Friends Make a Difference

We are sitting on our anchor in the Tobago Cays of St. Vincent & the Grenadines.  The time is sunrise.

The last few days have been a real gift.  We FINALLY left the wonderful island of Grenada (and I cried like a baby when I said goodbye to my great friend, Marti) on Friday the 25^th and had a lovely sail to Sandy Island, a spit of beach 2 miles away from Hillsborough, Carriacou where we checked out of Grenada.  We spent 2 nights at Sandy and were blessed with friendship and social activity on each.  We met up with Audrey & Mike of Serenity on their beautiful and oh-so-comfortable 60’ Morgan on which we had dinner al fresco in their great cockpit.   

We brought vegetables and rice and Audrey cooked up fresh Mahi Mahi that Mike had caught. 

In the late afternoon on Saturday (which we spent mostly indoors because of very big, gusty winds and periods of downpours), we heard “Ahoy, Ilene” and it was Michelle & Manu of Teepee who left Grenada on Saturday (which I’d wanted to do instead of Friday because I hate saying goodbye!)  They looked like they had been through the wringer…and they had.  Their sail, which we had done the day before in such pleasant conditions, was very uncomfortable and difficult.  They were so glad to see us.  Roger picked them up in our dink and brought them over to us at about 6 where we enjoyed some cheese and crackers and then a very good dinner of rabbit in a mustard cream sauce with rice and vegetables.  And after dinner we played a few hours of cards.  We actually stayed up until about 11 PM…an almost unheard of activity on ILENE.

Before we left on Sunday, we finally got a bit of snorkeling in at Sandy which is a playground for fish, and on our walk on the beach met Patty and her husband Chris who live in Vermont.  They keep their boat, a beautiful 43’ Shannon down here and when they can get away (he is an Oncologist) they come down here and get a few weeks in sailing. We actually rescued them as their dink engine died and so we towed them and their friends, “Salty” and her husband Ernie back to their boat.  We saw them again briefly yesterday at the Cays and will meet them again in Bequia, our next destination which we leave for today.  Hopefully we can get to spend more time with them.  We liked them.

We arrived at the Cays after leaving Union Island where we sailed when we left Sandy Island on Sunday to check in to the nation of St. Vincent & the Grenadines (here after referred to as SVG).  It was another beautiful and short (just the way I like them) sail.  I really like Union Island although Sunday is a very dead day on any of these islands.  Almost everything is closed.  However, on our way back to the boat on Sunday late afternoon after checking into SVG at the local airport, we decided to visit Happy Island, a unique bar and restaurant located in the middle of the water approachable ONLY by dinghy.

Janti owns Happy Island and built it from scratch. It sits inside the reef which creates the harbor. We sat there with him and his cook, a beautiful young lady who Roger mistakenly thought was Janti’s woman because they both live on Happy Island.   This is quite a small island with an estimated 40’ diameter. 

The front of the establishment is the bar/restaurant and the back is their living quarters.  Janti is quite a philosopher and we enjoyed the 90 minutes we spent drinking and conversing. Here is a view of the boats anchored in the harbor through a window of Happy Island.

BTW, the smell of “ganga” is everywhere.  It is smoked quite openly and I still just love the smell!  We did go back into town on Monday AM for some fresh fruit (we finally got mangoes…yay) and fresh bread and then sailed for Tobago Cays. We left Union at about 8:45AM and arrived at 10 AM.  Before the day was out we had at least 6 visitors from the ever present boat boys selling us whatever we needed or wanted.  Here are a few of them hanging out on their brightly colored boats.

We have a fresh baguette being delivered at 7 this morning (I am writing this at 6AM having gone to sleep last night at 8:30 PM), we bought 2 hand painted T shirts from “Mr. Quality” who when I commented how big his boat was, he told me it wasn’t a boat…it was The Caribbean Floating Mall.

And, we agreed to let the entrepreneurial Hethlon, and his assistant, to the right, prepare for us a fresh charcoal grilled lobster dinner. 

But, before dinner we took our dink to the little beach and got into the water to snorkel, and we were rewarded.  Just like our last visit, we were able to follow the underwater activity of the giant sea turtles.  They are such beautiful, unique creatures.

