O.K. folks we are still in P.R. and I don't know when we will leave here. I'm ready to make a 6 or 7 day run to Columbia but the V.A. are not cooperating. Right now we are adding solar panels on the boat. At the moment I have 4 panels and have 1 more on order, should get here this week and then I'll be putting in 460 watts and about 25 to 30 amps. After this I won't have to run my generator or engine hardly at all.
It seams that being here we have taken advantage of the grocery stores here. Our freezer is so full that i can't get anything in it and the refrigerator is over stuffed also. Along with too much food on board I have gained a small amount of weight. Sitting here with no sailing the meals Karen cooks are getting larger and larger. I'm sure the beer has nothing to do with it.
We had some new cushions made for the cockpit and they don't fit, had them made in Florida and there is no way I'll send them back. I guess I'll bite the bullet and have some made in Columbia if I ever get there. I'll try to post more but it is boring here and not a lot to tell y'all.
See Y'all Down the Road'
Mike & Karen

Well it's me again with not a whole lot to say. We are still waiting on the VA and sitting here in P.R. I did purchase 2 more Solar panels to add to my free power. I have been working on that about a week and should finish in a day or two. Karen finished all the varnish yesterday and celebrated with several rum & cokes. We have about 20 or more coats and we don't have much burning from the sun. Probably will not have to varnish for two years now.
When we Finlay finish here if it's not too late in the year and no hurricanes in the Caribbean we will head to Columbia and stay down that way during hurricane season. After the season we will head north up Central America. Well I guess that's about all I have now,but will keep y'all kind of up to date.
See Y'all Down the Road
Mike & Karen

Hey y'all miss us. We have had a rough 3 weeks, to start with in January we had to buy a new inverter/charger and with this new one our Honda 2000 would not work on the charger part. Well for 3 1/2 months I have had to use the motor to charge the batteries. Not only does it cost a lot of money to buy fuel it puts too many hours on the motor. Looking for a larger Generator I finally found one built like the Honda and it was a 3 1/2 KW, that was plenty of power,Ha Ha. It took about 4 weeks to get here to Puerto Rico, so this last Monday it arrived and everything was good. I got it back to the boat added oil and gas fired that mother up. Boy it worked for an hour and we shut it down to go to movie night at the marina. (Little Fockers is a good movie by the way.) the next morning here we go I start it up and started charging, everything was good. Three hours later it shut down, I thought we ran out of gas. We went out and opened the fuel tank to find plenty gas. I fired it back up and 30 seconds later it shut down, this happened every time I fired it up. OK here is where it gets complicated. I purchased this on Home Depot. Com and this is Puerto Rico and this is Home Depot Puerto Rico. Called HD.com and here is the answer, no problem just take it back to any Home Depot and get your $ 1000.00 back, so we rented a car and drove to Ponce picked up this little object put it in a basket, rolled it in the store and here is the red lights. The little lady said we don't do that. Anyway another lady showed up and about 2 hours later she called us on the phone and said everything was set to give our money back. Happy days are here again. Anyway purchased a regular genset and so far it works OK, a little loud but who cares. This should keep y'all up to date with our trials and tribulations. See Y'all Down the Road Mike & Karen

Hey Everyone,
I guess you wonder what's happening. We are still sitting in Salinas PR. waiting to get this V.A. thing finished. They are going to put me on disability and give me money so I'm sticking around for a while.
Karen & I did fly to Grenada last week to look at a boat, but I guess I offered to little and he sold it to another buyer. This guy offered full asking price without a survey. Now that's stupid for anyone to buy a boat without one. I guess one is born every day and sometimes two. I am not one of them.
Nothing really to tell y'all so until there is See Y'all Down the Road.
Mike & Karen

Been waiting for the first comment to be put on the blog just to see if anybody looks at the damn thing. Karen and I have been working on the varnish work on Drifter and just about finished. We have made several trips to San Jaun to the V. A. and just almost finished with them, so we will be leaving here and heading to Lureron in the D.R.

It seems that Geraldo Rivera owns an island here in Salinas and brings his children here to the marina in his half a million dollar launch. He told me that he flies back to the states every 2 weeks to film his show and then returns here. Must be nice to own your on island.

Karen finally went to get her hair cut and got out of the chair with none left on top.

