St Croix was definitely a hit with us, the locals are so friendly and make you feel very welcome. The shopping is excellent, they have a large K Mart and Home Depot as well as several large and well stocked supermarkets so we had no trouble finding everything we wanted, including a bottle of Glenfiddich for Christmas.

It was time to move on, with St Thomas our next stop as we have a new hatch being delivered there for the forepeak locker (the hatch we have is a bad fit and lets water into the locker, so we are replacing it with a full watertight cover).  With a 20 knot forecast from the north east, we left Christiansted and set a course for St Thomas only 35 miles to the north.  Its days like these that put a smile on our faces, a nice brisk wind and a reasonably flat sea, and of course the sun was shining although it felt a little chilly in the fresh trade wind.  Within half an hour a pair of Boobies had joined us circling the boat and hunting for flying fish as they escape the 37 ton of steel hurtling towards them.  They stayed with us for almost the whole 5 hour sail, swooping past the handrail so close I could have touched them.  Then the inevitable happened, we were looking up watching the beauty of these birds doing their thing when I got smacked full in the face with thick fishy grey bird poop.  Yes, a bullseye shot covering my sunnies, right across my face, in my hair and it even made it past my smile and into my mouth!   Jez only got my splashback, and after the initial shock, screaming and laughing subsided I ran to the shower and hosed myself down.  So that is supposed to be lucky, right?

By 3pm we entered the beautiful bay at Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas and found a spot to anchor well away from the three huge cruiseships in port that day.  We had only just settled in when Liz and Devin from Moosetracks came over to welcome us, we had spent some time with them back in June at Grenada after they kindly lent us their spare outboard when ours was awaiting parts.  There were also two other boats here that we met in Bonaire so we will hopefully catch up with them too.

With Christmas looming we really want to get ourselves to a nice remote anchorage for some swimming and peace and quiet, but need to wait for the hatch to be delivered and this should arrive Christmas Eve.  Looking forward to the bottle of Glenfiddich and choccies we have stashed away, we have already eaten the crisps and dips we had bought for Christmas, its amazing the whisky is still untouched.