Checking out of St Croix ... Tuesday 17th April 2018

Checking out of St Croix   ...   Tuesday 17th April 2018

We rented a car this morning and headed first to Fredericksted on the west side of St Croix. It's in a beautiful location with pristine clear water. However, the town looks like it's seen better days, partly because it has taken a beating from hurricane Maria, but also just seems run down. We found a great cafe and shared blueberry Belgian waffles with a side of bacon for second breakfast, with coffee of course. After this we headed to the airport to meet with Officer Morales from teh Customs and Border protection. She was very helpful and we sorted out all our paperwork quickly and are cleared for departure any time in the next 48 hours. Our third stop was a large supermarket where we stocked up on just a bout everything we could think of. We don't have high expectations of provisioning in the Bahamas. We ended up with four large boxes of groceries, which we then ferried out to Cotinga in the Dumb Dog.
At this point we got a text from Moose to say that he was finishing up work and would be free to dive on our boat in 15 minutes. True to his word he appeared off the side of our boat and proceeded to replace the zinc on our Max-Prop propellor in no time. Moose is originally from Indiana but has been in St Croix for 7 years. It's a really small world - As I sit in the Brew Pub checking out the third and final beer selection (English Pale Ale) and use their WiFi - I just found out that Cayleigh our waitress last night,  is Moose's girlfriend. They both seem like lovely people! Thanks for all your help Moose and Cayleigh!
It is likely that we will depart tomorrow - it sounds like it will be squally - but winds and seas on Thursday are much higher. It's a tough call. In any event we will likely be off-air for the next week or so as we make our way north and westwards to the Turks and Caicos via the north coast of Puerto Rico, the Mona passage and the north coast of the Dominican Republic. It's about 500 miles from here - but we'll likely break it into more manageable sections and stop over in various harbors flying the Q-flag.

More later

M&G