Hello Vieques!!

We set sail on St.Paddy's Day at 06:30am. Good Bye St.Croix! We are fully provisioned (thanks Rum Runners for the help with that!). We had a fantastic start - 48 miles of great seas and easy winds. The trip was a breeze! All crew members on board are happy! Esperanza, Vieques around 14:00 -




Cat's Eye happy at anchor in Esperanza!

Once we anchored I gave Maggie a call - a good friend from St.Croix who was vacationing on Vieques with her sister. We motored into town and meet for a drink!


The day was great - We enjoyed a couple of cocktails and a good dinner then headed back to Cat's Eye for some rest. Tomorrow was another day of sailing - next stop Salinas, Puerto Rico! We are on our way!! 

We are off!! Sort of!

We take off on time! February 26th we depart St.Thomas! We head straight to St.Croix!! Since Dave and I lived in St.Croix for a several years we are coming here to say "see ya later" to good  friends. So OK we really did not make it to far and we still have one BIG project that needs to be completed. So as we wait for the new radar/chartplotter to arrive we set up many "see ya later" gatherings! I seem to have a knack for this! The radar is ordered but it is back ordered till March 7th. Since it will be over nighted to us we know we are "stuck" here till at least mid March. Since somethings you can not control - we decided to just sit back relax and catch up with great friends.
Once the radar arrives we now have to install it - oh fun fun!! Thanks to good friends the install goes VERY smooth.

So now with radar installed! The To Do list is small and we set another departure date - March 17th 2011!  We will have the luck of the Irish with us!!

The journey begins!

It has happened! Dave has retired! After many years of friend and family listening to us say "this year Dave will retire" He finally made the decision that he was ready! I personally was ready years ago (just kidding). Now that the choice was made there was a LOT of preparing to do before we set off sailing! Dave had some major projects to do on the boat - I had lots of goodbye parties to plan! We are going to be busy!!  Dave's retirement day happens! December 31st 2010 - of course there was a party. Dave then started working on the boat. We had some of the To Do list done already. A 16 a gallon an hour watermaker had been installed. A small apartment size washing machine had been installed. Dave took off on Cat's Eye to Tortola to get hauled out - we had a dirty bottom. Dave took that opportunity to redo the drive shafts. I stayed behind in St.Thomas - I was still working after all! I really could not get off to spend days in a hot sweaty boat yard!
Dave returned and did LOTS of engine work. Getting these lil Yanmar engines ready to go proved to be a HUGE project but he got it done! We kept Cat's Eye on the dock in Frenchtown Marina, this is also where I worked. It made a very easy commute to work every morning (and yes I also worked everyday that Dave had the engine pulled out! It was safer there!) This also proved to make it easier to get home after all the "See ya Later" parties we had lined up!
As February rolled in the To Do list got smaller - parties where often and we felt if we did not set a leaving date we might never leave. We decided on February 26th (our anniversary) The date was set and we where sticking to it!