Dinner on the beach was magical. Like at Happy Island the floor is sand and shoes would get wet.  Over my right shoulder are lights shining from the tops of moored or anchored boats.

The grilled Caribbean lobsters were amazing.  Roger, who is not a big lobster lover declared it the best lobster he had ever eaten.

Sometime this morning we will raise anchor and sail the 25 miles or so to Bequia as we continue our journey.  I could not have asked for a better few days filled with new and old friends, social activities and beautiful Caribbean vistas!

 

Thanksgiving in Grenada

Thanksgiving Day in Grenada was a non-event.  It basically rained all morning until early afternoon, and then the sky was overcast and gray the rest of the day.   At 10:30 we headed into shore and set up shop at the Grenada Yacht Club, a very open and comfortable pavilion type structure with free wifi and a $15 EC daily (eastern Caribbean dollars) lunch special.  That comes to $6 US.
I made lots of skype calls, charged my IPAD, Kindle and laptop batteries.  We had lunch with Manu & Michelle of Teepee who were basically doing the same thing we were...email and skype.
M&M have been with us so often during our time in Grenada and we, of course, know them from our last season here when they hitched a ride with us from St. Martiin to Antigua saving me from having to stand watch on that overnight passage.  We have both grown very fond  of them and they have been quite helpful to us in many ways.
The boating community is unique in my experience, although I do believe that when people are bonded through a common purpose or activity or perhaps a passion, you get to experience the helpfulness one shows another. One really becomes aware of how dependent we are on each other.  We help each other because one day we'll be the one who needs that help!

The day before Thanksgiving was an interesting day.  Roger had to stay on the boat so Wayne (mechanic) and Herve (electronics guy) could continue fixing the engine and our windlass.  Marti picked M&M and me up at the GYC for a trip to Grand Etang, the national rain forest located in the central highlands of the country. But, first a quick trip to the GSPCA (Grenada-ASPCA) to drop off an injured and emaciated dog she had been notified was laying abandoned on the beach.  When it comes to animals, Marti is known as the go-to person.  She, as expressed before in these postings, is a person to be admired to put it mildly!
In addition to the rain forest, where last season we had monkeys eating out of our hands...but not this time, we drove to Annandale Falls where we saw the "Annandale Jumpers" and swam ourselves.

  And, there was a monkey for hire....$5EC for a little shoulder action.

Then it was back to the GYC, to the dink and back to the boat which, it turned out, was quite wet from the side hatches being left accidentally open during a downpour.

Ilene The Boat's First (and only) Mate

I don't recognize myself some of the time. Even the title of this posting leaves me a bit incredulous.  First mate?  Who am I?
Well, if I live in the present moment, which I try to do, I am wife and companion to Roger, my Captain. 
I fell in love with him on a boat (having never been sailing before we met, our first summer together was one of the most romantic times in my life.  I pined for him when he went away on a 16 day summer cruise with his yacht club without me.)
So, now I can drive a dinghy FAST and get to the dock, tie her up and start her again by myself...I can steer our 43' foot, 10 ton sailboat onto a dock and I steer her to the mooring ball while Roger picks up the ball from the front of the boat.  This is very cool stuff to know how to do!  And, I understand and can speak "sailing lingo".  I say head and galley as a matter of course.
And, probably most important to Rojay, is my commitment to this 8 month, 2000 mile journey from Grenada back home to New York.
I'm really a sailor, and yet it's still hard to believe.
Let me add in here that as much as I love Roger and as caring as he is for my well being, this trip might not have been possible without the hours of fun and love I get from Alpha Girl & Whitty.


I won't recap the entire trip so far (actually not much of one yet...we'll have been in Grenada a month in 2 days and have moved about 12 miles so far.  We are both ITCHING to get going and to have all of the systems we need working...it has been frustrating so far to say the least!) as Roger has done a lot of that in his several blog postings so far.  I hope to post more than I did last season and will have my own take on what transpires.
I'll start with my reflection of a couple of days ago.  We experienced yet another mechanical breakdown.  In the middle of only our 2nd very short passage from Prickly Bay to the anchorage outside St. Georges (the capital of Grenada) our engine screeched and died.  Now, I'm sure not many of you have sailed onto an anchorage and I'll tell you that it is a somewhat scary maneuver.   But, my Captain is a very good sailor who may not be able to fix a windlass (the mechanism that lifts and lowers our very heavy anchor for us)...but he can sail!
Yesterday, Wayne, a local mechanic found for us by our wonderful friend, Marti, who lives on the island came and fixed the engine. 

