We stayed in St. Kitts a few extra days at the marina to fix our head. That's the toilet for land-lubbers out there. It had been increasingly difficult to pump, requiring extra pumps, and on the way over to St. Kitts it overflowed with sea water - not a good situation. We closed the thru-hulls and knew we'd be facing another go at the toilet. It's a Lavac, supposedly one of the more maintenance - free varieties of marine toilets. But ours has been a problem off and on, requiring taking apart every few months. Now we wish we had bought a whole extra pump in St. Martin, that will be on the list for purchase in Grenada!
Boy what a mess when we took it apart - calcified crud with sea salt, thankfully not too smelly, as it was all petrified. Lots of buckets of vinegar later, the crud came off and all parts looked much better. A new valve at one end - and put it back together.

Woops! Larry threw the bucket of old vinegar water with crud overboard - and the black plastic nut required to hold it all together. Here's the nut pictured with the scuba gear he needed to go diving after the part. Not a chance we'd find one of these nuts on the island.

We finally left St. Martin and started our way south. After 1,000 miles of upwind motorsailing from Miami in the last year, we turned the corner and are able to sail. We are still beating into the wind, but conditions are improving.
We sailed from St. Martin south to St. Eustatia, where we dropped our hook for the night and then kept going to St. Kitts. If you stop at Stasia and don't intend to go ashore, leave at first light or the park patrol will charge you for anchoring.
In St. Kitts we stayed in the Port Zante Marina, a real treasure at fifty cents a foot per night. We have not been to a marina in over a year and it felt good to treat ourselves to a dock and fresh water showers.
The people of St. Kitts are friendly and helpful. We explored the town of Basseterre, and took a bus up the coast to the restored fort of Brimstone Hill. That is well worth the excursion, we got an audio tour guide and learned all about the history of the extensive fort. The public bus leaves you a short 30 minute walk to the fort, but it's all uphill and a good hike.

We tackled some climbing here in St. Martin. For weeks now, we've been anchored in front of Mount Fortune, so we decided to try climbing it. Mountain goats scamper up and down the face of this rock every afternoon. We put on our hiking boots and jeans and made it to the top, for spectacular views of the Simpson Bay Lagoon, Marigot on the French side of St. Martin, and Simpson Bay on the Dutch side. At the top the wind really blows like a banshee.
We've been waiting out strong trade winds and high seas (25 + knots, with squalls coming through regularly, and 10 to 12 foot seas). We went into the boatyard to chat with our friend Lindsey and others.
Our instruments are now in and working (at least the depth; we'll have to wait until we're underway to test the speed and distance). We chose Navman instruments to replace our original Datamarine setup, which lasted over 20 years of good service. Of course we had to do some carpentry to make the display fit, and the wire stringing around the boat took days to finish, mostly grunt work of taking everything out of all of our lockers to access the hidden panels and painstakingly shove wire through small holes. But we are delighted to have a working depth sounder and a crisp display with large, easy to read numbers.

While we were waiting for our instrument display to arrive, from France no less, by ship, the international Heineken regatta was held in St. Martin. Almost 300 boats of all sizes and classes raced from March 6 - 9 in fine weather with crews from France, England, the Netherlands, Brazil, South Africa and the U.S.. Larry volunteered to drive a water taxi for the racers to get to and from shore before and after the races. We both helped deliver these big dinghies, with 30 and 40 horse power outboards, on an ocean run from Philipsburg to Marigot. Larry got very used to that much power in a small boat; our little Portabote with a 3 hp engine was quite a step down after that experience.
We saw some amazing racing machines, some up to 100 feet long, in the racing class. It was quite a busy time in St. Martin with sailing and celebrations, though we missed the really hot parties with such acts as Shaggy, King T-Mo, and White Knuckle Weekend.

