Familiar faces!

You might not guess it, but in some ways, cruising can feel rather isolated. When you are aboard and out cruising, often the goal is to explore new territory, experience new things and see new sights. It's delightful to share that with your beloved partner, but as you travel, unless you are cruising with a group of boats (not all that common in the Caribbean) you can find yourself longing for more company than just your significant other! (Ron and I joke about it: "I love you, honey, but I need to be with other people!") While it can be and often is romantic and amazingly beautiful to be at sea alone, you are also alone against the elements, so you had better be self-sufficient to some degree when problems crop up. And once you arrive at your new port of call, you will literally find yourself a stranger in a strange land! So yes, it can feel lonely at times!

Working aboard Equinox the other afternoon, we paused to watch a sailboat pull into Gallows Bay near us as they dropped their main sheet. We then saw the boat's name: Earthling!! Earthling's earthlings are none other than George and Kelly, whom we met at Southside Marina in the Turks and Caicos this past spring on our return north from the Leeward Islands! Familiar faces -- how fun!! We waved, hallooed and and happily greeted one another with unexpected delight and promised to come over in the dinghy once they were on their mooring. We have friends!!

And of course, as promised we did get together, quite happily!! We had them over to Equinox for dinner, which was a long, enjoyable, relaxing evening. It's always a treat sharing stories: catching up on the places we each visited (George spent some time in Iran this summer), sharing our experiences at different places in the islands (the Dominican Republic), comparing tales of boat work done over the summer and commiserating over woes of more work to be done (like diagnosing our davit issue). Dinner was a great event: surf and turf! Ron made his absolutely fabulous Maryland-style crab cakes (yes, we did provision a few cans of jumbo lump crab, ordered from J. M. Clayton in Cambridge, MD!), Karyn supplied her now-signature truffle mac-and-cheese, and the Earthlings brought a crisp and delicious tossed salad to supplement the turf -- filets mignons. Delicious wine, fabulous food, fun friends, great conversation -- now that's cruising!!