Gallows Bay,
Christiansted,
St. Croix, USVI
17.44.911N
64.41.908W

Nothing much new for today; we’re still waiting for our mail to arrive. We still can’t connect to the internet unless we’re sitting in, or in front of, the marina store. Dale busied himself putting our old fin stabilizers on the new outboard. He had to drill a few holes to do it so he had wait until his drill batteries charged up.

After that, we tore the boat apart so that he could run the lines for the SSB radio. I mentioned before that Jim on Chez Freddie had suggested them to aide in transmitting. Dale had lots of wire on board and cut them to length as directed for the project but then we had to figure out a way to lay them out so that there were no turns in them (apparently this is important). Easier said than done. We eventually started them in the lazarette where the antenna tuner is mounted and then fed them through to the master stateroom underneath the bed and along one of the bulkheads. Like I said, we tore the boat to pieces to do it. I hope its worth it but I’m not sure how we’ll know for sure.

By the time we got the Palace back in order, we were able to sit and watch the St. Croix equivalent of Jacksonville’s Parade of Lights from our transom. They had about 20 boats decorated with Christmas lights that lined up for the parade right behind us, then convoyed to Ft. Christensted, rounded around Protestant Cay to complete their circle before doing it all one more time for good measure. There were some really extravagant decorations as well as a few more humble ones that either were having technical difficulty with their lights or just wanted to be in the parade and put a string around the hull to qualify. Afterwards we had fireworks to the east of us. One of the advantages to living on a boat is that we were lucky in having center seats for the whole show. I really enjoyed the beautiful evening.