This is the view we have in the evening during sun downer and that dear folks is about all I have to tell you. We are still having a good time but I can't wait to get back under sail again. This sitting in one spot for so long gets boring. I just hope when we get to Guatemala we have plenty of places to go and see. O.K. until next time See Y'all Down the Road Mike & Karen

Hi Y'all,
I know you think we have forgot y'all out there but we haven't. There is just nothing going on but work. Karen is doing all the varnish work and I'm watching. She is putting on anywhere from 6 to 10 coats on everything, and I'm watching. Now I don't want you to think that's all I'm doing is watching because that's not true, I'm also telling here if she is doing a good enough job on the varnish.
We are sitting at the dock in the Marina De Salinas waiting until I get all this V.A. crap out of the way and then we will get back on the anchor.
I promised a recap on 2010 but just haven't gotten round to it. I will in the next day or two start on it. We just got the Internet back to working at a decent speed and I hope it stays this fast.
We are looking forward to leaving here for the D.R. and Luparon but we still enjoy the P. R. and the people we meet here.
Karen has got excited about an other boat that I found in the B.V. I. it's a 47 Gulf Star Sailmaster. She has priced tickets to fly there so we can look at it and maybe get a survey while we are there. I'll let y'all know what happens. This boat will be more comfortable for us in our later years plus be more comfortable in heavy weather.
O.K. so now y'all know we haven't forgotten you out there but we really haven't anything to report. See Y'all Down the Road.
Mike & Karen

Well it's been awhile but I do have an excuse. Now I know one of you don't want to here it but here it is. Being on a boat there are certain times when water gets inside and sometimes your computer may get in the way. when that happens every thing gets messed up and some keys don't work. Well this happened to me and I could not type in my password. So if a extra U or IU shows up just let it pass.
O.K. we left St.Maarten on the 8Th and went to Virgin Gorda in the B.V.I.s. There was no wind to speak of so it was a motor sail. We arrived at about 1500 hrs and went to a mooring ball.
The next morning we checked In and went to the Baths. This is a volcanic island and what happened to the round boulders was the soft layers of lava, after a few million years wore off and you get this great bunch of holes and caves. If you ever get a chance to go it's worth it.

After we left the Baths we hightailed it to Jost Van Dyke and the bar Foxy's as most of the people that been there will tell you It has not changed since It opened. We spent a couple of days there and left for Calebra( on of the Spanish Virgin Islands) It was not what we left In 2002 last time here. There are no cruisers anywhere and most of the shops and beer joints or closed down. That's really bad news for those who like to drink a beer or 12 a day.

We left Calebra and had a pretty good down wind sail to Salinas P.R. So here we sit for the next month or so while I get registered with the V.A. and start receiving meds. from them. In the next week or so I'll give a recap of the last year of where and whats happened to Karen & I & Drifter. See Y'all Down the Road.

P.S. Mike I hope this satisfies you for a few days.

Mike& Karen

Well here we are in St. Maarten & St. Martin. We hope everyone had a happy New Years Party and didn't get to for in to the bottle.
As you can see from the photos St. Maarten is the home of the mega yachts. Over the holidays the number of them went down to about 45 at the docks, after the 3 Rd. of January they started to fill up again. This is just an estament but I would guess there is a 1/2 Billion dollars worth here at the moment. Some are too large to get into the Lagoon and have to stay on anchor out in Simpson's Bay. The largest yacht that can get in here is 320 Ft. Stephen Spielberg's yacht is too large and so is the ugliest yacht in the world. That's the one I put in the blog from Guadeloupe.

Oh by the way the second ugliest yacht in the world is here also and I included a photo down below. Maybe some of you space age folks won't think so but Karen & I do.

We are just sitting here for the last 17 days waiting on a new Inverter/ charger from Marine.com now I'm not going to tell you how P.OD. I am about this wait, because I don't want to burn the keys up on my computer. Their excuse is the blizzard and FedEx would not pick it up. I just won't order anything from them. They normally have the lowest prices,but I cut off my nose to spite my face if I wait somewhere on them again.

There really not too much to do here unless you like to go to rough beaches or shop so we just work on the boat. Boy after 17 days there is not much left to do. We have caught up with a years worth of thing that we have put off. The only thing left is the %$#*&!@# Inverter/ Charger.

Well I'll wish you all a Happy New Year and SEE Y'all Down the Road

Mike & Karen

Hey, I hope everyone had a good Christmas.

I think we left y'all in Antigua last posting so here goes. Karen and I left Antigua and headed for Nevis. Nevis is only about 32 miles form Jolly Harbour so it was a nice motor sail over, that's right motor sail.( NOT A BIT OF WIND ) We rounded the island about 2 PM and was looking forward to anchoring on the prettiest beach in the Caribbean. It has this great white sand beach with all these coconut palms lining it. Well guess what, nothing but sticks sticking up in the air. All of the palms got a disease and died. So we just kept on going to St. Kitts to overnight there. At least on the way over we did spot this one sail boat.

