How Much Sailing Did We Do and Where Did We Spend Our Nights?

People have asked so, based on our log book, here is the answer. Our voyage began on Day 1, October 22, when we left City Island, New York, for Hampton Virginia, and ended on Day 179, when we hauled ILENE in St. David’s, Grenada on April 18, two days before flying back to New York.

110 of our 179 days were lay days, in which we did not move the boat at all. We laid over in 30 of the 52 ports or anchorages that we visited, in eleven different nations, with our longest layovers being twenty two days in St. Martin, thirteen days in Hampton Virginia, eight in Tortola, six each in Prickly Bay Grenada and in Falmouth Antigua, and less, to as little as one day, in the other twenty five places where we stayed over. We also had two days of day sailing where we returned to the same port at the end of the day and hence did not move the boat to a different port.  Adding these two to the 110 lay days and subtracting them from 179 day total means we made at least one “passage" (we sometimes stopped in two ports in a single day), or part of a passage (an overnight involves two days in one passage), on 67 days.

How long did we sail (or motor) during the 67 passage days? Thirteen of them were overnights; we ended the passage a day or more after we set out: Three of these were the trip from New York to Virginia; eight were moving from Virginia to Tortola; and one each were the passages from Tortola to French Saint Martin and from Dutch Sint Maarten to Antigua. By subtracting the thirteen overnights from the 67 passage days means we devoted only 54 days to shorter passages, ranging from eight hours to as little as half an hour.

Also, by day number 78 out of 179, we arrived in Antigua and had completed our night time sailing. 

Was this enough sailing for us?  Yes, even for Roger, who loves to sail.

And how did we spend the 178 nights of our voyage?   We were at docks in only four ports, for a total of thirty nights, and most if them toward the beginning of the voyage: fourteen days in Bluewater Marina in Hampton Virginia, nine in Nanny Cay Marina in Tortola, three in Rodney Bay Marina in St. Lucia and four in Port Louis Marina in St. Georges, Grenada. So 23 of our 30 dock nights (77%) were during the first 35 of our 178 nights (first 20 %).  Subtracting the 30 dock nights and the thirteen overnights from the 178 nights of the adventure leaves 135 nights on a mooring or our anchor.

These, it turns out, were very evenly divided, with 68 nights on mooring and 67 on anchor. But an interesting pattern emerges, not intended. We mostly took moorings during the earlier part of the trip and mostly anchored when we got further south. Moorings in the south were relatively less plentiful, we gained confidence in our anchor and the winds slacked off. To illustrate this pattern, our first night on anchor was after day 53 in Marigot Bay, Saint Martin and our second such night was after day 79 in Falmouth, Antigua. So the remaining 65 of our 67 nights on anchor all took place during the final 99 of our 178 nights.

Of the eleven nations we visited, eight were English-speaking; on the other three, French was the native language. The restaurants are generally better on French islands but shopping for food in markets is more difficult because of the language barrier with the types of foods sometimes unknown and  their names and the cooking instructions, if any, in French.

While we will stop briefly in some of the eleven nations we visited while outbound, most of our northbound stops will be on islands we have not visited yet.

Roger has been asked by a friend to help him bring a 65 foot luxury motor yacht from Boca Raton, Florida to Westchester County, New York. So stay tuned for more waterborne adventures.

Hauled and Homebound

     Three hectic days of work and we are hauled, almost all secure for the six months long hot summer and flying home for the summer as this is being written.
     The wind was light for the 5.6 mile motor trip, including out from Clarkes Court Bay and into St. David’s Harbor. Its wide channel is well marked by two pairs of red and green buoys. Our first anchor drop looked suspicious so I dinked closer to shore with the boat hook and sounded (tested the depth of) the water. It got to less than six feet deep way too close to us. So we picked the anchor up and the second time took a good spot for our last night afloat. Our neighbor was a 30 year old 35 foot Hallberg–Rassy from Bruchsal, Germany, the bigger town near Untergrombach, the village of my father ‘s birth. (They keep her in the Baltic Sea, a long ride from southern Germany.) They invited us for a ‘sundowner’ with two other German flagged boats with whom they were cruising, but our work schedule required us to decline.
     We started work by 9 am and had the two remaining sails down by noon, the jib neatly folded and the main temporarily secure it its stack pack. We took our last dink ride to check out the Bel Air Plantation Resort, where we slept the last two nights, and the Grenada Marine facility where ILENE rests on her cradle tied down in the four corners (We are sort of  in the center of the picture on their home page which also shows the slipway where raising the boat from the water takes place.)
     Next came the storage of the dink. After disconnecting the gas line and letting the outboard run dry, we unscrewed the very solid lock that locks the outboard to the dink and, aided by white lithium grease, loosened the thumbscrews that hold the outboard in place on the back of the dinghy, lifted the outboard from the dinghy to the aft rail of ILENE and cleaned off the barnacles and sea slime that had grown on it. We emptied the dink of all of its contents and thought about where we will store the individual items. The hardest part of our return to the boat in October will be remembering where we put these all and other stored items. I had scrubbed the dink’s bottom while swimming in the water the day before, but hauling showed how poor a job I had done. For hauling the dink aboard, upside down, on the foredeck we used the whisker pole as a crane, two lines, one run forward and the other aft from the outboard end of the pole to steady it and the davit lifting blocks for raising it. I lifted it in a horizontal position, the way it floats. Next time I will take Lene’s advice and hoist it from the bow or stern so it hangs vertically. All went well until it was time to flip the dink over. It weighs about 95 pounds and we had trouble with this until Nicky and his wife Christine paddled by on one of the hotel’s hard plastic kayaks. Nicky offered to help while Christine admired the cats. They are from London, work in real estate, and were at the Bel Air on a four week holiday. I tried to offer Nicky our last bottle of beer but he declined. (We have been rather successful, though not perfect, at using up our foodstuffs that will go bad if not used or giving a few items away to willing takers to avoid waste. Then there was a tough job of scrubbing remaining, dirt, algae and barnacles from the bottom of the dink. A credit card as a scraper followed by strong cleaners and a brush was the method used and we got 99% of it. One of our final acts was Lene treating the dink’s hypalon rubber like fabric with 333 Aerospace Protectant, wrapping it with the white nylon tent that had proved the dangerous “waterslide” for Whitty, tucking its edges under the dink and then tying it down firmly to the boat with a lattice of lines run from one toe rail to the other so that hopefully it will not blow away.

