We were on a pretty big high after sailing on a gun boat, placing 2^nd overall in our class in Antigua, and Matt’s 50^th celebration and it was time to leave our new friends and head back to St. Marteen to provision and pick up some orders.  We had a pretty good sail day which took us about 16 hours to get back to SXM with Big Bertha our spinnaker making two appearances (she was up, then a squall came along so we took her down and then put her back up after it passed us).  We got into Simpson Bay around 9:00pm – lucky for us we have been here a million times and were able to find our “usual” spot pretty easily.  After a good night’s rest, we had a full day!  We had to clear in/out, dump trash, drop off laundry, pay for and pick up fabric from Tropical Sail, schedule the drop off of our elusive chain, go to Divico, Prime, Careforre, Fuel dock, Island Water World, Budget, and Ace Mart  We had originally scheduled two days in SXM but since we stayed longer in Antigua we had to get everything done in one day – minor miracle, but we did it!  I cannot recollect how many trips we made in the dinghy but I can tell you that the fabric took one trip, the chain took one trip, and then there many trips in between.

Fabric:  You are probably thinking, why are they buying fabric?  Well I have many sewing projects I want to accomplish and I am going to try channel my inner Grandma (since she showed me how to sew when I was 10-12 or something).  We picked up 15 yards of Logo Red Sunbrella, 15 yards of Toast Sunbrella and 15 yards of Phifertex.  That is a SHIT TON of fabric.  Ok, yes, I overbought, I get it!  Gesh these rolls were heavy!  We are going to replace our awnings, seat back helm covers, several pillow cases and a couple of other covers.  We are also going to sew a new outboard cover, a few new cushions and a few other small projects – where should I start?

Chain:  As you might recall from several blog posts back, Matt ordered 100 meters of stainless G5 chain from London and had it sent to us via 3 different delivery companies.  We were finally able to reach the final company, scheduled a drop at the police station, and waited.  They showed up relatively on time with a huge drum full of chain.  Matt and the delivery person unloaded it onto the parking lot and it started to rain.  Not really a problem since I am not made of sugar, but it made the ground muddy which mucked up our new shiny chain.  We had to pull the chain through the fence onto the dock and as we did that we measured every 10 meters so we could mark it with colored zip ties.  If we had time, we would have marked it with paint and nylon webbing too but the popo wanted us off their dock.  So we marked it with a few zip ties and loaded all 500 pounds of it into Sweet N Low (our poor dinghy)!  We then artfully loaded her onto the boat and let me tell you we were exhausted from this day!

We hit the sack early and hard since we had a lengthy sail to the BVI’s the next day.

We had a long and uneventful sail to the Virgin Islands.  We had not been to these islands in about 10 years and we have never brought our boat here – so we had to dig through the memory cobwebs to navigate. We had planned on arriving in St. Thomas today but the weather was such that we only made it to Road Harbor, Tortola.  We wanted to get anchored before dark since we had not been in this area in a while and Tortola was where the wind took us.  Close enough, we will figure out a new game plan tomorrow.