It's up to you....

New York New York....

Sending this from Broadway. Well, you do, don't you.

US US USVIs

It's my birthday! 30(d) today! And my first ever birthday in the US Virgin Islands.

It was a sad farewell to Trellis bay and all the nice people there but it had to be done. A 30 M sail to St Thomas, the engine seems knackered, it's time to go home!!

BV BV BVIs

Plenty has been going down since the last entry. Too much to go into detail really so, until the book comes out, a brief summary will have to do.

During my dads' hol out here we circumnavigated Tortola, visiting Cooper, Salt, Peter, Jost Van Dyke, Guano islands and several smaller "cays" as well. My favourite anchorage was Little Harbour on Peter Island: It was very deep but well-sheltered; we put the anchor down and took a stern line to shore. The water was incredibly clear and us lads enjoyed diving and jumping (Susi was not keen after we spotted a huge stingray). There was nothing ashore so, as evening approached, I dinghied over to a charter cat and explained that we had a slight emergency situation. The skipper was a coiled spring, ready to spring into action (he even put his drink down!) but he soon relaxed when I explained that the nature of the emergency was that we really, really needed some ice. He gave us a whole bag. This is just as well as we got thru a whole bottle of Appleton 12yr old rum with coke. An excellent evening, a right laugh and I found out that I may be related to James Hunt, the F1 chap - as you do.

Dad is too much of a man to wear suncream, and he allways just goes black anyway. Of course he got very, very sunburnt. He went from "a bit sore" to "no, it'll go brown by tomorrow" to "um, maybe I will stay out of the sun then" in the space of a few days. I think it was the scabbing of his chest and general post-Hiroshima look which finally convinced him. I felt bad - I am the skipper after all - but I knew he wouldn't listen. I had to get Susi to rub all sorts of creams and lotions into him, we even tried smearing him with Manuka honey & he wasn't too keen on that but, generally, he seemed to enjoy the attention.

We met fellow Bristolian, Dave, who helped make dads' hol one to remember by throwing a surprise birthday bash on his luxurious cat (actually I don't know if the party was organised especially for him, but it did say "Happy Birthday Peter" on the gigantic apple and blackcurrant pie that he wheeled out for desert), taking us snorkeling and generally being good company.

We have met lots of other cool people too (Hans, Ernst, Jo, Sam, Norm, Patti.......etc) which allways helps to make a "nice time" a "great time".

Wildlife: Turtles, rays, tarpin, baracuda, puffer fish, lots and lots of different fish. No sharks.

Sitting on deck today reading and sipping a warm beer when some dude sails past on a Hobie cat. "Wanna go for a sail?" he asked. "Sure" sez I, & in I dive. Just an example of what I love about this lifestyle: You never know what is going to happen. Like Dave taking us across to Marina Cay in his RIB for dinner. To a different island, for dinner! How cool?

Apparently my birthday will be on the 17th May this year - hope you can all make it to my party.

Laters...........