CAPTAIN SLOG STAR DATE 79.13

Well today was St Thomas, U S Virgin Islands.

Woke up at 6am and nothing but sea, by 7.30 we were docked and ready to roll, ....so I turned over and went back to sleep! This is such a tiring holiday.

I finally got up about 8.30 and staggered of for brekkie. I decided on grilled mushrooms on toast and some HP sauce that I found lurking in a corner. Yum, a little taste of home.

As my trip today doesn't start until 11.30, I decided to go shopping first. Everyone that I have met has told me that St Thomas had great shopping, so off I go in search of some  gifts for my lovely daughters. There is so much crap around, tacky souvenirs etc that it's quite hard to find anything tasteful. Of course I am partially guilty for fuelling the tat market and I have come through once again with a rocking seahorse in glorious pastel shades.

I have found it very disturbing that my fellow guests have been in the queue next to me buying this crappy, tacky s***e for their loved ones back home." Oh this is so cute, 
Marvin's just gonna love it".

 Poor Marvin, you do have my sympathy.

I have bought the girls something that I hope will be OK, useful and not tacky!

I spotted this guy on the way back to the ship. He was just sat there on a bench, sporting a life jacket and a tin hat a good 10 feet above sea level. It looked like he was expecting a flood or a plague of frogs to be dropped on his head, meanwhile, he was fast asleep. Bless him!

My trip today was a champagne catamaran trip. It turned out to be a whole new 
experience for me. 

I boarded the cat and got a seat in the shade. I was sat next to Ed and his partner Mark who both kind of adopted me for the trip. It turns out Ed is employed by J P Morgan, 
same as Wendy. He will be sending incriminating photographs to her on his return. I think he is a VP or something. I told him Wendy was vastly undervalued and 
underpaid so I'm sure that will speed along her redundancy package! 

Sorry Dee Dee xx.

They managed to persuade me to go snorkelling. We are talking a major break through here. I do not do water, especially deep water. I don't even bath, I shower.

So armed with a snorkel, mask and flippers. I step up tentatively for the safety briefing. I also have a very puny looking life jacket, I mean three puffs and it's inflated. The boys are confident that I will be OK, I am not.  On this cat there is a nice gentle stairway down into the sea between the two hulls.Somehow I end up half way down the ladder, Ed in front and Mark behind, obviously there's no turning back at this point,and launch myself off into the sea. Apart from having the snorkel mouthpiece in sideways, I did OK. It was a long way to shore with a bit of a current. I saw a few of our little finny friends and got a bit absorbed not noticing I had reached shore until my face ground into the beach.

Free dermal abrasion!!

It was actually a very relieved and triumphant little Jilly who sat on the beach a little later on, although I did feel a bit like Kermit with those flippers on and if I crossed my legs I looked just like the crispy frogs' legs on the plate the other night but not quite so brown. The other thing with flippers is that, when sitting on the water's edge, the incoming waves push against them and push you over

Many thanks to Ed and Mark who looked after me so well.

I did actually swim back to the cat as well, just to prove I wasn't a one trick pony! 

The picture shows how far I swam, the furthest ever, as my girls will testify.

Ed promptly fell asleep. stretched out on one of the seats, shepherding is clearly 
exhausting.

There followed much champagne, loud music and revelry as we travelled under sail, back to the port. The end of a lovely day and a landmark in my life - I have put my face into the water!! I even got my hair wet too!!

We arrived back at the ship just in time before she sailed. We are now heading back to 
Fort Lauderdale. No more islands and a chance to chill out for a couple of days.

Having sat in the cabin and counted up my dollars, I decided that it was time for another foray into the casino, I still needed a couple of hundred dollars for my shopping in Sawgrass Mills.

So it was back to Griffins Gate and Jackpot Party for some serious investment. It only took about 30 minutes to accrue the required cash, so I trotted back for a glass of fizzy wine to celebrate.

Apparently it is not normal to view a casino and its slots as an ATM but it appears to have worked quite well for me on this trip. Maybe it was my lucky Barbados elephant .........