Have a Happy New Year

Hi folks: It is just after noon on the last day of the year. We are in Grand Case, having enjoyed a Tuesday Night Barbecue here. We had "sundowners" aboard Prudence, then went ashore with Derek and Betsy of Lorien, who caught up with us just yesterday. Since we parted with them a day out of Bermuda, they have enjoyed many guests aboard during their time in Antigua, Barbuda, and the Saints. However, they have been plagued by technical problems aboard the big boat, and are somewhat disillusioned.
They will be leaving on Thursday to sail back to Florida to sell. Hopefully they'll be back with a smaller, less demanding cat.

This is a beautiful day here. We talked Derek and Betsy into a morning walk on the long sandy beach, and it was quite nice - we theorize that these two have been so overwhelmed by entertaining that they may not get time to do such things. Dawn could only find one flip-flop and a clothespin, so booty-hunting was a bust. I (Laurie) have just received my haircut from Dawn, a low maintenance #4. Her salon doesn't offer a complimentary shampoo, so I had a wonderful joybath, and am good to go... We
are about to take a slow "jib-sail" back to Marigot, where we will host Derek and Betsy as well as Joe and Wendy of OffCall for a New Year's Eve dinner. We'll try our best to stay up for the fireworks, if only to protect the boat from errant flares and sparks.

Believe me that we are thinking about many of our friends and family back home these days - those we normally visit at this time as well as those we have not spent real quality time with for way too long. It is really nice here, but having it all would mean many people here with us (Okay, having it all would mean you were all on boats beside us).

Tomorrow we dinghy in to pick up Lorna and Brian at the airport. We'll let them communicate here next.

We wish you all the best in 2009!