We spent three weeks in the boatyard, an intense time of working on the boat all day, every day. We had a lot of work to do on the bottom - she is developing tiny micro-blisters all over the hull, which we popped, dried, sanded, filled, and primed before painting. Next time we haul we will probably have to grind down to the gel coat and start fresh.
We also noticed some bare spots on the rudder, so we spent time grinding it down. We drilled holes in it to let out water in its core, let them dry, filled it in, did fiberglas on a crack, and primed the whole rudder. We used Interprotect 2000 to prime before painting.
The bottom paint we used is a new brand, called Ameron ABC #3, which we bought over on the French side of St. Martin at the Time Out Boatyard. At $120 a gallon, it is less than half the price of commercial bottom paints, and gets good reports from other cruisers who have used it.
We also had the bowsprit foot platform reworked by Graham in the boatyard, who did a wonderful job of removing the rotten pieces, replacing with teak, and finishing it all with epoxy. We then reinstalled it after taking all the rust off the stainless frame for it. All of the screws that had been holding it in were gone (!), so we replaced all of them.
Lindsey in the boatyard took apart our gear shifter, replaced some worn parts, relubricated it, and put it back together. We were probably going to have a failure on that, as it was getting hard to shift from neutral to forward and reverse. That could have been a real problem underway. He also installed our new transducers for depth and distance in the hull.
We also sanded down our waterline stripe of red, which has been a problem for some time. We primed and just put bottom paint up the side, which now looks much better.
We're back in the water now, anchored in the Lagoon, and waiting for the display unit for our new instrument transducers to come in (only a month and a half late!) so we can install that and be on our way south.

We are in the boatyard now, at Bobby's Boatyard in St. Martin. It's an adjustment to "life on the stilts". Here we are in the well, waiting for the TraveLift to take the Debonair out of the water.
The dogs are everywhere; here they're waiting with the workers to get ready for the lift.






"Easy does it" - up and out of the water.
















Pressure wash to get most of the marine growth off the bottom.














Moving through the boatyard to her new home. The TraveLift is quite a machine, and it's an amazing thing to watch the boat being wheeled around on land.




Settling the Debonair into place, putting stilts and ladder around the boat.












Larry in full sanding gear, working on the hull and hamming it up.

We took the bus over to the Dutch side capital city of Philipsburg, which is all cruise-ship oriented. The whole waterfront is full of jewelry stores, beach ware, perfume, cigars, all duty-free shopping. We had a good time just being at the beach and walking around. This map of the island was set into the sidewalk.
Back in Marigot, we saw this great place - the Fantastic Guest House and Auto Supplies - and had to take a picture of it.

We spent three weeks in Marigot Bay on the French side of St. Martin, exploring the island by bus and enjoying the very French town of Marigot. Here is a view of the bay from the high point of Fort Louis, overlooking the harbor and Anguilla to the north. Our boat is one of the many boats seen at anchor here.
The fort is only a ruin, but looks good from this viewpoint. If it's any indication of French forts, we're convinced that the French could learn a bit about fort-building from the Spanish. Now, the fort at San Juan was built to last!

On Thursday, January 10, we motorsailed out of Fat Hog's Bay on Tortola. It was a fine, sunny day, with a light north-east breeze, as we sailed east-southeast to St. Martin. The first photo is of Fat Hog's Bay, seen from the bow of our boat, as we were leaving. The second photo is our last view of the British Virgin Islands - Round Rock, with Virgin Gorda in the background.
It was a wonderful passage with no problems at all, and the breeze helped us out all night. We dropped anchor on the French side of St. Martin in Marigot Bay just after dawn on Friday, and checked in to customs and immigration there. We've been exploring the island and price shopping for boat yards, as we prepare to haul out and work on the boat. We will be going over to the Dutch side of the island for haul out, and have a reservation for Monday, Feb. 4.

We sailed from Road Town to the eastern end of Tortola and anchored in Fat Hog's Bay on December 29, only about six miles up the coast, but it was a hard, slow slog to windward. We've been taking hikes up into the hills; some of the roads seem to go straight up. We also figured out the bus system and took a bus ride into Road Town. There are a lot of goats in town; they seem to be the only way lawns get mowed around here. A group is working on the cemetery in town, and another group is lounging in the shade next to the video store, on the main road through town.
We'll be making a hop over to St. Martin when the weather cooperates, probably on Wednesday.