The hauling went remarkably smoothly. We did not even have to remove the fore or back stays to fit into the lift. I backed ILENE into the slipway and a crew of about six men worked to get us out of the water and power washed. They use a quick motion back and forth with the nozzle of the power washer which is more effective than the methods I have used all these years. Amazingly, not only were there a few barnacles that I then killed, but white curvy things the thickness of a pencil lead clinging to the bottom – coral I learned – not a problem in ILENE’s home waters. We flushed the main engine, but with fresh water rather than antifreeze; no risk of a big chill this summer!
Here is ILENE on her cradle, with outboard on the stern rail.

We also continued to clean like crazy, using a lot of bleach and other cleansers to try to get the hidden compartments clean, pumping out the bilges and the holding tanks, washing the clear plastic inserts in and then taking down the bimini and dodger and folding them to keep plastic away from plastic, cleaning and taking the solar panels down, stowing one inside and attaching the other with a nine foot long electrical cord so it can continue to feed the batteries through the regulator so that the batteries can operate the bilge pump in case water enters through the top of the boat. But the new electrical connections I made for the working solar panel were not done right and we ran out of time and patience to do this again so this is a job for the yard to do correctly. Up north, I watch while the yard people do their work and thereby learn; which is an opportunity that is unavailable this summer. I have to ask the yard to make the electrical attachments over because the juice is not flowing through to the batteries so they will die even sooner than if they get a daily charge. We will need new batteries this fall; five summers and this winter did them in.
We “pickled” the Spectra Ventura water maker for the first time. The rather well written instruction manual lists the ten step process with pictures so you can find the knobs, hoses, switches etc., needed in this process. Essentially, after flushing the system several times and pumping water from the system into a bucket, into which two hoses are inserted, and filling that bucket with about a gallon of the system’s water and adding the pickling chemicals to the water, you are supposed to turn the “pressure relief valve 180 degrees counter clockwise” and then throw a switch hidden under one of the other boxes to cause this bucket water and the remaining water in the system to circulate through the system for ten minutes, so that the filters etc. do not rot over the summer when the system is not used. All went well until the last switch was turned: we heard the motor hum, but no circulation was taking place. Lene saved the day with two calls to our installer in Newport , Rhode Island. The first time he told us to pour some of the liquid into the take up hose to prime the pump. This accomplished, the system still did not circulate. On our second call the installer asked if the pressure relief valve was loose. I said I had turned it the required 180 degrees counterclockwise until it stopped. He said turn it a bit further. I did and it became loose and with a whoosh, water began to circulate.
Ilene found a reasonably near, reasonably clean and reasonably dry patch on which we took the mainsail out of the stack pack “tube”, laid it out flat and carefully folded it compactly for the summer. It took both of us, one pushing and the other pulling, to lift it onto the deck and into the forward head, where with the small jib, it will rest for the summer.
Our first night in St. David’s was our last for dining and sleeping aboard. The last two nights there were at the Bel Air, in a large, modern air conditioned guest cottage complete with kitchen, set high up on a hill overlooking the Bay, the pool (which we did not have time to use) and the waterfront restaurant. This view from our room is to the South East.

We made our own dinner the first night and having eaten up our food, dined in the restaurant the second night  before flying home early the next morning. The hotel did our laundry so we have clean stuff when we get back to the boat in October.
We met a number of people who will be taking care of ILENE. Mark is Grenada Marine’s project manager. He came aboard to see the work projects we want done. He will send us an email with prices for each so we can decide how much we want them done—how many of them we can afford. The insurance company’s surveyor came aboard to inspect the damage done when Black Elise rammed us and neither he nor Mark had found any other damage than we had seen ourselves. The sail maker sent his representative to pick up the Genoa for patching its protective layer where it chafed and the bimini, which had chaffed against the bolts of the solar panel holders. And we met Rock Charles, who will look at the boat, air it out periodically and tell us if the work is getting done. He came highly recommended by both the owner of a bigger boat who had used his services and by the cruising guide. After looking at the boat he told us that it is a smaller, simpler one and so his fees were voluntarily reduced by 25 percent from what he had quoted us. This made us feel good about him. He also operates a taxi service and drove us to the airport. One of the six guys who helped us haul told me to use On and Off, a very nasty acid solution, and then sandpaper, to clean the propeller before the barnacle bases calcify and make the job more difficult. He gave me half a cup of the acid which I applied. But I ran out of time for the sandpapering part of this project and he said he would do it; we will pay him what we think is fair in October. Island entrepreneuraship in action.
The first half of our adventure is now concluded. ILENE is at her southernmost point (except for the day sail with Marti): 11 degrees 59 minutes north latitude. She is 1847 nautical miles (2122 land miles) from City Island as the crow flies and it bears 350 degrees magnetic.
I may continue to post blogs about sails on other people’s boats this summer, or progress on the various things being done to and for ILENE, but otherwise, we will be signing off until October. I have written most of our postings, though all were edited by Lene. I hope you have enjoyed reading some of them as much as I have enjoyed writing them.
Roger, over and out.