We left St. Kitts the next morning ,mainly because there is nothing to do on the island and sailed to St.Eustatius ( Statia ) . This is Karen's favorite island. I have to admit it's not a bad one. In town there is the road up to the town proper called the slave road. The way it got it's name was the slaves lived down the hill and had to walk up so the built the road. I guess you can tell it's a little steep. Well by now you know if there is a tall hill there is a fort up there someplace and sure enough there is. Sure we had to visit it, now 10 years ago we went to the same fort but we're back tracking now. I think the reason Karen likes this one so much is that 10 years ago we walked up to the top of Quill. I even went down in to the inside about 500 Ft. Liked to have never got out. Well we enjoyed Statia for a day and then sailed on, I'll let you know where in a day or so. But it's J.A.F.I. in an exotic place to pull maintenance on the boat.

See Y'all Down the Road

Mike & Karen

O.K. I left y'all with us in Guadeloupe and from there we left Pointe A Pitre by going through the sail water river to the Cul de Sac. Now we had no problem with the river but, after we got out in the bay we had no idea which way to go. The damn thing is wide open and no instructions, that we had found. Low and behold we missed a page in the guide book. Found the thing after we had already got out. Anyway we went to Antigua to English Harbour and took a couple of photos. Oh yea there is a fort in English Harbour so guess what, Karen did not want to climb to it. The only reason was it was only one flight of stairs and not on top of a mountain. We took a few photos from the dingy and that satisfied her.

When we left English Harbour we went to Jolly Harbour(don't you just love these names).

While sitting in the anchorage Montserrat erupted. Now I kind of like that island but I think we will miss it this time. What do y'all think, good idea. The photo here is the first of it and as close as I wanted.

We left Antigua and sailed away to the next exotic place to work on the boat.

See Y'all Down the Road

Mike & Karen

O.K. lets catch up on where we've been. We left Grenada and started north. Y'all know we stopped in Caracou I think that was the last real posting. From there we ended up in the Saints. They are a few little islands in French territory right before you get to Guadeloupe. Here Karen is out trying to find something to wear , but it never happened. I just can't get her to spend any money. Y'all parable think I don't try but I do. She says all the time I spend enough for both of us.

Of course there is a damn fort on one of the islands and as you should know the don't build the damn things at ground level, So up the mountain we go so for the second time at this island we can look at old buildings that have fallen down.

We left there and went to Pointe A Pitre on Guadaloupe where the worlds ugliest yacht. A PP we had some engine work and a little shopping for food and beer. Then we left for Antigua. Now y'all are going to have to wait for a couple of days before I go on.

See Y'all Down the Road

Mike & Karen

Just a short post to let y'all know that we have not forgotten you all yet. We have been in the Saints and the internet is not good. Now we are in Guadalupe and heading for Antigua tomorrow. There they have a service that I can get on the boat so we will post photos and what we have been doing in the next few days. I see that the comment section is back to working,so Karen is looking forward to the remarks. See Y'all Down the Road
Mike & Karen

Hey folks, I don't know whats happened to the blog but I see that the front page is now different and you can't make comments. I'm working on it but it's not going too well.

O.K as you can see we moved from Marin and went to St. Pierre on the north end of Martinique. In 1902 this little village was called the Paris of the Caribbean and the volcano St. Pelee erupted and killed 30,000 people and left 2 alive that was in there basement. In the town every one of the building has at least one wall from the original buildings. So much for your history lesson.

There wasn't that much to see so we left after one day and headed to Dominica, and on the way this 4 foot Mahi Mahi jumped on a blue Rattle Jet and at the same time one quite a bit larger hit a red one. Now it was rough as hell and all I could do was get the one closet to the boat. The one I lost ran just about all the line on the other 6/0. Well maybe next time I'll get the bigger of the 2.

See Y'all Down the Road

Mike & Karen

O.K. folks look close at the green channel marker, it looks like a little green man with his hands on his hips. Just tell me the French don't have a since of humor when they make a marker. Here we are in Martinque at Marin ( Cul de Sac). We always stop in here because you can get anything you need to keep on going.
We left Bequia a few days ago just out of bordom. Been there don that so many times it's getting tiresome.
We had a great sail coming across and I just thought I'd show y'all what we see out the cockpit as we travel.
On the way I hooked a fine sail fish between St Lucia and Martinque, I got 6 tail walkings form him before he got off. Karen & I were both screaming and jumping up and down. O.K I was jumping up and down but Karen was excited also and realy wanted to catch it.
We are getting our Inverter/ Charger worked on. The charger has stopped working with my generator. To start with I thought it was the Genset but today we turned on the the air conditioning and it ran fine so I concluded that it was not the generator but the charger( du )
O.K. that enought info for one day and wy beer is running out and my cigars are on the boat and I'm in the bar so See Y'all Down the Road.
Mike& Karen