Day 70, Year 6 Another Relaxed Work Day
Date: Sunday, January 2, 2011
Weather: Winds Less Than 15 Knots; Alternating Rain, Fog, and Sunshine
Location: Simon’s Town, Western Cape, South Africa

We are still enjoying calm winds-so nice. Today was a relaxed work day. We continued our internet research into places in the Caribbean where we might meet our children in late April. St. Martin is just too expensive, so we took a look at the US Virgin Islands. St. Croix looks great, but plane fares are not cheap. So today we took a serious look at Puerto Rico and the islands of Culebra and Vieques. Both are looking like a real possibilities, but right now we are leaning toward Vieques. We still haven’t made the final decision, but we are getting closer.

We talked to friends from the Chesapeake Bay this afternoon, Ron and Suzie Williams, and we talked about stopping by their home in the Chesapeake in June. Just talking about that makes us realize that we are really headed home. And we did spend a great deal of today working toward that goal. We took everything out of our “garage”-the v-berth. It has been a jumbled mess since the crossing from Madagascar and we finally got it all back in order. We had to take everything out in order to get our asymmetrical spinnaker out from under the v-berth. It looks like light downwind sailing in the Atlantic and we will need it. Mark also went through all of our books on the port and starboard sides of the v-berth and reordered them. We have a big bag to give away and lots of good reading for our passage to the Caribbean.

So we are now counting down the days until leave to cross the Atlantic. Tomorrow morning we take our LP gas tank in to be refilled. Tuesday someone from North Sails comes to pick up our main sail to check it out completely and to repair the rip we discovered just after leaving Mossel Bay. We could repair ourselves, but we want someone else to look at the whole sail and make sure everything is fine. I’d still like to get some varnishing down before we leave, but if not, everything will be fine. We have a few more things we want to see here, but basically, we will be ready to leave by the 15th. It will take us two months, but we can now say, “Caribbean, here we come.”