Hi everybody, we have started our third year of cruising on Snow Shoo in the Virgin Islands. We arrived in St.Thomas a little over a week ago by flying from Montreal via Miami. It took us 2.5 hours to cover the distance between Florida and the Virgins; last year we spent close to two months on the boat to cover the same distance. We caught the Roadtown fast ferry to Tortola the next morning and checked in to the Hummingbird B & B. We were delayed leaving on the ferry by a bomb threat at the airport that shutdown the roads including the one from our hotel to the ferry, but we still had enough time to walk down to the yard in the afternoon to inspect the boat and do a few things on board. The people at Tortola Yacht Services had taken good care of the boat and she was wearing a new coat of bottom paint. The first thing to be done was to put up the bimini top so that we could have some shade. The heat has been fierce, 30 ºC with relatively little wind. One big day of work and we were almost ready to be launched the next day. We were told 10:30-12:30 would be the expected time for launch. At 8:30 we found the boat in the slings ready to be launched. So much for “island time”.

Once in the water we turned the key and pushed the starter button and crossed our fingers. The engine cranked over for about 15 seconds and caught. Eureka. We sat at the dock for the most of the day getting things done including a small grocery run to tide us over for the next several days. We had sent out our top life lines to have a new set made up and because of the early launch they weren’t ready and it was only in the middle of the afternoon that we were able to leave Roadtown.

We crossed the Sir Francis Drake Channel to one of our favourite spots in the BVI, Benure Bay. We spent all of the next day there taking stock of everything on the boat and our “to do” and “to buy” lists were started. The next morning we headed off to West End on Tortola to check out with customs. Familiarity with the procedures made everything easy. We had checked out of the BVI by 9:00 and by 10:00 we had checked into the USVI. We were at Crown Bay Marina by noon and fueled and tied up at a dock by 1 in the afternoon. We had sent our various bit and pieces for the boat to the marina for safekeeping.

To buy all the food and other stuff we will need for the next few months we rented a car and hit the stores at St.Thomas. After going to a number of stores we brought back a heavily loaded Suzuki to dockside and unloaded everything on to the boat. We fitted our new main sail on to the mast and left the next day.

We are now sitting on the south side of St.John enjoying the sun and light breezes when we aren’t doing little chores getting the boat ready for the cruising season. Menno has had to go up the mast several times as an adjustment to the jib furler resulted in it hanging up and not allowing the sail go out and in smoothly. This has now been fixed and we intend to do a little sailing tomorrow to see how everything is working.