We spent Christmas in the US Virgin Islands, St. Thomas and St. John, at some lovely anchorages on the south coast. The wind was picking up, so we sailed over to the British Virgin Islands while we could, and cleared customs and immigration on December 27 in Road Town, Tortola. Then we bashed our way to windward and dropped our hook at Fat Hog's Bay, on the eastern edge of Tortola, where we'll wait for the winds to come down a bit before we make the hop over to St. Martin.

We spent December 18 - 21 at the loveliest little island we've ever seen, Culebrita, just off the east coast of Culebra. It is part of the Spanish Virgin Islands, east of the main island of Puerto Rico. Most of the time we were there by ourselves, on a mooring ball, with clear, blue-green water dotted with reefs and much sea life to snorkel in. We saw hundreds of colorful reef fish, sea urchins, starfish, and many other sea creatures. Also, part of the island looks like the western U.S. - boulders, sheer cliffs, and great hiking. We hiked up to the top of the island, where the ruins of a lighthouse stands, and could see for miles. St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands beckoned us to the east - and we sailed across the Virgin Passage on December 21.

We sailed into Culebra's harbor on the afternoon of December 4, expecting to spend a day or two. Instead, weather intervened, with a late tropical storm passing to the north of us, bringing brisk winds and squalls. The forecast calls for settled conditions, but higher than normal trade winds (between 20 - 30 knots) through Sunday. So, we'll stay put until the weather is more favorable for our next hop to windward, the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Thomas. We could see St. Thomas as we sailed into Culebra; it's about 20 miles away.
In the meantime, last Friday before the storm hit, we took a ferry back to the main island of Puerto Rico, to Fajardo. Here is the sun rising over Culebra on our trip over. It was fun to let someone else worry about the navigation, the piloting, the waves, the weather. On the way back the waves were breaking over the enclosed first floor of the ferry, and we stayed down there.

We left Salinas on the morning of November 28, and anchored just 6 miles away at Boca de Infierno to scrape the boat bottom and propeller, and rest. We buddy-boated with our friends Pip and Luz for the first part of this trip and enjoyed their company very much.
In Patillas, we anchored for a couple of days, waiting for weather. We saw this parachute sailor in the anchorage. Later the couple both tried windsurfing.
On the way to the west coast of Vieques Island, we left in a bit too much wind and had a real shake-down of the boat. We had the footrest platform on the bowsprit come loose; we were able to retrieve it, but it will need replacing. Then we were taking water into the anchor locker; Larry realized this when water poured out of the locker over our bedding in the V-berth. We lost the cover for the windlass. Then the jury-rigged depth sounder came loose and we had to do another jury rig on a pole to lower the sounder when we take readings. We need to replace the sounder with a permanent one when we get to a boatyard.
Here is a photo of Pip's boat underway from Vieques, where we anchored for one night, on our way to Culebra.

Debby flew back to Puerto Rico on November 5, and heard all about Tropical Storm Noel from Larry. It was gusty winds and torrential rain for four days, but everything turned out OK. We did a lot of provisioning at the larger supermarkets in Salinas. Shown here are the beach over by the coral reef, with its protected swimming and snorkeling area, and horses grazing in the field between Playa Salinas and Salinas.

We also had to take apart our trusty little outboard motor, a Mercury 3.3 HP. We rely on it every day to ferry us to and from shore while we are at anchor. We hadn't done this before, so we were very careful to read all the directions and save all the little screws and parts. We cleaned out the carburetor and got it going again! One more task we learned how to do.

We finally left Salinas on November 28, bound for islands to the east.

While in Salinas, Larry helped a small nonprofit organization with their business planning. VOLUNAC is a social service agency that provides assistance to poor, elderly and disabled residents of the Salinas area. The agency was created by Carmen Rosado who manages social work for the town and teaches at a nearby university.
VOLUNAC takes an innovative approach to social services by establishing a network of community volunteers which helps leverage scarce resources. But more funding is needed to undertake new projects. To do this, the agency is applying to the U.S. IRS for tax-exempt status which will greatly expand their fundraising opportunities. The IRS application was an extensive, detailed document that needed some English translation and interpretation of its work plan and by-laws.
It was a pleasure to work with and get to know the staff of this small but effective agency. Kenny(college intern), Larry, Carmen and Nancy.