Christmas on St. Thomas

Delays in getting parts for Sandpiper’s refrigeration kept us from leaving Wilmington before Christmas. But on Dec. 17 we flew to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, to visit our son, Carl, for Christmas. What a beautiful time we had! Carl’s boss, Mike Dunstan, invited us to join his office staff for dinner at his mountain top home. We enjoyed watching Carl race at the St. Thomas Yacht Club on Stinger, an IC 24. Later Carl took us sailing on this fast boat between St. Thomas and St. John.

Every day the temperature on St. Thomas is 84 degrees F during the day and 72 degrees at night. Most days there are one or two brief showers that last for 10 minutes and disappear. Occasionally the temperature will vary + or – 2 degrees. This is as near perfection as you can get. It was great weather to work on some projects with Carl.

We had fun making our traditional German stollen . We went to the St. Thomas downtown community evening festival called Miracle on Main Street. On Christmas eve we attended the Christmas carol service at the Reformed Church and at 6:30 AM on Christmas morning we went to the town square for the Battle of the Choirs. Many of the church and social choirs are up all Christmas eve singing carols at jails, hospitals, nursing homes and residences. On Christmas morning they take turns singing while traditional foods are served to the crowd. It is a joyous celebration of Christmas!

McDougal the cat is Carl’s close companion and friend. There are issues about who is in charge of training whom.

We went to St. John to visit Jane Bloomquist (Belmont Yacht Club) and Bill McMullen. Carl and Jane mastered a Hobbie 16. The snorkeling was spectacular. Loy explored a sunken airplane in Cinnamon Bay.

Today 12/30/05 we moved Sandpiper from her slip to a face dock. We are supplied and staged and ready to depart Wilmington as soon as the weather reports are good, hopefully tomorrow. We will be working our way South toward Florida all through January. We hope your new year is one filled with satisfying accomplishments. As they say on St. Thomas, “The Best is yet to come.”