Seems like it's been weeks since we first left the Grenadine Islands but it's only been a few days. From Canouan we traveled for a day and a half to St. Thomas Virgin Island stood at anchor for less than a day. Went into shore to go through customs because it's the US' territory we have to present our person to the customs to be able to see it is really us coming into the States. We have three Americans on board at the time but we went in groups because not everyone can leave the boat all at once. I was in the second group and I was the only American. We drove the baby tender into land then had to leave one person behind while I was the first through customs because I was American, I then had to go back to the tender and drive it around out in the harbor and let Lesely (first mate, Canadian)go through as well.
It took them a lot longer to get through and we had to run through and try to beat the huge ferry carrying over 100 passengers. The people of St. Thomas aren't really Americans, they are on just the same time as all the other islands and if you don't believe in "island time" it's a real thing!! We were stuck so many places because everyone in these small tropical islands are really on island time. I don't know if most of them even owned a clock to know what time it was.
We then had to do some food shopping (provision) and collect water because we were completely out. We got 50 cases of water so over 600 bottles of water and they were all incased in cardboard boxes. Cardboard carries small nats and other types of bugs that we obviously cannot have on board so we had to take all 600 bottles out of the cases individually and transport them from the dock to the tender then the tender to the big boat. Reminder that the big boat is at anchor in the middle of the harbor where it was still choppy. We had to make a chain of people and launch all 600 bottles of water from the tender to the big boat! Took almost two hours to transfer all the bottles. Then the boys thought this would be funny as the lone stew all by herself to clean this up.
Once we got back from customs, Abby, Dave and Kylie all left for the airport to go see their dads, both which are very sick. After dropping them off we were down to two girls and one was on deck so I am running solo in the interior. We had to st in St. Thomas to get back up engines for our big tender and then we were off.
Only an eight hour trip to Puerto Rico so we were there early in the morning to fuel up. Our boat takes 10,000 gallons of fuel a costs $200,000 to fuel up from empty to full. ONE TANK! crazy money once again but things like this should not surprise me.
We pull into the harbor next to the four cruise ships and two mega yachts which make Big Eagle took tiny.
The picture above is "Le Grand Bleu" the first giga yacht made. One of the biggest in the world. This has a sail boat (the one off to the port side of the boat which can be lifted by a crane up and put onto the yacht) then it has a Riva 74' (another small yacht) craned in on the starboard side, 3-in-1. This is 391ft long. Big eagle is 172ft long.
This is Luna 377ft long. Owned by a Russian billionaire. Two heli pads, pool, spa, hot tub and crew of 40. Madonna was the most recent guest on board. (no I didn't get to see her)
After fueling up we had to drop our captain off at the airport and then we were off. Been out of sight of land for over two days and we have another two or three before we see land, but this time it will be Florida!
