I am sure there are plenty of American people who know where St Thomas is and that it is an island in the Caribbean. For us, it is a well traveled island, with massive cruise ships dropping off tens of thousands of human souls for the day. Some days there are 6 or 7 cruise ships, stacked up, tied up and the island seems to practically sink in people.
For us, we were dealing with equipment failure while we were in St. Thomas. Our forward hatch cracked, which means when we go to sea, any water over the bow goes cascading into the forward berth.
Oops
We were able to borrow a friends car and find a man on the island who was an old sailor. He provided us with a new sheet of the exact kind of plexi glass we needed. The main challenge was how to bend it to the previous specifications. We took the spinnaker pole and tied it down on one side, and everything that was heavy for the other side : diving weights, chain, and even a can of antifouling.
This took more than a week of hot sun beating down on it, and in the end Philip finally took a blow torch to it and created the bend we needed.
We did leave the cruise ships behind, and headed the 16 miles to Culebra, to finish the job.
The other side of the anchorage in Charlotte Amalie
The sailboats behind the cruise ships look like little toys compared to these big boys.
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