Things Are Different Here

      We have been thinking about how different our life is here. (Sorry, no photos in this posting, just thoughts.) The obvious difference is that here we float, while at home we are land based. But there are many other aspects of this difference.

      At home we look out from the seventh floor onto beautiful, gothic Grace Church. While the view changes with every change of the time of day, season and weather, as Monet illustrated with his many paintings at the Cathedral of Rouen, it is always Grace Church – our home does not move. And when we move, it is usually fast – by subway or automobile. Here we look out at a completely different landscape every time we drop anchor or take a mooring. Our house moves and seven knots (roughly 8 mph) is considered a high speed. And at home our life is urban while here, with the possible exception of our two days in Fort de France, Martinique, we are in small villages or towns or uninhabited rural bays.

     At home we live in about 1150 square feet, a nice size for a one bedroom New York apartment. Here our boat is 43 feet long and 12 feet wide at its beamiest point. But the bow and stern are not living space, and more of the rear is our patio (the cockpit). With the average width of the interior living space at perhaps seven or eight feet, let’s say our home is 250 -300 square feet. But it seems roomy and there is storage space for more “stuff” if we want to bring it.

     At home we never give any thought to the availability of water, cooking fuel, electricity or ice. They flow into our house in an inexhaustible supply and very inexpensively. Here we think a lot each of these commodities, checking our volt meter several times a day and conserving where possible. We use electricity to make water, and our engine and solar panels to make electricity and the engine and ice to keep our refrigerator cold. We buy ice and propane when needed because if you run out, you’re out.  

     At home we spend a lot of time on the computer, but access is never an issue and the speed is fast.  Here getting the net in port is a struggle that we sometimes lose, and when we win, the speed is sometimes slow and access fragile.

     At home we work out in a gym; here our exercise consists of working on the boat -- “wipe on; wipe off.”

     At home considerable time is spent going to movies, lectures, plays, concerts, dance recitals, art galleries, and other cultural events. Here there is virtually none of that. On April 1^st we went to our first movie since October 2010.  On the other hand, at home we watch TV while here we read. And at home we do not get to swim and snorkel and take outdoor showers whenever we want, like we do here.

       At home we have closets full of clothing and we take it to the dry cleaners from time to time. Here we have a few long sleeve and long leg pants that hang in a closet unused (no ties! no sports jackets! No dry cleaners!). And when we come home for the summer, we will bring half of our shorts and tops – and leave them home next fall because we don’t need that many here for next winter. At home we do our own laundry in the laundry room of our house and our per load cost is ridiculously low-- Lene washes and I fold. Here our laundry is taken away and brought back cleaned, dried and folded, but expensive.

     At home Anna comes once a week for half a day and cleans our home. Here, unlike the laundry, this is a “do it yourself” task. And with so much living in such a small space (and with cats), housecleaning must be done at least every other day. And we have no dishwasher here like we do at home.

     At home we give little time or attention to our food. We dine out in any number of places with a wide variety of cuisines and price ranges within easy walking distance of our house. Here most of the restaurants serve either Caribbean of American food and, with the exception of some experiments and fine dining on French islands, most of which have been documented in prior postings, the food is wholesome but not memorable.

     Likewise, at home there are five supermarkets within five blocks of our house, some are open 24/7 and one can get virtually any fresh or packaged foodstuff to cook at a reasonably low price. And we have a chef, Iwona, who comes to our home every couple of weeks and cooks up a whole lot of great food that we eat during the next week – yes, leftovers, but delicious.  Here one must dink ashore, the markets have limited offerings and the prices are higher because most food is imported by sea (though you can’t beat the mangos or the tomatoes). Lene has rediscovered her love of cooking and we haven’t gone hungry at all.

      At home there are two locks on our front door and you have to get past the 24/7 doormen to get to that door. Here we have a padlock that any determined thief could cut through in less than a New York minute (or worse, smash through the hatch boards causing damage in less time than that). And in some harbors we rely on solitude, or there are boat boys who are supposed to look out for our boats or guards on marina docks.

     At home, if things break, the building’s handymen are there to fix them or recommend repair services for those they can’t fix themselves. Here, fixing things is part of our job, and if we can’t do it, we look for someone who can, or simply do without or work around the inoperable system until later. Example: the built in battery operated push button electric stove and oven igniter has been broken all trip; instead we have used a long handled propane lighter; the repair of the built in lighter is a summer project.

      At home the sources of anxiety include the potential for terrorist attacks or planes falling from the sky. Here we don’t worry about these things. Nor, despite some friends’ urgings, do we worry about sharks or tidal waves or pirates. But here we do worry about risks that are much more likely to happen than terrorist attacks:  breaking off from our mooring, dragging our anchor, being hit by other boats (especially at night though we always leave a light on) or developing a leak and sinking.

