Dinghy disaster

Hello Everyone.

The interenet has been down in Les Saintes for the past few days so we have been a bit out of contact.

Saturday night we spent the day exploring the island with our MP3. It turned out to be a bit of a dissapointment. It was much cooler looking than it was to actually drive. It felt very unstable and made us both a little nervous. We hiked a few different trails around the island before deciding to return the MP3 early. The narrow, steep roads and the unstable device were not a fun combination! We spent the afternoon reading on the boat. In the evening we went into town to pick up something to BBQ for dinner. We had a small appetizer before heading back to the boat to have a quiet night.

At 3 in the morning Walid woke me up reporting that our dinghy was gone! We used our crime scene investigation skills to notice that everything was as it should have been to hook up the dinghy making it seemingly unlikely that a theif came in the middle of the night. Walid considered taking or kayak out to look for it but decided against it due to the heavy winds and lack of lighting on the kayak. The wind direction was in our favor-if our dinghy had floated away it would have washed up on shore. At sunrise Walid set out on the kayak to find the dinghy. He was able to enlist the help of another friendly American who gave him a lift on his dinghy. Fortunatly for us our dinghy had not only washed up on shore, but, a friendly islander had tied it up and removed the motor for us to prevent any damage. The biggest casualty of the debaucle was our hiking shoes which were getting worn down in any case after several years of use. We feel very lucky (and impressed/amazed) that there was no further damage to our dinghy.

We have decided to stick in Les Saintes for Christmas. We have found that it has the most holiday cheer and additionally it has been very windy and rough. We are keeping our fingers crossed to find a nice piece of meat for Christmas eve or Christmas day so we can cook on the boat. We aren't really in the mood for a creole Christmas!!

We hope that you are enjoying the days leading up to the holidays and that those of you with snow enjoy a white Christmas.