Back in St Thomas

Wed Jan 28th 8:30 am AST St Thomas. Well we are back in St Thomas after a busy 10 days for Joyce. She passed her IDC Padi course and is now getting ready for the final IE in Ft Lauderdale this weekend. When she gets back on Monday she will be a Dive Instructor. We have been down here in the Islands for 2 months tomorrow, most of Joyce's waking moments have had her nose in 1 PADI book or another. It will be nice to see her relax next week.
We had a great sail over from St Croix in 20 to 30 knot winds, averaging 8 knots. We caught up with Phil and Joanna. They have been to the BVI's for the last 2 weeks. Dinner and "Snake" (Dominos) tonight.
For the last 5 days we ave not had any internet. Seems most of Christiansted is served by 1 provider and he has been down since last Thursday. Aren't the Islands wonderful..... We went in yesterday to get some important stuff done, but are going back this AM to finish up. Joyce's computer and my SSB radio are here, but the watermaker pump is not. We had a failure of the booster pump.Being French there were no specs on the old pump. I have tried using all my spare pumps to fix this but the only one that works is our fresh water pump....which means I plumb it to the salt water intake and then into the watermaker. After 2 days down in the engine room swapping out 4 different pumps... I have figured out that I need high pressure and a moderate flow. The A/C pump is high flow low pressure, the backup fresh water has the pressure but not the flow....and so on...where is Dennis when you need a plumber. So today back on line to find something.
The batteries are doing fine....but as they should, they take the charge very slowly once they get closer to 90%. When the amps going in are 18, and the amps going out with the generator off is 11, it does not make sense to burn $2.70 a gallon for a net gain of 7 amps. I will have to equalize in a few weeks to keep them in shape.
You will not hear from Joyce till next week when she gets back from Ft Lauderdale...her nose will be in the PADI books. I might get some pics up this weekend....more later