      At home weather is a minor concern. The issues are temperature and the likelihood of rain, with reasonably detailed, accurate and understandable forecasts universally available so we can know what clothing to wear and whether or not to bring an umbrella. Here, precipitation and temperature are less of a concern but wind speed and direction and wave height and direction are important and forecasts are difficult to come by, and when obtained, more difficult to interpret.

     There is a spiritual component to our life on the water. It is more apparent to us here than it is at home… more easily accessed. We wake up every morning, basically, in a picture postcard.  God’s beauty is evident everywhere. We are very grateful for the joys and serenity that we have been blessed with.

     At home most of our friends are of long standing, decades long relationships and they are good loyal friends who we cherish. And it is difficult to find the time and motivation to make new ones. Here we are far from these friends. Here the people we meet are from all over the world, England, Denmark, Australia, Canada, France and Germany as well as islanders and families from throughout the United States.  Friendships are, of necessity, made very quickly and people help each other without hesitation.  We hope to maintain and nurture these relationships with our new friends into the future.

     At home we are usually gone off in different directions and engaged in different activities most of the waking hours of the day. Here we are together essentially 24/7. We are truly dependant on one another for security…a feeling of safety…a trust that we are there for each other…the feelings of self worth and appreciation that often are derived from others comes from mainly one source here: each other.

     At home our lives are calendared and planned with appointments and activities every day and our lives are rushed. Here we move at a much slower pace and are more often living in the moment.  It is all happening today, not tomorrow. We wake up and later decide where or whether to move to a different anchorage. We really, most of the time, don’t even know what day of the week it is.

     We have many marvelous devices that make it many times easier to sail than it was 100 or even 40 years ago. These include a GPS enabled electronic chart plotter that actually shows our position accurately on the chart, cell phones that receive email anywhere on or near shore, radios, life saving equipment, a water maker, an engine in case the wind should die by a lee shore, a windlass to raise and lower the heavy anchor and its chain, and an electric winch to hoist the big mainsail. Yet despite all of these modern wizardly marvels, we live a rugged, challenging, spartan and primitive life here as compared to at home.

      We love our life afloat and despite the allures of this summer (allures of being at home), we look forward to returning for six more months of life afloat next winter.

               

Monkey Business and Atmosphere in Secret Harbor

Here in Secret Harbor we have spent most of our days cleaning. Roger did the big lazarette and found potential problems with the steering and the hot water heater. He changed the oil, refilled the fresh water cooling reservoir and took some black water out of the aft holding tank. I have gone through most of the cabinet drawers and other storage spaces with vinegar and bleach to try to clean and disinfect them, as well as try to improve the organization of their contents and throw out things we don’t need. A second mind and new thoughts on organization is always helpful which Roger recognizes though he is resistant to change.  There is still a lot to do but we have made progress. Roger keeps telling me that I will feel more that the boat is mine if I work on it, and he is probably right... as resistant as I am to work, "probably" is the best I can do.  But cleaning and restoring are not the stuff of which interesting blogs are made.

We had a tour, through an introduction by our friend, Marti, of Atmosphere, a 173 foot megayacht.

Notice the mammoth rod rigging above Lene's head and the size of the fender.

Next is ILENE,  the speck of white anchored off her starboard quarter and Atmosphere's brow (gangplank), which when raised to horizontal, slides into the side of the hull which then closes over it.

Roger did not think it polite to take pictures of the interior in the absence of the owner and his permission, but these opulent rooms filled with original artwork (the heads with marble bathtubs) can be seen in photos on the boat’s website, above. What a boat!  Atmosphere has two inflatable launches (only $135K each) stored under port and starboard panels of the teak foredeck which lift up like gulls wings arcing toward the centerline. These boats are lifted out by a crane which is buried under another teak panel of the foredeck at the centerline. Many dinghys are named  “Tender to s/v [Name of boat]” with “s/v” meaning “sailing vessel”. These tenders are to “s/y” : sailing yacht.  Atmosphere was built by Perrini Navi , a well known Italian builder of megayachts, ten years ago. She has push button everything and rod rigging. 

 

The owner grew up on the docks of Marseilles and is a self made multimillionaire. When he is aboard, he brings his own two chef to cook for him and his guests, 14 can be seated in the dining room, or perhaps 50 on the outdoor patio aft. This chef’s galley has everything a professional chef could want. We were treated to coffee and pastries in the crew’s galley and spoke with the Captain and crew. The crew includes a crew’s chef and her galley is bigger than our kitchen at home and better equipped.  Two washing machines and two dryers and an ironing station are on the engineering level: no wrinkled sheets for guests to sleep on here!  The crew of six each have quarters bigger than our Pullman.

She was at the dock and we were anchored quite close to her so Roger offered to move our boat if its location would make it difficult for her to get out. But with two propellers, one in forward and the other in reverse, plus a bow thruster, she had no trouble getting away from the dock the day after our tour.

;
She is headed for a few days sailing in the Grenadines with a French TV mogul producer (friends of the owner) before leaving next Monday for the French Riviera.  ILENE is quite small by comparison, yet there are larger megayachts as well as plenty of boats smaller than ILENE. We are, indeed, content with our lot.

Then Marti drove us on a trip to the north of this nation. We went to Grand Etaing (Big Lake) a pond in a nature preserve at elevation of 2000 feet.Here is the lake:

We walked a trail to a clearing at the top with a picnic bench under a thatched roof where we ate lunch. We could barely see the Caribbean due to fog.

This is a high rainforest and the fog in question is actually clouds, but it reminded us at times of New England. It was also noticeably cooler up so high.

