It took a few days to recover and grab perspective to write this post.
Our journey started Sunday afternoon at Jost Van Dyke. We had planned to spend the day on Jost and head to Virgin Gorda on Monday morning. That changed with the big snow storm that hit New York. That storm was tracking to head toward the Atlantic and make waves and winds quite large on Monday night. So, we left Jost on Sunday about 3pm and arrived in Virgin Gorda about 7pm to grab a ball in the dark. First time to do this, but it went relatively well. We met our captain, Pedro, for the journey to St Martin and had dinner. A nice break before the 16 hour haul to St Martin. We departed Virgin Godon about 10pm on Sunday and plowed through wind and waves coming directly at us for 16 hours. Very little sleep and banging the waves most of the night. Pedro our captain was awesome and had a great attitude letting me know the 8 foot waves and 20 knot winds would double the next night when we had planned to cross.
The thing I know and expect about boats is that things break. This was quite challenging when we had three things break at once about 3am. But all was good and all was made to work well enough to arrive at St Martin about 2 pm on Monday. I was at the helm while the sun was coming up and I could see the faint distant shadow of St Martin. We were still a good 6 hours away but it was cool to see land from the middle of the ocean and darkness and know what sailors felt like long before GPS and modern ocean charts. During the passage between about 1am and 3am Kelli and I had a chance to sit on the back of the boat and count shooting stars. Kelli saw 11. I counted 4 and Cody was up for a while and saw 5. It was pitch black and the Milky Way was glowing. God was smiling. It was comforting. Shortly after sunrise a small rainbow appeared and again the thought of God's promise was comforting. As a father I was extremely proud of my family for dealing with very uncomfortabe conditions for 16 hours straight. Not one complaint just a few questions of "how much longer".
Monday afternoon was minor clean up on the boat. Relax, eat, drink and sleep. Our bodies were in need of rest. Tuesday morning we all got up late, school work, boat repairs and cleaning in the morning. I had work to catch up on. We spent most of the day Tuesday getting back into a normal groove. Late afternoon we found a small rocky beach and then a nice pool where the boys swam laps and cooled off.
Then off to Grand Case on St Martin via taxi where there is a carnival parade every Tuesday during the spring. We spent the evening strolling along the main street where all the shops and restaurants are located. Lots of street vendors, artists, t-shirts, bracelets, etc. Quite a few great places to eat with great French restaurants, boutiques and LOLO's. We ate at a great little LOLO. This stands for locally owned locally operated (I think ). Great foods cooked on open fires for about $10 each. The parade was full of men and women dressed in typical carnival apparel along with drums, whistles and many other noise making instruments. Quite fun and relaitively family friendly. The kids discovered crepes from several of the street vendors and all had several crepes filled with ingredients such as Nutella, Lemon & Sugar, etc. Very French and very fun.
It's been great to see our family adapt to environments we are not accustomed to. To be in areas where there is no cell phone, texting or internet service and figure out how to communicate with the locals who primarily speak French. It's great to get outside your comfort zone and to truely understand that God has not brought us this far only to leave us.
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