SailingKnitter

Terry and BK

It's been a long time since we've checked in here on the blog. Why? Because my HP mini notebook computer fried it's motherboard at age 18 months and refused to play anymore. Sure, it behaved nicely for the 7 days that we had our first guests, but as soon as they waved good-bye it never booted up again. Bad boy.

Guests! Yes - we've been entertained by our lovely guests; a knitter-friend and her darling daughter for a full week aboard, a single-day cruise ship stop by a fellow knitter and her family and another full week of our own sweet sons. As you can see, our hammock was given a work-out by our guest "KK" She liked it so much that she bought one to take home with her - go girl!

There has been some drama here on the island of Roatan concerning us sailboat cruisers. The mayor of the local municipality mandated that the Roatan Marine Park had to remove the moorings and that we were no longer welcome to moor or anchor at the West End. Of course we voiced our displeasure, and the local businesses fought the mayor because we do spend a lot of money in the village of West End. But, after we were threatened by the mayor with police action (which did actually occur yesterday), we dropped our mooring and left.  Of course, we find out today that the Port Captain says that the mayor doesn't have the authority to tell us to leave. Latin American politics - we don't want to get in the middle of that!

Niki Wiki anchored in Gibson Bight

Our guests got a little unexpected motor-passage over to anchor in Gibson Bight. This little bay on the northwest side of the island is just big enough for 3 boats to anchor. We received permission to use the dock at a small marina to tie up our dinghy and go ashore to walk out to the main road. Not bad. Except for the crocodiles hanging about - no, we didn't see any but the security man warned us about them. So no swimming here (we found this out after I went snorkeling to make sure our anchor was hooked.)
We stayed in Gibson Bight for about 10 days while Jonesy repaired the water-maker, the generator, and the steering. Oh yes, he was busy. The steering system had leaked out all of the hydraulic oil thru an abraded spot in a copper tube. I knit.

Finally we were whole again so we took off on a good wind and sea day and motored over to French Key Harbor on the South side of the island. We spent the next week or so cussing at the fate of my computer and waiting for our boys to arrive. My younger son, Brett, had hand-picked out a new computer for me and brought it down to me - hence I blog.

We had a full and fabulous week with them. Here's a family photo of us on top of the ridge overlooking the (old) mooring field of the West End. On one day, our boys took their first scuba dives! First in shallow water to learn the skills with their instructor and then out in a boat to the reef.

KNITTING
April 1st was the launch of my new sock pattern for the Six Sox Knitalong Yahoo group. POTLUCK SOCKS was designed for you to be able to use up all those leftover little balls of sock yarn and still end up with some great socks. The pattern is sized from a Child's Large up to Men's Large and includes some easy to work little touches of Fair Isle stranded knitting. My lovely foot model, Sharon from the s/v Sunbow was rewarded for her efforts by receiving the lavender socks. Wear them well Sharon! The other pair is going off to the orphanage in Kazakhstan with my mountain of other knitted warm  goodies.

My knitting guild back in Sacramento are participating in a "yarn-bombing" in a couple of months so I got busy and worked up a 43" x 7" strip for them. This is my first time to be able to play along with a yarn-bombing! Then, I whipped up some chemo caps for the guild's charity program after finding a couple of balls of Fun Fur yarn when straightening up the boat before the guests arrived.

There's been a whole lotta knitting completed lately, but the photos have been lost along with my computer. Seems that when I was backing up my hard-drive I wasn't doing it right. Who knew? So when we tried to put my files back on this new computer, I have nothing since November 2011. No new photos, no Excel working file for new sock designs ;o(, and no new patterns. Thankfully, I can retrieve some of the patterns in pdf format and photos from Ravelry.com. THANK YOU Ravelry!

It's been 6 hours since my boys flew off for home. We're already counting the days and waiting for their return someday. Perhaps they'll visit us in Guatemala or even up in Belize or Cancun next season which is where we're going. We'll be waiting....