January 31, 2026

After the kids departed in late December, we needed to get in position to leave the boat so we could head home for Mather and Abby’s wedding on January 3rd in NY. That meant we had to get the boat in place on Old Years Night (that’s what they call New Year’s Eve in the islands) and fly out New Years Day. How lucky are we to have the Spenceley’s living on St. Thomas?! They set us up with a mooring at the St. Thomas Yacht Club. What was amazing is that they look right down on the harbor from their balcony so kept an eye on her all week. We tied the boat up and headed up to join Elaine and Richard for cocktails and a yummy early Old Years Night supper. It was gorgeous!

A lovely “Old Years Night” evening with Elaine and Richard at their beautiful home – with Carried Away sitting in the background!

In retrospect, with the air space shut down around Venezuela, it’s amazing that we made it in and out of JFK for the wedding with only slight delays. Our biggest issue was the COLD. It was only 20 degrees when we landed and we have definitely acclimatized to the Caribbean. Despite the temperatures, we had a wonderful time in West Chester celebrating the marriage of Mather and Abby.

An added bonus of traveling home was the opportunity to meet our new grand niece Margot Jane Vander May. My niece Casey came up to Peter’s house in CT from NJ so we could meet Margot before we flew back to St Thomas. Ryan, Bridget, Trevor and Sarah came too and we pretty much overwhelmed Margot. She wasn’t so keen about all the new faces, but she’s absolutely beautiful and definitely said she wanted to come sailing soon :).

We returned to St. Thomas and hopped over to St. John to meet Kim and Katie Hutchinson. Katie had just a few days left of her winter break and they came to get take in some sunshine and relax. Notably this was the first time that Billy was outnumbered 3-1! We called ourselves JUGSOTB (Just Us Girls Other Than Billy) and it was so much fun! We enjoyed dinner at the Lovango resort with the Vogels and spent time in Maho Bay including a long hike out to the Annaberg Ruins. Katie was getting ready for her lacrosse season so we did a lot of hiking (she ran, we walked). Then we hopped over to the BVI for all the important stops including Soggy Dollar, Foxys and Willie Ts. It was a short trip, but we had a blast and they certainly had some fun in the sun!

We had the boat hauled in Sopers Hole Tortola for what we hope to be the “third time is a charm” resetting of the rudder posts. And while she was “up on the hard” we also had them give the hull a nice clean and polish. We love the West End Boatyard – the owner Sharn is terrific. One small project we had been thinking about was adding a back rest to the cockpit seating area. Sharn helped organize all of it – really quickly. He got his friend Cleatus who runs a metal shop in Road Town to make the support within a week. We then worked with Doyle to design the cushion which required getting a piece of Starboard from a local manufacturer – who cut and had it ready in 15 minutes! It was a blast driving around to all the local purveyors to get it done. The cushion will take some time to make so we’ll stop back in late February to pick that up.

With the boat work done, we began watching and waiting for a weather window to get back to Antigua. Since it is south and east from the BVI we have to sail directly into the trade winds and it can be a very slow and hard ride. So you wait until the winds ease. We waited for almost 2 weeks to get a “decent” window.

Of course it’s not so bad to be “stuck” in the BVI. We spent some lovely quiet days at Norman Island, headed up to The Bitter End in Virgin Gorda where we watched the Patriots beat the Broncos (wahoo!). We even dashed out for one night to Anegada and had dinner at the Lobster Shack.

Finally our weather router said, “while not ideal – it’s the least bad window you’ll see for a while”. So…off we went and honestly it was a fine passage. We left at noon on Wednesday, motored the whole way, had a bright moon at night and arrived to Jolly Harbor Antigua just as the sun set on Thursday.

Next we’ll spend a week in Antigua with my brother Mark and his wife Robin and my other Peter will join us as well and stay on to sail down to Guadeloupe. The fun continues!