Virgin Islands gallery is done!

The sky has cleared up now, but this weekend started out windy & gray - good time to go through Virgin Islands pictures, so I've finally finished my Virgin Islands gallery!

Got doubts about tomorrow's paddle now - we've got a gale warning on today, and although the marine forecast looks better tomorrow, that's a very qualified "better" - winds 15kts, gusting to 30. well, we'll see. Later update - the marine forecast has been downgraded a bit, it's now winds 10-15 kts, gusting to 25, so Voyageur, who's the organizer du jour, is willing to give it a go. It's a solid crew, and he's hoping that if we zip straight over to Jersey, we can get out of the worst of it by staying tucked in under the shelter of the Jersey side (that's a pretty standard approach to windy conditions, unless the wind is going either straight up or straight down the river, if you get over on the side it's coming from it's usually a little quieter, because the shore can block the wind, and offers calmer water, because the distance wind travels over open water is called the "fetch" and the longer the fetch, the higher the waves). Just finished packing up my stuff; VHF and camera are a-charging,I wonder if I will be able to get any good pictures of the beautiful wagashi (Japanese sweets) they sell there...some of them are just lovely; I tend to buy the less-fancy kind for myself. This means I'm sticking with the drysuit as is - don't have the patience to do otherwise!

If it doesn't happen, well, that at least gives me more time to think about contacting Kokatat & see if I can swap this medium unisex they sent for a women's medium - I feel like I'm swimming in this one. They've got something they call "Competition Cut", which translates into cut more loosely for freer motion. Really undecided on this though. Seeing as in my old one I always felt like I was fighting it, especially early in the season during the time of readjusting to winter gear, maybe a looser cut is a good thing; also when I imitated the set-up position for a c-to-c roll, I did actually use all of the extra fabric in the sleeve. This is exactly why I usually don't like to order stuff on line - fit is so important to gear working well & being comfortable, and I so much prefer to be able to try a few different ones on. In this case I may just end up keeping it 'cause I just don't want the hassle, and it's not too bad. But once I've worn it paddling, I'm committed. Now, as requested, here's me modelling the suit (lucky you live Malaysia...). I thought YellowEye might enjoy seeing my cold-weather balaclava, too, so I threw that on!