It’s Thursday afternoon and a beautiful day here in George Town. This morning’s sunrise was particularly spectacular as the sun rose over Stocking Island to the east. 
And, as the sun was higher in the sky, the clouds to the west took on a beautiful hue in the reflected sunrise.
I coudn’t resist a panorama. If you click on the photo it will get bigger and hopefully more impressive. Notice Monument Hill in the center of the photo. 
The other day I hiked up over the Monument Hill and took a photo of Pandora riding at anchor among the other boats. 
There are a LOT of boats here in the harbor. The view to the south shows just a portion of them. 
After enjoying the view I found my way down to the ocean side of the island and spent some time collecting shells. It’s a pretty well picked over beach but I was still able to find some little gems. 
As I mentioned in a recent post, I have mixed emotions about being here in George Town. On the one hand, it’s a lot of cruisers jammed in one place, 310 boats at last count, which makes for some interesting dynamics. However, I have to say that it’s a very nice group that will do just about whatever it takes to help out each other.
Today, during the morning radio net, here in the harbor, I made an announcement that we were looking for a particular book, Spanish for Cruisers, which would help us with phrases that are particular to boating, something that really isn’t covered in most English/Spanish phrase books. And, within a few minutes, we had a call from a fellow boater, from the same town we live in in CT, no less, offering for us to have their copy of the book to keep or borrow. Now that’s fast service. Who needs Amazon Prime? That’s what we call a “threefer”, a new friend, a book and meeting someone from our home town all wrapped up in one.
Anyway, it’s been fun being here and what a nice experience to prepare us to shove off and begin our run to Cuba tomorrow. And speaking of Cuba, which readers of this blog know I do ad-nauseum, I have mentioned on the Net that we were are heading to Cuba a number of times and the amount of response has been amazing. Some folks that have been there have offered to give us advice. Others wanted to learn more about the process of gaining approvals and a few were interested in buddy-boating with us.
Interestingly, just about everybody knows someone who’s going and only a handful seem to be doing so legally. Most seem to just go and return, hoping to stay under the radar. Having said that, I have also heard of a number of cruisers who have gotten in trouble although wrist slapping seems to be the punishment norm. This is very different than in the past when the punishment was harsh and sometimes meant loosing your boat.
However, with this blog documenting our every move combined with my insatiable desire to stay in touch, I would not take the chance of running afoul of the law. And, I am sure that they’d find out.
One way or the other, visiting Cuba is all the rage with just about everyone thinking about doing it so It will be interesting to see what the experience is like even if we are only a few pages ahead in the “book” from everyone else. And, of course, that ignores the cruisers from other countries that have been visiting Cuba for years as it’s only the U.S. that has imposed sanctions for these many years.
In any event, the weather still looks good for a departure on Friday morning so stay tuned for more developments of Bob and Brenda’s most excellent, Cuba adventure.
Details to follow.