So Pam gets to go home to meet our new grand-daughter, Chevy Louise. Glen stays behind to transition Blue Pearl to Al and Maria.
Air Canada trusted Al with a $130,000,000 AirBus 330 before he retired last week so we figure we can trust him to baby Blue Pearl while we go home for grandbabys at Christmas. Maria took care of principal-Glen for 10 years in the school office - surprisingly successful at keeping him out of trouble. They sail a C&C 44 at home in Vancouver but this is their first experience sailing in the Caribbean.
The moment Pam left everything went hell-west and crooked. (Acadian phrase meaning disaster according to our friend Dorothy.)
We couldn't get the anchor up. Turns out electrically challenged Glen forgot to connect up the windlass battery to the boat system. Six weeks into our shake-down cruise the battery finally had enough.
Finally got the anchor up. So off then to Honeymoon Bay on Water Island to plan our transition cruise. Had a nice night, a visit to the Pueblo and Crown Bay grocery stores where Glen, once again, tried to guilt our new guests into buying a "thank-you" bottle of the $4999.95 bottle of wine they stock. No gratitude!!! We need richer friends.
Off we go to new adventures. But first we have to get the anchor off the bottom. Don't know what it got stuck on but it took motoring over it slowly to finally get it to release. What would Pam have done??? What else is going to go wrong?
Onto Christmas Cove for a snorkel lunch and Francis Bay for a night anchorage.
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| Maria going Spotted Eagle Ray spotting |
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| Eddy the Eagle... Ray |
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| Al's art shot with his new underwater camera |
So when did Barry Balmar the Regulator decide to go south? We have a 140 amp alternator dying to charge our batteries but a regulator that is having "issues?" Dang, that ain't good!
Glen read the Boy Scout book on marine regulators and found a "patch" that will get Maria and Al through their sojourn on the boat. Al, the pilot, is not used to "patches" so we are crossing our fingers.
We wanted to check out the charging so we motored 4 miles to Cruz Bay to have a look. Yan Diesel seems happy enough with the patched regulator so all is good. Found a nice shoreside pub and spent a very happy Happy Hour there.
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| Checking out a different captain's seat |
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| Getting ready to jump in |
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| Cruise planning |
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| Marooned on a USVI park pay station |
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| Enjoying lunch with Iggy |
Anyway, we are roaming around, hoping nothing else goes wrong. We will spend our last night at a marina at Red Hook. Then it is a taxi to the airport and the ride home for Glen!