We are hoping to take a snorkeling trip today or Thursday morning to the underwater sculptures, and then sail to Cariacou and Sandy Island.
Thanks for reading.

Photos and Final Reflections on Grenada Marine

 Here is the cats' ladder, the heavy twisted line, with it now having been raised a couple of inches so the heavy braided part runs from below the water line to the top of the swim platform. We think Alphie is both smart and strong enough to climb in. Whitty, however????  The blue and white line is the dinhy's painter, running from its bow in the lower left to the boat and back in a temporary manner while the photo was being taken. Normally it is tied to a cleat at the top of the stern of the boat.

 Since we are talking about Grenada Marine, here (top center) is a pic of the newly built cabinet to replace the old microwave. They took off the door shown in lower left to use as a model for the new door and the match is better than we had hoped for.

 Telephoto view of Roger, 60 to 65 feet above sea level, sitting in the bosun's chair while taking down the fixture in which we inserted LED navigation and anchor lights. Lene and the electric winch, pulled him up.

 A view from the top on Roger's return trip to the top of the mast to reinstall the lights. Here are other boats in the anchorage and Prickly Bay marina in the upper left corner, on the east side of the bay. Those condos to the right are not renting so well yet.

Also from the top, looking north to Da Big Fish restaurant and Spice Island Marina. The rock cliffs to the right provide the sound of surf all night.  Lots of room for other boats to anchor in this bay. One more shot from the top, the best -- straight down,  is in our next post, written by Ilene.
                                                                       *******
     So what about the much maligned Grenada Marine?  Expensive, yes. Not all of the jobs were done, or completed as requested. Slow. But consider Mark's job as Scheduler of let's say 20 jobs per boat on 100 boats! An administrative ability that I could surely never hope to aspire to.  The place is located remote from everywhere else so that weekly taxi runs are scheduled for the boaters to obtain provisions.  The ground is swampy, though they dumped a load of gravel behind ILENE to provide a bit better footing at the base of the ladder they provided. The electrical lines and water hoses lie in the mud.   Security guards are are on duty 24/7.  No one seems to be in overall charge of the operation, though Raquel, the office manager, plays a key role. The owner is reputedly a Grenadian, though if we ever met him or her, we did not know it.
Storage is charged by the day, so they have a financial conflict of interest to keep boats a bit longer than anticipated, though they were refilling the yard when we left: our cradle and the one next to us with a big Danish trawler on it were refilled with other boats while we on the mooring in St. David's Bay.
     I loved the crew and it of them I sing. Perhaps 150 black men, mostly young, that all go about their business, roughly divided into specialist crews, though they seem to overlap somewhat in skills. There is the crew that operates the big lift that carries the boats from the water to the cradles and jack stands, power washes the bottoms of the boats and carefully braces the boats and straps them down to anchors embedded in the mud designed to prevent tipping over and takes them back to sea. A safety mandated howler roars throuth the yard whenever this crane is moving, which is a lot of the time. Then we have painters, fiberglass workers, polishers, carpentry/cabinetry makers, metal workers, engine repair people and electronics and electrical teams.  And all their work is billed to your account except the sail loft and the chandlery which bill separately. They are male with the exceptions of the rest room cleaners, the office workers, the lady who runs the chandlery and the snack bar crew which is gender integrated. The snack bar, except on special musical nights designed to promote drinking, has a daily menu of one (possibly 2) entrees that are served at both lunch and dinner; not a big menu choice like at the Harlem Yacht Club.
     The yard crew all wear royal blue tee shirts imprinted in white with the company's logo and slogan: "We love boats".  They wear them with pride and yell at each other rather than speak to each other, across the open space, in a dialect that I could not hope to understand.  I learned to ignore the yelling, realizing that it was not directed to me and not said in anger.  They all have cell phones and many have portable music devices and sing along with their radios, loudly and lustily. They seem cheerful and are quite willing to talk to boat owners and offer helpful suggestions.  In a nation enmeshed in an economic depression, they are pleased with their year-round jobs and seem proud of their work. They seem quite cheerful, though a few have expressed the reality that in a nation with only two boatyards, if they lose their jobs they have no other place to employ their specialized skills.
One of the several bus lines that traverse the island, runs along a main road from which the road down to Grenada Marine twists and winds for the last two miles. So to get to work involves a long walk, unless they have private wheels or take taxis.  The buses are vans with a capacity of about 15 persons, run by a two man crew: the driver drives and the other man collects fares. They stop anywhere along their routes to pick up or drop off passengers and the fare is only $2.50 EC, slightly less than one  dollar US, per person.  But these buses stop running at about 6 pm and do not run on Sundays so workers with overtime can have transportation problems.
      I will probably never set foot in Grenada marine again but salute their cheerful, hardworking skillful crew.