And then we met the family of mona monkeys; these are two of the adults.

They have learned to beg from tourists and to unwrap candies. I suppose it is easier than unwrapping figs, which is what they call the local small bananas here. (I got a fig for them because it is healthier than candies.) They live uncaged  and hence are wild, but when I was holding the bigger part of the banana in one hand while offering a bit of it in the other, one of them swiped the bigger part. Like I say, they are acclimated to humans.

Next stop, after passing through the island’s second largest town,  Grenville, was the nature preserve of Belmont Estate, on the north coast. This is Cookie’s home, and that of her mother, Darla, who rejected her. She is in a pen with five other young goats her size.

The blue marks are temporary, disinfectant applied where she was dehorned by a cauterization process.  Dairy goats are easier to handle without horns. These goats are mostly female and either pregnant or giving milk. The males are sold off; curried goat.  If it were at all feasible, I would bring Cookie home with us.  I bet Alpha Girl & Whitty would approve....NOT!

Also at Belmont are land tortoises, parrots, and a chocolate factory. We saw the beans in their ingenious drying pans, perhaps 15 feet by 30 feet, which are on rails so that one can be rolled under another, and a cover can be rolled over both to keep them dry during the frequent rains.

We saw the dry beans being ground by hand in an old fashioned meat grinder and of course the bars – no milk chocolate – are for sale.

A very full and fun day, and a break from the deep cleaning which we continued the next day. Alfie in a partially packed suitcase lent to us by Marti; kitty is ready to come home.

Eight Nights in Prickly Bay

 As peripatetic as we are, to spend eight nights in one place is unusual. The first four were previously reported and included Lene’s stay at LaSource and our crash.  The next three nights involved live music. The first was at the Prickly Bay Marina, where we had had our laundry done earlier that day. We met with Alan (but unfortunately not with Lisbeth whose back hurt), had pizza and salad and Roger had happy hour drinks. (One could call the happy hour custom a form of alcoholism training.)  This meal was accompanied by a six person steel drum band, and, after an interlude of stage changing covered by a DJ, an American old style Rock band. A group of older men played for us.

Next day we were picked up in a van, together with seven other volunteers from Prickly Bay and other bays and taken to the community hurricane shelter of the town of Mt. Airy to serve as tutor-readers for about 20 kids.

They had a heavy dose of prayer, a bible story reading and a special feature this week was the appearance of two young ladies from Mt. Airy, currently associate attorneys in different law firms in St. Georges. They were very well dressed, well spoken and delivered a  well targeted address: “You can be what you want to be if you study and read a lot.” After a muffin and juice (snacks for the kids and “tutors”) we were driven back to our pick up points. Our cost was only $5EC per person, which goes to the charity, with the cabbies having volunteered their services for a good cause. During the cab ride, we got introduced to Steve & Donna Constantine. They had sailed down here in the Caribbean 1500 the year before we did and indeed were the owners of Summer Love, an Amel  55, the boat on which Dave Hornbach, who crewed with Roger on his trip to Tortola, had crewed that prior year. So we had a mutual friend and we all sang Dave’s praises.

Our next night, after cleaning a lot on the boat (the fenders and the heavy plastic coated yellow electrical shore power cable look like new) we met with Mike and Audrey at the cross bay competitor of the Prickly Bay Marina’s tent kitchen restaurant – De Big Fish, adjacent  to Spice Island Marina and the Budget Marine store.  Here happy hour beers are three for $10EC ($4US) and the music was Island Calypso/Reggae/Hip Hop.  A singer named X-tasy accompanied by his drummer and keyboardist entertained. The group worked continually for more than two hours with no “breaks” between “sets”  -- no union rules here. An elderly black man (probably not older than Roger come to think of it) in a white shirt and with rubber hips shook and swayed to the music throughout the show. We thought that he was not officially part of the show.  Also not part of the show was a young black lady in a skin tight maroon dress who after a while, fortified by several Carib beers, shook her “booty” better than we had ever seen booty being shaken before.

Our third consecutive night of music was of a different order: a fund raising concert of the St. Georges University Chorale and guest artists.  It was held in Charter Hall, on the campus, which could have seated 500 students. The auditorium seats had swing down desk tops.  About 300 people paid $30EC ($12US) for admission to the concert. The music was predominantly  Beethoven, including the chorus of the fourth movement of his Ninth Symphony.  The orchestra to accompany the chorus and guest soloists, however, consisted of a piano teacher at his instrument, six kids aged as young as twelve with violins and one man with a horn. The organizers and promoters of the concert were quite proud of themselves and such a collection of amateur singers and instrumentalists on such a small island was a big accomplishment for them. They were particularly proud to have presented what they called “the first Grenadian performance of  Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony”. Several honorable people in the government and diplomatic positions were present.  As with the kids in their open air school house the day before, we heard the Grenadian National Anthem fervently sung.  Not all of the performers were very talented and there were problems with the placement and sound mixing of the microphones, but Beethoven’s joyous music and Schiller’s text (translated as “all men are brothers”) made it an extremely pleasurable evening.

Following the concert, we dined again with Mike and Audrey at the Dodgy Dock, finally having the opportunity to patronize that restaurant. The torrential rain that fell just before we ordered desert caused us to relocate to an area further from the edge of the elegant tent covered dining pavilions.  I had Callaloo soup and chicken breast stuffed with Callaloo in a nutmeg sauce which was quite delicious. They grow nutmeg and other spices on this island, nicknamed the Spice Island, and a nutmeg is included on the national flag. So they make the most of what they have, putting nutmeg into jams, jellies, liqueurs, syrup and anything else into which it can fit.

