We found Wayne.

In San Juan. We made the connection and arrived St Lucia as planned and headed straight to the hotel and the over to Oceans bar for a quick drink after midnight. Pretty much had the place to ourselves. The marina is pretty empty.

Woke up pretty early when the sun started coming through the hotel windows and I set off to find the boat dragging one of the suitcases of boat stuff with me.

Found the shack in the yard and open her up and unloaded a bunch of stuff. Back to the hotel @ 8am for breakfast with the rest of the crew. And then back to the boat to put it all back together. Christine handled the inside and Wayne and I the outside. We were pretty well done by noon then putzed around doing some random projects and when it was time for beer we called it quits and headed to the conscience store and then to the hotel pool.

Hung out there for awhile then went over to the marina and chatted with the guys who fixed the inverter and got a little nervous that even if the part we are waiting on got in on friday it wouldn’t get out of customs till Monday. So we had another beer and walked around the west marine store to see if there was something that we couldn’t live without.

It was getting close to Jamie’s arrival so Christine went back to the hotel to meet her and Wayne and I went to Mikes bar to wait for them. Her flight was uneventful. Had a couple rounds watching the pirate boat load up with tourists for a sunset cruise.

Took the ferry (manual rope barge thingy) back to the marina for a bite to eat at a place that serves pretty good Rotti. We figured a nap was going to be necessary to make the Friday night jump up. So we went to catch up on some sleep. Set the alarm for a 2 hour nap. And wouldn’t cha know it. It’s 6am the next morning. Guess we missed the jump up. 🙂

We did get confirmation that the part was at the FedEx office but haven’t heard if it made it through customs to get installed today. Fingers are crossed.

When the best laid plans go ary, you just gotta roll with it.

Yesterday, one day before we board the plane to St Lucia we get an email that Sugar Shack is back on the hard. Seems the issue with the sail-drive transmission was more than just replacing the seals and oil. The shifting cone had worn out, small piece that puts the propeller in forward or reverse. A pretty important piece if you ask me. The email said that the part was hard to find but it should be on island on friday. The day we were going to provision and leave. Since the boat was on the hard for the repair Christine found us a hotel near the marina to crash instead of staying on board.

I called around to see if we could find the parts and get them sent to us to take with us. Unfortunately every p,ace had a 2-3 day lead time before they could ship. So that didn’t work out too well. It was a back up plan just incase they didn’t arrive on island on friday as expected.

It is going to take a full day to repair after the part arrives then a while to drop the boat back into the water. No big deal we can roll with it, we’ll be in the islands after all.

Up bright and early on Thursday morning get all loaded up and the taxi arrives early and we get to the airport with plenty of time to relax at the admirals club. First bud light to start vacation @ 8:30, every thing on track. It gets close to Boarding time and I check the iPod app and see that the flight out of Austin is delayed. Check the connection in dallas and its now a 13 minute connection. Christine checks with the desk and there is little chance we make that and there are no more flights to San Juan so that we can make our connection. 45 minutes later exploring all possible routes through JFK to LAX we settled on a change of airlines. We are on JetBlue flying to FLL and going to take a 1 hour taxi to MIA and catch an American flight to San Juan and catch up with Wayne for the last leg.

Changing airlines means we had to go back out through security and grab our bags and check into JetBlue. Since we have no status on JetBlue our heavy bags cost a $100 dollars. While collecting our bags the carousel jams with too many bags going around and shuts down before our bags came out. We help unload the carousel and eventually it starts delivering the bags again and we hustle up to the JetBlue counter to check in. Back through security again. At least we were able to leave the carry ons in the admirals club and get a JetBlue priority clearance to go in the fast lane. We made the full JetBlue flight barely.

Now to collect our bags in fort lauderdale and make a bee line to Miami and once more through security all within a 2 hr window and the drive between airports is 1 of those hours.

We are rolling along, at least flying over New Orleans on our way.