Happy Thanksgiving!

You know you've been in one place too long when the excursion boats add you to their itinerary.  I looked out the port the other day and saw the folks along the rail of this schooner with their cameras, making pictures of the little boat.  That would be Play Actor, I think.  We have been here in St. Lucia for a little over two weeks, and we are still enjoying it.  We always do -- Rodney Bay is a favorite spot of ours.  It's a good anchorage with attractive scenery and clean water in which to swim.  There's a lot of water-toy activity with people from the resorts capsizing their Hobie cats and paddling their kayaks, so we can drink our coffee in the shady cockpit and watch the tourists change color from pasty white to hot pink, right before our eyes.  At just 12 degrees above the equator, the attenuation of UV by the atmosphere is much less than at higher latitudes, because the rays have a much shorter trip through the air.  It doesn't seem any brighter or hotter, -- in fact, it's in the low 80's here -- but exposed skin will burn in minutes.  We're planning on leaving later this week.

We've been watching the weather, waiting for a few days of good breeze to take us to Antigua, and then on to St. Martin.  The low pressure system that's east of Bermuda has been blocking the trade winds for the last few days, otherwise we would have left already.  We went grocery shopping several days ago to provision for the trip,  and now we've eaten our stock.  It's time to go shopping again.  We tried it yesterday, but discovered that it was really time to rebuild the carburetor on the outboard instead.  That done, we're off to the grocery store this morning, with an eye toward a Thursday morning departure.

We'll probably spend Thanksgiving Day at sea.  Think of us when you're eating your turkey -- we'll probably be eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, unless the fish happen to be running.  If we get lucky with a tuna or mahi-mahi, we'll steam some rice and have sashimi in the cockpit.  Happy Thanksgiving.