   

Are we in a Grenadian Rut?

Here it is Sunday, November 20 and we are still in Grenada, not that that's such a terrible place to be. We got here October 26, and began working on ILENE the next day, planning to sail away November 1. We were the victims of our own excessive ambitions. In fact we launched on November 7, but remained in St David's Harbor until November 14, when we finally sailed about five miles to Prickly Bay, where we have remained until today.  Roger was getting depressed about how slow everything was going here, in addition to being physically sick. But in reality, we are in no worse shape than most of the other boats around here. The fact is that the hot humid tropical summers take their toll on the boat's systems.
     First we had no windlass making it hard to lower and raise the anchor. If we would have let the yard's expert electrician staff do it, it would have been fixed in a day. But it took us a day to get the bolts backed off the studs, turning 1/6 of a turn at a time, times about 100 turns time four studs, and once removed, we still couldn't get the damn thing off until a yard worker smashed at it with a big hammer; Roger can't bring himself to whack away at our boat so mercilessly. The third day was for fixing the rusted bushings and the fourth for re-installation with instructions to give it more lubrication to keep out the rust.
     Then we had no electronic chart or autopilot. I saw a block of six rows of two connections each which looked rusted in a high corner of the big starboard lazarette. How did water get in there, so high, and what to do about it. Herve, the brilliant French electronics expert from Grenada Marine came and saw and replaced: Voila! we have electronic fix and autopilot again. Now it is the VHF radio that doesn't work, though we have two hand held ones that do work. And Friday morning our propane tank ran out of fuel during breakfast. We have an attachment and small cans for campers and attached one and took the big can to be refilled, but that won't be back until Monday.
      Monday we plan to round the SW corner of this island and anchor off its capital, St. Georges. We'll stay and do some touring on Tuesday by visiting the underwater sculpture garden with our fins and snorkels before heading north and east toward home...with one month of our anticipated eight month journey behind us. We have a lot of lovely spots that we visited last winter but in a month or two we will branch off to the west from last years track to visit St. Croix, the Spanish Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico's south coast, The  Dominican Republic's north coast, and then Turks and Caicos, a great route up through the Bahamas and joining the US in Florida for a slow trip up the coast to New York. Planning these trips, not that the schedule is set, is half the fun, but Roger realized that he is missing Bahamian paper charts and up to date cruising guides.  His objective is to select routes of moderate mileage for each passage. Up to date cruising guides are useful to prevent surprises at the end of the day; if you plan to anchor at XYZ Cove but it is now completely filled in with an expensive Marina, it is better to know this before you set off than when you arrive all tired at the end of the day. Columbus didn't have cruising guides but we should not leave home without them.
Photos: Da Big Fish Restaurant, with its dinghy dock in front, masts from the other marina, Spice island marina, behind, and the Blue building to the left as the local Budget Marine store. Live music by night and internet access by day.

 The same, looking out from the restaurant to the dinghy dock, with the coast guard station ahead and the masts way in the background being ILENE's mast and others.

