I'm back!

Well, the sailing trip was quite an adventure. A brief recap:

Picked up a 45-foot catamaran, Las Salinas 57, in St. Martin

Sailed to St. Barts, Saba, St. Eustatia, St. Kitts, Nevis, Antigua, Guadeloupe, Les Saintes, and Guadeloupe

Saw a bizarre celestial phenemenon (UFO?) at Saba

Accidentally rammed the dock at Port Zante, St. Kitts, and put a little hole in the side of the boat

Floated away from our anchorage at St. Kitts (the boat, not me)

Lost the mainsail halyard in the mast at St. Kitts

Lost the dinghy at Nevis (retrieved through a sefless act of bravery by my husband)

Became illegal aliens in several islands because immigration and customs weren't open when we needed them to be and we went ashore anyway

If you would like all the gory details as well as photos, go to Ship of Fools.

There was knitting:



And yes, that is a sock that I'm knitting. Nancy (in the visor) is knitting a scarf in a lovely basketweave pattern using llama yarn. Nancy wins the prize for being the most prolific knitter on this trip--she completed three or four handbags for felting (she didn't felt them on the boat, but it was hot and humid enough if she had so desired), plus the basketweave scarf. Gina (of Willy Warmer fame) was working on two shawls, Carolyn was working on a scarf in 1-1 rib, and I had my sock and the Fern Leaf Shawl.

I must say, though, that my sock (rather, the sock for my husband) has its problems. The new short row technique that I tried gave me fits, so I'll have to whipstitch the holes closed around the heel. And for some reason, the foot circumference is big...very big. Like 10 inches big. I need to grab Tom's foot and try the sock on for size, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to rip the entire thing out and start all over. This is the offending sock:



Does it look like this sock would fit the foot of this man?



Likewise, I had trouble with the Fern Leaf Shawl. I discovered that I need total silence in order to get the pattern correct. It isn't a difficult pattern; it's just that it changes every other row because it's a triangular shawl and for the life of me, I cannot get the YOs and the decreases to work out. I knit and ripped the thing out about 10 million times (well...that's a slight exaggeration; six is more like it). Unfortunately, there wasn't total silence on the boat. There was lots of interesting and funny conversation and as soon I tuned into the conversation, I lost my place in the knitting and couldn't get back.

While we women were knitting or reading, the men were doing manly nautical things, like sailing:



Or picking up moorings:



But all fun things must come to an end and we flew home on Thursday and got in late that night. Getting out of bed in the middle of the night was interesting. I didn't have my land legs yet and the house appeared to be gently rocking, just like a boat. It rocked all day Friday and finally settled down early this morning. Such a strange feeling!

Anyway, that's it for now. Tom has started working on painting the house (when he's back from vacation, he's back). I'm still on vacation, however, and am going to knit until dinner time.