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Diane's Diary1/12 Friday Larry works on the stanchions again today. We had to have the rigger help us. More money on boat repairs! 1/13 Saturday Our crew of Harleigh and Kirk arrived. We advertised for crew on the internet as 2 previous crew cancelled on us. We did not know either before the trip. I found it difficult to have 2 strangers on the boat. After all, Destiny is our home. I'm sure you all understand how it would be to have strangers staying in your house for 2 weeks! Tom & Tonya invite us to their home for a wonderful homecooked meal with wahoo fish. It was delicious. We all had a good time. Drank way too much booze! 1/14 Sunday Herb, the SSB weather guru advises us to leave tomorrow as we have a good weather window for St. Martin. Although we have more boat repairs to do (Larry has been working on the boat nonstop since we got here) we decide to leave. One reason we leave is we have crew that has plane tickets back to the US in 2 weeks, If we don't leave now, when will we get another weather window? We haven't even gotten to see Bermuda but guess we will have to see it on our return trip. Since we were the only cruising boat still in Bermuda we really got a chance to meet the natives. Everyone seems to really like the yachties here. On the other hand, they dislike the cruise ship passengers. One reason is the multitude & constant number of people. The other reason is that the cruise ship people spend very little money. Yachties actually spend more than cruise ship people! We buy drinks, meals, food etc. The townspeople told me the cruise ship people even go back to the ship for all their meals & if they do go into a restaurant it's only to buy a soda. Well, I guess I would do the same things- food is expensive here & the cruise ship people feel they've already paid for their meals on the ship, it's free, & is a better meal than they have in town. Interesting viewpoints. If we ever come back to the Caribbean again other than by our own boat, I know we will see things differently! We bring the boat to the fuel dock to gas up. $4/gallon. Ouch! I spend the rest of the day cooking meals for our voyage. I made baked ziti, chili, turkey enchiladas, & soup. I was exhausted when I finished. We went to bed by early since we have a big voyage ahead of us. I am very nervous & scared about the upcoming voyage. I got seasick on the way down. I hope it doesn't happen again! We spoke to many of the local people. One day this lady stopped by & I spoke to her for awhile. It turns out she owned the Bermuda Memories store in St. George's located right next to the visitor center. I happened to see her one day & told her we were leaving the following day. She told me she wanted to give us a gift. She gave us one of her beautiful paintings of Bermuda. She would not allow us to pay for it. This was the true Bermudian hospitality we found everywhere. We now have Jill's painting hanging up in Destiny. Thank you again Jill for your lovely gift. 1/15 Monday Departure Day! We all take showers & then head back to the yacht club to fill up with water. Since we don't have the watermaker working we will have to be very conservative with water. That means NO showers & water use will have to be kept to a minimum. We leave the yacht club shortly before noon. It's a beautiful sunny day with very little wind. The calmest weather we have had so far. I am very anxious about the trip. |