Where in the World Have We Been?

Happy New Year!

We’ve been woefully silent on here for a couple of months, but in a nutshell we’ve…

…visited several islands since we left Grenada at the beginning of November – St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Martinique, Guadeloupe and the Saintes, Antigua, St. Martin…

…explored a bunch…

…had some minor medical issues (like Ted having to suture his own foot)…

…and lots of introspection about what we like and dislike about cruising and living aboard, what has been unexpected, how we’re all adjusting, and what all of that means for the future… 

For now, we’re in the British Virgin Islands. We plan to stay here for about a week depending on the weather, then we’ll head offshore to Turks and Caicos. It’s a much shorter passage (a few days) than the hops up from Brazil (10&11 days), but this will be our first extended time offshore with just the four of us. We had hoped to make it a little shorter by stopping in Puerto Rico, but other cruisers have advised that our first landfall in U.S. waters might see the boat stopped by customs for several weeks, so we’re aiming to make U.S. landfall in Florida instead.

We had our first visitors aboard Ohana this past month, with Danny and Alyssa (the girls’ brother and his fiancée) visiting, then Jen’s parents for Christmas and New Year’s. We didn’t know what to expect for the holidays – our first Thanksgiving without extended family, and our first Christmas on the boat. But as with everything else this year, it may not have been as expected, but we found ways to merge the past with the present. 

Thanksgiving:

• spent in St. Lucia, waiting for a boat part
• successful apple pie despite our fickle oven
• turkey and fresh cranberries
• day after: putting up our Christmas tree and Christmas decorations, listening to Christmas music and sipping eggnog with nutmeg from Grenada

Christmas:

• sent our letters to Santa and visited Santa at a mall in Martinique
• saw the new Grinch movie in the theaters (in French!)
• watched Elf on board…and Rudolph, and Santa Claus Comes to Town, and Frosty the Snowman, and Charlie Brown…
• made graham cracker ginger bread houses with friends on their boat
• made Christmas cookies
• Danny and Alyssa brought a Nutcracker DVD for us, and we cooked a delicious dinner on board, dressed up, and watched the ballet together on Ohana
• Christmas Eve mass with bongo drums
• on Christmas Eve, read The Night Before Christmas (a long-standing tradition from Ted’s youth) and opened one gift (nightgowns that Grandma made)
• Christmas morning in Antigua with Grandma and Grandpa, with fewer gifts than in the past, but I think more appreciated because we’ve learned to live with so much less on the boat

New Year’s:

• spent in Saint Martin, enjoying fireworks in the distance
• used some precious GoogleFi data to stream an early countdown to midnight (thank you, Netflix!!!)
• New Year’s Day also happened to be our 20th wedding anniversary – thank you to Grandma and Grandpa for our date night!

We look forward to getting caught up on the blog with some of our adventures, as WiFi allows, and hopefully seeing some of you in the next few months as we wander back to the US for the first time in almost a year.