Day 74, Year 6 The Twelfth Day of Christmas
Date: Thursday, January 6, 2011
Weather: Still Sunny with No Wind
Location: Simon’s Town, Western Cape, South Africa

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love and I searched the internet looking for the perfect meeting place in the Caribbean with our children, brought aboard and stored 20 cases of beer delivered by the local ‘spirits’ shop, had Nat and Betsy from Bahita over for a Mexican dinner, and took down our macramé Christmas tree to end the holiday season. In a nutshell, that was our Epiphany and my true love did not bring to me twelve drummers drumming.

The internet search for the perfect place that we can afford to meet our kids in the Caribbean is about to wear me out. We sat in the Yacht Club for another six hour stint today, this time exploring the US Virgin Islands of St. John’s and St. Croix and we really only came up with a couple of possibilities. Everything is just too expensive or is only for 2-4 people. We’ll review all of our notes in the morning and hopefully come up with one favorite in Culebra, one in Vieques, one in St. Croix, and one in St. John’s. Then I’ll ask Heather, Jed, Jo, and Justin to each send their favorite to us, and Mark and I will do the same. Hopefully one place will come out the winner and that will make the final decision. And since it looks like the kids will be meeting us in the northern Caribbean in late April, Mark’s brother and sisters are thinking about meeting us in the southern Caribbean in mid-March and sailing north to St. Martin with us. Getting the timing right for these rendezvous will be a challenge for us, but if we can do it, we should have a great homecoming in the Caribbean with family.

Late this morning Mark took a break, walked into town, and came back with two pieces of good news. Our Monitor wind vane that we left in Durban to be sold on consignment has sold, so we will receive that money before leaving the country. Yippee! And the secondly, when Mark went to the spirits store to pay for the beer, the manager said he would deliver it all the way to the boat. It turns out that he needed a little help from Mark in order to do this because there is no way to get a cart from the shore to the boat without lifting it across a few barriers, but the man did try and his attempt did save us a lot of time and energy. We also learned today that we will be moving to a new slip tomorrow. We are occupying a slip owned by a boat on the hard that will be launched in a day or so and will want to come ‘home.’ And late today, the boat occupying the slip we are to move to was taken out of the water. So our new slip is empty and waiting for us. Sure hope this NO WIND situation continues until we get moved.