Today we filled up the fuel tanks and took our friend Marti on a day sail.  We got a late start due to problems in hoisting the dinghy, in untying the snubber line and in raising the anchor, but all of these were nullified by even greater delays because the fuel pump needed to be repaired. At last we sailed south for an hour in about 17 knots of wind with reefed main and small jib before tacking and going back, both ways on close to a beam reach. It felt really good to just be sailing again. But when we got back on anchor and lowered the dink to take Marti to her car, we were tired. We had planned to then go on to another Bay, further east, to meet up with Alan and Lisbeth, but stayed here in Prickly Bay our eighth and final night.

Three Resort Days and a Crash

I had the privilege to spend 3 nights/4 days at LaSource, a 5 star resort on Grenada. 

View from one of the restaurants northward -- Cruise ships at St. Georges to the left and Hobie Cats to the right. The next two are views from my window.




I’d told Roger before we left on our Caribbean adventure that I would like to spend one or two nights each month at a beautiful resort.  I thought this arrangement would make living aboard more palatable for me and Roger, of course, agreed.   I think he would have agreed to any reasonable (or even slightly unreasonable) request just to make me more amenable to this six month live aboard dream of his.  Well, I never did feel the urge to request Roger to fulfill that agreement we had.  There were even times when Roger offered the opportunity up…when he pointed out a resort on a particular island and asked if I wanted to check in for a night.  My reply was always a thoughtful “No thank you, I don’t want to”.  And, I meant it.  For the most part, living aboard has been great fun…except when it rains and we have to be inside with very little circulating air (as it is doing right now as I type away). 

However, the thought of spending a few nights at this fabulous resort and having a spa treatment every day (comes with the price of the room which also includes ALL of your food and drink, alcohol and non-alcohol) was too great to miss.  I did harbor a secret desire…an ulterior motive… my hope that a lot of the cleaning of the boat would get done while I was away.  But, truly, I mostly was ready for a getaway.

So, to the spa.  The grounds are beautiful, my room spacious and luxurious, the service friendly and professional, the spa treatments were all wonderful and the food was really, really good.  Unlike another spa I have been to multiple times, where the diet is vegetarian and rather spartan and weight loss is probable, at LaSource, the meal plan is more like on a cruise ship.  There were 5 restaurants and an afternoon tea every day at 4 PM.  The bottom line, however, without someone there to enjoy it with the time there was too long.

Roger came on my second day and spent the day with me.  We had two meals together and afternoon tea and he took me for my first ride on a 14 foot Hobie Cat.  What a thrilling ride!  Very wet, with the waves coming up through the bottom of the trampoline that we sat on when we were beating to windward. I had a very good time with my husband and was really sad to see him go.  I took a few classes…stretch and water aerobics… and I read a lot.  I had my hair cut.  I ate. I slept in a big bed, that did not move,  in a comfortable air conditioned room overlooking the sea.  I am home on my boat now and even though, due to rain, the hatches must be kept closed, so it is hot and humid, I am happy to be here.

Meanwhile, Roger cleaned out the aft cabin and the compartments under that cabin which contain the batteries and engine. He says it is not clean enough to eat on, but almost. The objective is to get rid of everything that could rot or mildew in the damp heat this summer. He also dined with Alan and Lisbeth of Life of Reilley, and Helen and Aidan, who have since flown back to England, at Da Big Fish, the local cruiser’s restaurant, and made the last of our mango pancakes for the season for Allen and Lisbeth. Allen said that Lisbeth has more sea miles than he does, including a Pacific crossing in a boat a lot smaller than ours when she was a teenager.

Roger got a very short haircut and bought a number of things for the boat at the local Budget Marine store. Nine feet of thick gauge electrical wire to connect one of the solar panels when it will be lying in the cockpit after it is taken down from its high mount where hurricanes could do it damage; a proper stainless snubber hook; a new ratchet strap to hold the dinghy firmly on its davit bar, this time of stainless to replace one from Home Depot which had rusted itself to death, and best of all, an efficient low cost solution to the problem of what to do when the propane tank runs out (there is no gauge on it): a small disposable tank of propane good for about three barbecues and a brass fitting to hook it into our regular propane delivery system to the galley stove, to tide us over until we can get the regular tank refilled.

He cleaned most of the boat before I got back to the boat around noon. But then we had a real shock in the early afternoon. A huge crashing sound and jolt!  What the heck?!  And then another, which almost shook the laptop off the salon table. Roger caught it and placed it on the cabin sole so it could not fall on his way out of the cabin to see what happened. Had we dragged? But the shock and sound came from the bow. A Hanse yacht, from Regensberg Germany (actually kept in the Adriatic) named Black Elise II had crashed into us on his way to be hauled at Spice Island Marina. He was probably moving at three or four knots. His port midships cleat had become wrapped by our deployed anchor chain around it. He had broken off one of his lifeline stanchions and its mount and bent the two adjacent ones and chewed up his aluminum toe rail and the teak below it.

Roger yelled for me to turn on the windlass, which once done, permitted him to lower the anchor a few feet, so the slack could be used to get the boats apart.

Fortunately, the only apparent damage to ILENE is that the stainless steel rod that holds the heavy tubular bowsprit down to the bow of the boat near the waterline is bent, the bowsprit is scratched and the mount on it for the lower starboard anchor roller may be bent. Photos below, in order: scratches, bent rod (upside down view) and bent lower anchor roller mounts.

