Linda buying fruit at an open-air market in Bequia-more fun than fighting Christmas crowds at the stores back home!

We’ve always felt that getting there, the passage, was a good chunk of the fun in cruising. Sure, sometimes the passages are not totally comfortable, but one needs to keep them in perspective. The next time we’re on a passage, and we start to complain about the conditions, we are going to think back to our recent trip home from the Virgin Islands.

To make this relatively simple "passage" involved one ferry boat ride, three cabs, a bus, and four airplane rides-one of which needed de-icing of the wings before we could take off. Two of the flights we were booked on were canceled, there was not a decent thing to eat between the Virgin Islands and Tucson, Arizona, and our brown bag of snacks soon grew stale. The airports were jammed with people coughing and wheezing, the airline personnel were grouchy. And then there were those wonderfully comfortable coach seats in which to relax.

Give us a gale at sea any time!

While we are on the subject of sailing, the last ten days we spent in the Caribbean we decided to play “olden days”. Aside from lots of Chuck Berry and Little Richard on the CD player, we did not use Beowulf’s engine. This included sailing into and out of a lot of tight anchorages, which is great fun, and living with the light airs when they slowed us down. We sailed on and off the anchor, and went out sailing almost every day (trying to stock up on sailing before the long winter back in Arizona). It was only on our last day aboard, when we had removed the working jib and loosened the rig for hauling, that we used the engine.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the concept of visiting new places that we lose sight of the pure pleasure to be had in a quiet (or boisterous) sail. In the future, we plan to do a lot more sailing.