middle of the night!!!

Raytheon provides a helpful troubleshooting chart for their Raymarine Autohelm Type 100/300 linear drive thing. Basically it goes something like:

Is your Autohelm autopilot working? ————-> Yes ————-> Good.                                                                                       |                                                                                                                                                              |                                                                                                                                                             V                                                                                                                                                            No ———–> Send to factory.

Since they charge something like $600 for this solution, I decided to plunge in and break it worse fix it myself. The Internet was there to help, telling me that the problem was dirty brushes (naughty Otto! schpenk! schpenk!). These can be cleaned easily for the cost of a can of compressed air and some special mechanic’s curse words that you probably have lying about the boat already. I’ll not tell you how to do it. Go here instead.

I haven’t put everything back together yet, so I’ve no idea how successful this will be, but there you go.

November and Dec ember’s expenses are a bit wonky because they include the additional cost of having Becca on board; starting in January I’ve adjusted for crew and guest costs that they reimburse.  I’m not even posting October because it was an orgy of spending on provisioning for the Caribbean and repairing the boat at Port Annapolis – haulout, storage, slip fees and work on the engine topped $10K.  Although we’re still smarting from that, the engine is in fine condition these days and our outfitting costs seem to have ended and transitioned to maintenance rather than repair.  Knock on wood.  The November expenses are pretty extraordinary because, if you subtract the $5,800 or so we spent on boat repair bills from October and Becca, we actually only spent $468.13 – in part because of the great Thanksgiving bonanza from Emmy Kate, but largely because we provisioned in November and spent most of the month on passage.

December, we went a little nuts on “entertainment,” mostly grabbing a beer almost every afternoon to use the internet at a nearby beach bar.  We could have just sat on the beach and not had a beer, though, so it definitely counts as entertainment and not communications!  Personal care, which includes things like laundry, shampoo, haircuts (though I cut our hair now…), etc, took a hit in December and January because we had our laundry done by someone else after passage and had visitors bring crate-loads of Coppertone Sport sunscreen from the States.  It’s the one must-have item for us that we can’t find down here.

The big bureaucracy expense in January is Philip’s passport renewal fee.  Ouch.

I combined propane, water, trash and pumpout expenses into a new category called “utilities;” of interest to those thinking of cruising this area is that water is $.15 to $.25 a gallon and it often costs a few bucks to dispose of trash.

Food is very expensive down here, but the costs are somewhat controllable if you’re careful what and where you buy.  Everything seems to be about 1.5 to 2 times the cost of what it would be in the States, although that’s partly because I never, ever bought anything full price at home, and here I haven’t found the same kind of discounted items.

Finally, the January alcohol expenses are high because we took advantage of Charlotte Amalie’s duty-free status and cheap Kmart to stock up on a few things for the next couple of months.  (Oh, and I have to point out, because my parents were giving me crap for the alcohol expenses, that at $10 per bottle of wine, and one glass a day per person, that’s $100 a month on alcohol right there.  So enough snarky comments, guys!)

All in all, we’re pretty pleased to have come in under our budget each month while actually cruising in the islands, and with random income from different sources, we’re actually managing to save a couple hundred dollars a month.  We know that there will be some more big boat expenses in the future – it’s inevitable, right? – so we want to start rebuilding our kitty for these inevitable expenses.

This guy buzzed our boat at about 20 miles an hour; winds were 25 gusting to 30 at that point and he was flying along with a massive wake. At one point, he managed to jump about 50 feet in the air. Looks like toooo much fun!

This random artwork was across the street from Vie's Snack Shack; it made me giggle.