Homeward Bound

For those of you who are still actually checking this blog, an apology for how lax we have been in keeping up the posts. It's not that we've been particularly busy, just that we've been particularly lazy. So...where did we leave off?
Actually we have some fairly big news. We have decided that our Caribbean adventures are coming to an end and are planning to put the boat up for sale in May. We've had a wonderful time, made some fantastic lifelong friends (we hope our cruising friends will keep in touch), made very few enemies (but they know who they are...we're talking to you, St. John Postal Workers!) but we feel it's time to move on to other adventures. So for several weeks we hung out in Culebra, watching the weather and slowly working through our list of boat fixes to get Solstice ready for sale. We also spent quite a bit of time just surfing the internet, ha-ha!
While we were in Culebra, our friend Teresa got in touch to see if we had some availability for a visit. We got back to her with the response "yes but only if you come quick". And she was on a plane within days, talk about flexible travel plans! She took a small eight-seater flight to meet us in Culebra where we did some snorkeling for a few days and then had a lovely sail over to Fajardo on the Puerto Rican mainland. The three of us took the ferry over to Vieques island where Starwood is opening up a new W hotel this coming Friday, so we had a nice pre-opening tour of the place. It is amazing, with two beaches, three infinity pools and rooms with fantastic views. For Teresa's last day with us, we rented a car and did a quick tour of El Yunque (the rainforest) before dropping her off at the Sheraton in San Juan. The Sheraton there is another beautiful property and we enjoyed a delicious lunch with Teresa's friend Julio who is the controller at the hotel. After lunch it was time for us to say goodbye to Teresa, but it was a nice visit and great to see a familiar face from work!
After dropping Teresa off this afternoon, we have been going nonstop (groceries, marine store, last-minute boat fixes, updating blog...sigh!) as we are planning a dawn departure tomorrow (Tuesday) for Ocean World Marina in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. It will take us 2-3 days to get there but we hope to go fast enough to arrive in daylight Thursday. We don't plan on staying long, taking the first available weather window from there to the Bahamas, and then hopefully making our way to Fort Lauderdale as fast as we possibly can. If any of you are interested in having your own adventures, we've got the boat for you!
Location=Fajardo, Puerto Rico
Lat=18 20.324
Lon=65 37.285