No personal injuries except to everyone’s equilibrium. The owner of the Hanse was at the wheel and quite apologetic, ascribing the cause as his inattentiveness. He was very pleased that Roger had not yelled and cursed him. Roger says he learned from racing with Craig and Kathy Briggs (now living aboard and cruising Sangaris, an Amel in the Adriatic) that when things go wrong, as they will, don't yell but calmly fix them. Black Elise has the same insurance company that we do, Pantaenius, but the German parent rather than the U.S. subsidiary.

There is a really efficient interactive net at 7:30 am on Channel 68 VHF, which includes weather reports, new arrivals and departures, cultural events, wanted to buy or available for sale plus local merchants announcing daily specials. A man later identified as Nils, from Norway, on Mary Jean, announced that he was in the market for five-gallon diesel jerry cans for a planned Atlantic crossing. The etiquette is to call back after the net ends and switch to another channel to conduct your business off line. Roger did so. We had four such cans (20 gallons worth) in addition to the 75 gallons in our two built-in fuel fuel tanks, for the eight day passage from Virginia to Tortola but didn't need any of the extra 20 gallons for that trip, and the way home will not involve any long multi-day passages, though one such can was retained, just in case you run out of fuel.
                                                                                                                                                                              Roger priced out the jerry cans at the local Budget Marine which, due to exise taxes charges higher prices than back in the states and he sold the three spare cans for a bit more than 2/3 their new Grenada price.  We had laundry done, shopped for groceries, cleaned up our fenders which had become grimy and dinked over to the Prickly Bay Yacht Yacht Club for pizza, salad, and live music: a six person steel band followed by a DJ and then a rock band.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

bsp;           

Four True Blue Days

Despite its rollyness, we spent four days in True Blue Harbor, and we felt a bit guilty not spending any money at the resort/restaurant whose dinghy dock we used every day. We were on anchor, hence no rent. The hotel gave us a slip of paper with the wifi password gratis and it provided the best internet access on the boat that we have enjoyed. The restaurant, self mockingly named the Dodgy Dock, apparently by some slangy Brits, though the waves under it did make exiting and reentering ones dinghy at their dinghy dock, well …. a bit dodgy. The restaurant looked like it served good food at reasonable prices, but we never ate there simply because we were either other places or ate aboard. We did fill one five gallon jerry can with diesel and at over $6 US per gallon, perhaps we can say that we did support the local economy. The rollyness is the result of (a) the wind, which is constantly from the east and holds our bow facing east, and (b) the waves that enter the harbor from the south and keep on rolling north, hitting us from the side. The waves are not large but they are frequent and make for less than ideal comfort conditions.

We enjoyed lambi (conch) roti for $6 US per person at a roadside food court kiosk one night and dined at the elegant Beach House with Aidan and Helen Harney, which cost more than $50 US per person, another. We had met the Harneys in Carriacou; they have hauled their boat there and have a flight back to Albion on Thursday. Some of the mangos we had bought more than a week before, in St. Georges, had finally ripened so we were able to provide mango pancakes to Helen and Aidan, after all. We, that is Lene, invited them to visit Marti and Dan’s house with us, to see Cookie (now twelve days old instead of five though honesty compells me to note that this photo, which Lene likes, was taken when he was five days old)

and two other goats that are being cared for there. The baby goats are fenced for their own protection against dogs but are not threatened by the four big dogs that live there with Dan and Marti. Their home is high on a hill and the back yard rises steeply and is accessible by a recently completed trail of terraced steps made of bamboo. Dan and Marti are putting a facing on their home of white Carriacou limestone (made of coral?) rather than the local Grenadian volcanic dark brown stone. After the goats, the six of us went for lunch to a beachside burger joint, Umbrellas. Our home cooking, courtesy of Ilene, included chicken breasts in tandoori sauce and the local pigeon peas cooked with rice, topped with an Indian spinach shag.

Did we do anything these four days besides eat and socialize?  Well, having friends with cars, we went to see The King’s Speech. It was opening night for that Oscar winning film here on this British island and while we went to the early show at 7, there were only seven people in the theater, including our party of four. It was our first movie in five months and a very fine one.

Our major boat work was the cleaning of the space that contains the anchor locker. In anticipation of leaving the boat all locked up in hot humid weather for six months, we washed down as many surfaces as we could reach, not only with cleaners, but with mildew fighting Clorox. This space also contained a big very solidly built plywood box that contained the forward Lectrasan. That expensive device that came with the boat is supposed to use salt and electricity to turn sewage into almost drinkable water; a self contained floating sewage disposal system. But it never really worked and electricity is not something to waste, so I had ripped out the unit two winters ago, more of its hosing in St. Martin, and now this heavy plywood box with many screws to loosen and fiberglass to saw through.  It is done and its removal provides better access to the anchor chain from below deck.

The trip from True Blue to Prickly Bay was a total of about one mile and most of that distance was in exiting True Blue and entering Prickly; we motored all the way and anchored on the west side to have access to the Spice Island Marina with its Budget Marine store because it is closer to the Spa that Lene has gone to for three days.

In reality, our sailing days for this winter are over, though we will not remove the sails from their ready to deploy positions until we enter St. David’s Harbor, home of Grenada Marine where we will haul and store. We will not be sailing because our experience sailing east to True Blue of head winds and hostile ocean currents has persuaded the boating community to motor east on the south side of Grenada. And we won’t take the sails down because they are considered the Boat’s main propulsion system. The diesel engine is our auxiliary power source. If the engine fails, we want to be able to deploy sails to maintain steerage and get to a harbor even if it is west of us.

