Greetings!
I'M BAACK! Well, thanks to all the well wishers. I'm glad we did it, but I, for one, am glad to be back home. The crossing back was quite an adventure and I am now having a fair amount of trouble shifting gears and focusing back on work again. We just got our pictures back yesterday - some of them are really nice and we will have them available on a web page before the end of the week (hopefully). On the web page, we will provide a bit more detail about the trip.
Rosi and Jim are having a great time in Trinidad with some of Charles' relatives. On Sunday they went to the south of the island with Harry and Judy (Charles' cousin) to visit some friends. Jim went to a cricket match (Trinidad and Tobago vs. Guyana) with some of the guys, while Rosi went with the ladies to do hair and visit with Harry's mom.
Libelle maintenance is slugging along. The helmsman's seat was repaired while Charles and I were still in T'dad. Rosi and Jim have since dropped off more teak bits and pieces for repair, and the dodger is in the shop to get some new plastic windows (that's good because you could barely see out of the old ones).
The wind speed and direction indicator was broken fairly early on in the crossing and I think they have opted to do without them for a while. An aside note on this: The previous owner of the boat had a device installed on the top of the mast to keep birds from landing on the mast and messing up the deck and mainsail cover. This device is approximately 1 foot long and has lots of sharp pointy things on it. The wind speed and direction indicator sit on this bird guard at the top of the mast and the tricolor lights are somewhere in the same neighborhood. The bracket for the bird guard broke about a week into the trip and the whole works was flopping around at the top of the mast. Jim disconnected the electrical bits so we wouldn't get an electrical short when the wiring tore to shreds. We also had to worry about the sharp pointy things on the bird guard tearing away at the sails or halyards. To reduce the chances of this, Jim became a cowboy and "lassooed" the bird guard with the flag halyard to keep it from banging around. Luckily, this held through the whole trip and the tricolor lights were still intact when we got to T'dad.
Rosi and Jim are planning to leave for Grenada on Saturday. After that, they will be making their way through the Caribbean , and eventually to Louisiana by early March. Insurance rates in Lake Pontchartrain are even less than Folly Beach, and Rosi would like to be some what closer to family.
Jim is still scheduled to return to work on April Fool's Day, and hopes to make it back to Madison by mid-March. After that, I think that Rosi will be splitting her time some how between Madison and Libelle.
That's all for now. Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. Jim and Rosi miss all of you and they think about you often.
Alles Gouda,
Yvonne
