22 - The leaving is the hardest part!!!!!!

We’ve heard many times that the hardest part of cruising is leaving your last port behind and the people you meet and fall in love with.  As I type this, we have just pulled out of the marina that’s been our boat’s home for the last month.  It’s impossible to believe that it’s been a month since we landed back in St. Thomas.  

Since we hoped to complete several boat chores on the never ending list and we both planned to fly back to the mainland, we decided to get a slip for the month.  Not knowing any better, we chose Sapphire Beach Resort and Marina because it seemed centrally located and the price was almost half of what we were quoted for the marina in “downtown” Red Hook.  Well, we definitely won the lottery with this place.   From the moment we pulled into the marina and a guy (Brian, of Brian and Jess) pops out of his boat and asks if we need help docking, we were welcomed by a community that was absolutely amazing.   We met Jeff and Karen aboard Ecstasy and Wayne and Kenta aboard Rochelle.  These amazing people taxied us (or Dan and Alison or both) just about everywhere.  They took us to boat supply stores (numerous ones so we could see selections) and hauled our massive purchases around.  They drove us to grocery stores, a warehouse store for bigger provisioning or the local K-Mart to get a few incidentals.  They helped with lines whenever we took off for day sails, invited us to parties, aboard their boats for happy hour, over for dinner, out for dinner or just to hang out.  Jeff and Karen (our closest neighbors and the parents of the most adorable German Shepherd named Zeba with whom we completely fell in love) even took us out for a Bon Voyage (until next time) dinner party as Dan and Alison, us and an adorable 25 year old we’d gotten to know and love named Lexi, were all planning to leave the next day (Lexi is crewing on a 109 foot yacht heading to St. Martin).  We’ve already made plans to go to an amazing restaurant whose master chef is a fellow sailor a few boats down from our slip whenever we return the island.  These people were definitely very hard to leave but they will stay in our hearts and we know we’ll see them sometime again!

As the saying goes, make new friends but keep the old, so we were excited to also have our Cocoa Beach peeps Janice, Rick, Michelle and Larry make their second excursion (they came to New York while we were there).  They are absolutely perfect!  We went over to St. John for a day of hiking and sightseeing, we took a tour of St. Thomas that took us to some areas that we’d definitely not seen before, we took our boat out for a sail over to St. John for beach walks and paddle boarding and we spent a lot of time laughing and enjoying each other.  Can’t wait for the next port of call and adventure with these guys.

Now, just so no one gets the wrong idea, it was definitely not all fun, food and drink while we were in St. Thomas.  We definitely attacked with vengeance our long list of boat chores.  First on the list was getting varnish on the teak all around the outside of the boat.  The ocean crossings had done a job on this. Several areas were completely worn off.  We spent a couple of days sanding and scraping and then Pedro managed to get a coat of varnish on a day for each of the next 4 days.  Finally, she was back to her old shiny self!!!

Next, Pedro had discovered a leak in the coolant line for the engine (we thought we had it repaired in Hampton but apparently not).  So he decided to just replace the entire line of hose. That took about 20 feet but it’s all done!

Next, apparently in hose changing mode and because we’d realized that almost 20 years of flushing salt water though the toilet had left considerable build up within our hoses (this was discovered during a mini repair mid ocean on our crossing from Bermuda which is about as fun as it sounds), we decided to change all of the head hose.  This took most of the 50 feet of hose that we ordered and took a couple of days.  But, we can now safely and freely flush.

The solar panels that came with the boat were somewhat outdated so we decided to upgrade.  We had three 85 watts panels and we decided to replace them with three 160 watt panels.  We found the panels at the local boating parts store (Pedro suggested that we walk the 2+ miles along very narrow and curvy roads carrying these panels but MaryAnn bummed a ride from Jeff and Karen) and we got another ride from Niles (the guy who rented us the slip) to a metal fabricator about 30 minutes away to get the brackets to hang them.  We were even able to pass on the old panels to a fellow sailor who’d lost their old panels during a recent storm while in the Dominican Republic.

Next, Dan offered to go up our mast to repair our masthead light (we think it got dislodged during repairs in Bermuda).  Luckily this was an easy fix and we were quickly back in business.  While we had him up there, he checked all of our standing rigging and reported that everything looks good.

Then, while we had Dan and Alison, we put Alison to work making us a new sail cover.  The old one had been patched several times and the Cabo Rico logo had worn off.  We wanted a new one and she volunteered to sew it.  It took the better part of 3 days with her sewing and cutting non-stop and Dan and MaryAnn helping but the new cover is so perfect and we’re so excited to have the logo (cut out of an old recycled sail) on it too!!!

Finally, the boat chores list was whittled and our month had come to an end.  We are heading over to the Spanish Virgin Islands of Culebra (to pick of friends of Dan and Alison) and then to Vieques (to pick up our aunt and uncle sailing buddies for our next passage down the islands). 

Until next post!