I KID you not!

We spent a total of four days at the dock in Port  Louis Marina, during which I was able to scrub down ILENE’s  deck with fresh water and clean off some rust. Here is EOS at the marina’s “megayacht” dock.

She is 306 feet long, as long as the USS Hammerberg, DE 1015, the Destroyer Escort  on which I served from 1965 to 1967, but a bit more luxurious. I asked the man who was taking down her Union Jack influenced flag about crew; she has 20, and is used strictly for the pleasure of her owner and his friends – not for charter. We know EOS was Commissioned in 2007 for Barry Diller & his wife, Diane Von Furstenberg, but we don’t know if they still own her.  These boats change hands frequently because these billionaires always seem to want bigger and better.

We then spent three nights anchored outside the harbor where it looked too rolly when looking there from the Fort. It was beautifully calm and comfortable, however.  Here is the Fort from our boat on anchor. The red roofed building below and to the left is another (not the big one) medical school  . 

On the blog detailing our arrival in St Georges, we had shown the empty cruise ship dock from the Fort; here it is with two boats, the small one, poking her bow forward of the Caribbean Princess, was revealed to be the Aida when the big one, left.

We navigated to the anchorage right outside the entrance to the harbor and Port Louis Marina easily using the chart plotter to get into the area and depth sounder to drop our hook in 21 feet of water. Later we learned that we made our "home on the range".

A "range" is an ancient form of navigational aid. Many appear on the old nautical charts I have been playing with at the New York Public Library. They are frequently made up of naturally formed points such as “line up the big rock on X island with the prominent tree on B hill.” This one is man-made, with bright red lights toward the top center of each panel, so that they work at night too. This one appears on our chart with a line telling the navigators of big ships to line up on the range on a course of 122 degrees magnetic.  We are to the left of that line, because the top marker is to the left of the bottom one. Before a big boat gets this far in, when, by having followed this range, it passed between a pair of red and green buoys, the navigator would turn left into the harbor entrance and follow another such range the rest of the way into the harbor.

 My chores here in the anchorage have included polishing interior brass, especially the switch plate behind the kitchen sink which had been tarnished by being splashed with water and other fluids over many years. Here it shines after being renewed.

I also finally finished the compounding and waxing of the topsides (except for the cockpit which gets a lot of shade), finished compounding the dinghy, and repairing screens damaged by the furry felines.

From this location we had the benefit of being able to dink back into the Marina to meet Mike and Audrey for dinner and they dinked out to meet with us on our boat.  Mike was a “snipe” (member of the engineering division) on a late WWII destroyer during the Viet Nam war. We were able to swap Tin Can sea stories from that era. In the last decade or so he has put 100,000 miles under his keel as a delivery captain of many boats. They started the first of their one week charters of Serenity the day after we said goodby so we look forward to seeing them again after it is over, to find out how they like their new life so far.

A wonderful and interesting development in my life was my being contacted by email by the man who replaced me as Anti Submarine Warfare officer on the Hammerberg. I last saw him, thought of him or heard from him in June of 1967. I could not even remember his name, though it sounded a bit familiar. We have been trading emails about the bad old days.  He lives in Boston and I am determined not to let him get away from my life again.

We introduced Mike and Audrey to Lene’s friend, Marti, who lives here with her husband, a physician-researcher at the medical college (the big one...St Georges University), which is the largest institution on the island. Marti helps the nascent goat dairy industry here. She drove the four of us on a tour of the southeast part of Grenada and introduced us to Cookie,

who is a nice kid and was only five days old when we met her. Cookie has to be bottle fed because her mom is sick with mastitis. Her breed is American Alpine. Marti is holding Cookie's bottle.

Cookie is so cute and scampered along after Mike all day while Marti took us around to a couple of the bays that cut into the south side of the island like shallow fjords. These included St. David’s Harbor where we got a chance to look at Grenada Marine, which will be ILENE’s summer home.  All the maps and photos can’t compare to being there as a comfort to seeing how to navigate into a place.

Our Marina is isolated from St. Georges, but there is a lovely nearby hotel , La Sagesse, which will pick us up and bring us back during the final two days when the boat will be ashore, being put to bed for the summer and during which we will be staying in the hotel. We all had a delicious lunch there. It’s kind of a shame to have the use of such a nice hotel but to be working on the boat instead of enjoying the beautiful hotel/beach.

Marti also gave us a book on Hurricane Ivan (know here as Ivan the Terrible), the hurricane that really tore up this island in 2004, which convinced us to spring for higher insurance premiums to cover potential hurricane damage.  She also gave us some some goat cheese (from the goat dairy farm) and tomatoes which were great for breakfast, followed by bread and butter with nutmeg jam with our coffee.

Yesterday we moved from right outside St. Georges to our current anchorage in True Blue Bay, where the local resort (True Blue Bay Resort) sends the internet out nice and strong, and gave us the password for free. True Blue is the name of the region in which the bay is located. This bay is perhaps the smallest and west most of about six bays on the western side of  the south coast. Sailing south to the southwest tip of the island was fun at six knots with 18 knots of breeze in the full main alone on a port beam reach, avoiding only one reef. But once we rounded the point to head east we were on a beat, with waves and tidal flow against us and made only two knots over the ground and eventually motored the last two miles.