Goodbye St. Maarten Hello Statia

Well, it’s been a great stay. Longer than I usually like but we got a lot done

*Haul out and painted the bottom
*Went into debt for new dingy and motor but it HAD to be done
*Had a great visit with daughter Leah - Come back soon!
*Made new friends in Mark and Lee from some crazy place called England or something
*Hooked up with old friends Larry and Debby on Debonaire - See you guys on down island.
*Hooked up with old friends Llyod and Val on Puddle Jumper - Same to you guys!
*Had lots of fun with the drunken sailors and the Heineken regatta. All of you racing sailors out there - put a team together and come down next year, charter a boat and enter the bareboat division. Looked like this whole group had a great time.
*Made a eye splice in double braid line (I’m as proud of this as I am of my participation trophy from chess camp!)

Sunday afternoon after all the racing was over sailors were anxiously checking their race results.

I worked as ‘dockmaster’ Sunday night at the yacht club for the final night of festivities for the regatta. At five to 1 AM though I needed to help take one last boat load of drunken Dutchmen out to their boat. This was one happy group. I asked them what the Dutch national anthem was and they instantly broke into song! 8 really drunk and loud Dutchmen singing (actually when you sing in dutch it sounds more like you are trying to hark up a chicken bone caught in your throat which explains why there are no dutch operas). It must have been an interesting sight and sound to see us pass by in full voice!

So Wednesday we go through the bridge at 0900 and head nearly due south for Statia (also called St. Eustatius - the little know saint of rusted anchor chains). This is the first in the string of Statia, St. Kitts, and Nevis. It is 30 miles to Statia and I’ll try not to turn it into 70! Should be one nice reach. We’ll see. Probably only spend a night or 2 there and then make the final 10 miles to St. Kitts and Nevis where we await the arrival of our best friends, Kay, Gary, and Sam from frigid Brookfield Illinois. Hurry down guys!