No, we aren't busted because the stock market decline has left us destitute. Not yet, at any rate. But it's tough to see your nest egg drop by 10 or 15%. No, we were busted by the authorities yesterday for breaking the law! And to keep you reading, I won't reveal how until the end of this entry.

Last I left off we were lazing about in Isles des Saintes, about 5 miles south of Guadeloupe. It was quite pleasant at anchor there, what with the downright Gallic charm, French food, clear water, and perfect temperatures. Still, we needed to be in St Thomas by the 19th of Feb, so we had to resume our northward trek. We decided there wasn't a whole lot we wanted to see in the very 1rst world island of Guadeloupe (as I've said before, only the French of all the former colonial powers have not deserted their former colonies, so the infrastructure is quite 1rst world on the French islands; whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is debatable). We did stop at Pigeon Island, about halfway up the west coast of Guadeloupe, on the southern boundary of the Jacques Cousteau National Marine Park. As Maryann already described, we did a SCUBA dive in the park, right off the island. It was notable for the size of the typical Caribbean reef fish; everything seemed to be about 50% larger than normal. Marine parks really work, wish more of the Caribbean would set aside space for them. I've heard it said that they actually improve the fishing around the parks, as the parks serve as breeding grounds, which tends to counter the argument the local fishermen make that parks cut down on their fishing grounds.

After Pigeon Island we stopped at Deshaies on the northwest coast of Guadeloupe. Much like Isles des Saintes, only much more like being in France itself. Once again I have to congratulate the French Customs and Immigration for making clearing in and clearing out simpler than any other place in the Caribbean.

From Deshaies we had a long sail to Nevis. We're getting spoiled by the wind out of the northeast; it makes heading northwest much more pleasant. And it means we can sail whereas last year when we were heading southeast into a southeast wind we ended up motoring more often than not.

We passed by the southwest coast of Montserrat on our way to Nevis, but did not stop. There has been an active volcano erupting on Montserrat for the past 10 years or so. It completely wiped out the previous capital city, and has laid waste to the southern half of the island. There's no more reasonable harbor, and the bulk of the population has fled to other lands. A very current reminder of the volcanic origin of most of the eastern Caribbean.

Nevis was nice and we are certainly glad we stopped on our way north, after giving it a pass on our way south last year. Expensive, though. From Nevis we made the short hop to Basseterre, St Kitts, intending to anchor outside the Port Zante marina. But the weather was fluky and we were getting swells from the south and southwest, making the anchorage way too uncomfortable. Instead of anchoring we stayed the night at the marina, where we'd spent a few days last season. This time around it was high cruise ship season, so the Port Zante shopping area was jam packed with cruise ship passengers. Looks like St Kitts is finally recovering from the string of 4 hurricanes that have devastated Port Zante in the recent past.

We cleared out of St Kitts and headed for St Maarten on a rare, nearly flat-sea day, and with the very light wind coming out of the northwest. As we were heading northwest, we had to motor, and had a fine passage until we were about 2/3's of the 75nm or so across, at which point the wind piped up to 20-25knots right on the nose and the seas came up, particularly choppy. Made for an unpleasant couple of hours before we gained the relative calm of Simpson Bay on St Maarten. We made it with about 30 minutes to spare for the 5:30PM bridge opening into Simpson Bay Lagoon. It was just like homecoming to enter the lagoon again, the 3rd time we've done so.

We had thought to do some boat maintenance in St Maarten, but as it turned out there wasn't anything particularly pressing that needed to be done. Kind of odd not to have 2 or 3 must-fix items on the todo list. I was wondering if we were getting better or if things have stopped breaking. Probably just a momentary cessation, as it turned out.

We hung around St Maarten for about a week, cursing the slow internet (or at least I did; Maryann did the sensible thing of going ashore to use the internet at Shrimpy's, a cruiser hangout. Did a bit of socializing with friends we'd met last season in the Dominican Republic, and marveled at how St Maarten was populated with a good number of the boats who'd spent the summer in Trinidad. We're beginning to recognize a good proportion of our fellow cruisers, or at least their boat names and radio personalities.

And things started breaking again while we were in St Maarten. First to go was the salinity probe on our watermaker. This is the 3rd time it's quit working, so we need to work with the factory to figure out why they keep dying on us. My laptop's display has gone wacky, though if I warp the case just right it clears up. Momentarily. Don't really want to invest in a new one, especially with our recent unexpected expenses of a new dinghy and outboard. More busted stuff, below.

The winds blow strong this time of year, and in fact they are called the "Christmas Winds". They should blow for the rest of February at least, and then start to die down in March. We had a reasonable weather window forecast for Thursday, though with the seas 6-8', so Wednesday evening we caught the 4:30PM outward bound bridge opening and spent a very uncomfortable night in Simpson Bay outside the lagoon, rolling from side to side.

Early Thursday we left for the 75nm trip to Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. At some point the aft head decided to stop working, so our gremlins are still with us. More seriously, the engine cut out (we were using it to boost our speed when we'd hit a windless patch). With the seas on the stern quarter at 6-8' things were very uncomfortable on the boat. We'd roll side to side with an odd little corkscrew motion that tended to make the both of us queasy. Of course there was no way I wanted to work on the engine in those conditions! Based on the symptoms I was reasonably sure it was clogged fuel filters, but the thought of trying to replace them with my head in the engine compartment, rolling and corkscrewing, just wasn't very appealing.

So we just sailed along, making 6 1/2 to 8knots with the wind almost directly behind us. Once we reached Virgin Gorda we decided to sail into the North Sound, a large area of water with land or reefs all around, which makes for relative calm. We sailed to anchor, which was a first for us, and didn't do too badly. Once at anchor I changed the 2 primary fuel filters, drained some junk from them, and changed the secondary fuel filter on the engine. Switched to a fuel tank with a little bit of known good fuel in it, and the engine started right up! Hey, maybe we are getting better at this stuff.

By this time it was sunset, so we motored across the sound to Leverick Bay, where I thought there was a customs and immigration station. In fact I'd thought that's where we'd checked out when we left for St Maarten last April (or was it March?). At any rate we grabbed a mooring and had a peaceful night after a long and very uncomfortable day. We planned to dinghy ashore early and clear in.

But in the morning we discovered free wireless, and were lazily surfing the web at 10AM when a large speedboat from the BVI Customs pulls up. This is cool we think, customs actually coming to us. Nope. Turns out it's part of an anti-smuggling, anti-drug, anti-people who don't check in with customs task force. They were not pleased that we'd not found a customs office first thing in the morning. Really not pleased. Kept saying it was a US$5,000 fine with possible confiscation of boat. Wanted to know how long we'd been on the water and didn't we know we had an obligation to report to customs at the earliest possible moment? And why were we in Leverick Bay since the nearest customs was in Spanishtown, about 6 miles down the coast.

Ooops.

Well, to make a long story short, they fined us US$300 and cleared us in. And then today we took a taxi to Spanishtown (a very spectacular ride, by the way, with fantastic views of Virgin Gorda and the rest the of the BVI), and cleared in with immigration. Now we're legal again and feeling better.

Tomorrow we'll do some boat work - need to figure out why there's no more electricity running to the aft head, and some other miscellaneous boat projects. Then hopefully Village Cay Marina will have a slip for us, so we can have the delivery damage repaired in our new dinghy's hull (see previous entry). After the repair we might get a few days to play before Julia and Morgan arrive in St Thomas on the 19th.

And that's all the news that's fit to print. Gotta go charge the batteries and get the watermaker running manually.