 And here is Da Big Fish's library. Leave one; take one.

     We have socialized with Marti and Danny several times. They live here, except when visiting Arizona from time to time. Danny is a professor and administrator at the Medical College (we invaded Grenada to save its students from a Communist coup during the Reagan years but the school has grown manifold on a new beautiful campus since then.) Marti will be remembered from last winter as the "goat lady", among her many other talents. They live in a home that they are expanding on a ridge overlooking Grand Anse, the big fashionable SE coast beach here. Yesterday we introduced them to Manu and Michelle, of "Teepee," at a lunch at a restaurant perched on the side of the road about 100 feet above Clarke's Court Bay and Hog Island, where Teepee is anchored. The restaurant is called The Little Dipper and has four tables. We six diners filled one of them and were the only diners in the place. The restaurant is operated by Joan, the wife of  "Rock," the taxi driver who "watched" our boat for us this past summer.  A faded article from a cruising magazine listed this place as one of the ten best restaurants in the Caribbean and while this was a bit hyperbolic, the food was wholesome. A very limited menu of broiled lobster, curried lambi (conch) or marinated grilled tuna steaks -- and you can drink beer, non-diet coke or water.  We enjoyed introducing friends to each other, and Manu and Michelle's plans have changed so they will be with us for part of the way north. After lunch a swim in the ocean and then home for dinner, a very calm dry night.
      Roger is eager to get started.

Frogs in Cat Boxes

Sorry for the delay: the laptop was broken for about two weeks, hence no postings. It is now fixed, thanks to help from Lene's relations from home, UPS, local customs and a very clever local computer guy, Garvey, who installed the new screen to replace the old, which was cracked.

"Six days shalt thou labor and do all that thou art able; and on the seventh, holystone the decks and scrub the cables."
This doggerel, if Roger's memory serves him faithfully, is the beginning two lines of "Two Years Before the Mast," Richard Henry Dana's memoir of his apprenticeship on a wooden merchant vessel in the Pacific Northwest in the 19th century, which Roger read in his teens.
Holystones were large flat bottomed stones that the sailors, working in pairs, would slide back and forth across the massive oak beams that made up the decks, thereby sanding down the soiled outer layer of the oak. Heavy work and on the Lord's Day. It is a twist on Genesis's seventh day of rest, which the sailors did not get.
Holystones do not work on fiberglass boats and our decks are not pristine, but last Sunday was our 11th consecutive day of dog work, and we launched Monday a week ago for more days of work while we are on a mooring, where we have escaped the oppressive land heat in the blazing sun, the fun part of the adventure can finally begin, probably on Friday, November, 18.
Roger did get to "scrub the cables", however, if you define cables as the lines (ropes) that lead out from the top and bottom of the mast that haul the sails up and control their angle to the wind. If anyone had advised us to run up thin "messenger" lines to replace the lines that control the boat, Roger forget to do that. We don't do it in winter in NY, and I didn't do it in the summer in Grenada. But ILENE has its famous "cat boxes" in the forward ends of the gunnels, side walls of the cockpit. As noted last winter, the cats each like to hide and sleep in those boxes, while we are underway. Rain flows into these boxes but seeps out of what are called weep holes low at the outboard side. When the boat is on land, the level of fresh rainwater in those boxes is about 1/2 inch deep. Algae grew on the cables. But when Roger removed the lines to scrub them with a stiff brush and soap and Clorox, he found families of tiny frogs in each. (First a photo of Tee Pee, with our french speaking friends, Manu and Michelle, who were such good help and good friends as we shared our yard experience.) Tee Pee is on route to the water, where she launched before us but we got away before she did.

Here are two frogs. the little hole, top center, is about one inch in diameter, to give you an idea how small the frogs are. Roger thought he had chased them all away but when we were underway, from St. David's to Prickly Bay, Alpha Girl emerged with frog legs hanging out of her mouth. Roger eventually disposed of the carcass.

How did these tiny tree frogs climb from the ground up about 15 feet? We are not sure. Roger believes that the black stuff, associated with the algae consisted of tiny bits of froggy fecal matter. Cables duly scrubbed,
Roger does most of the heavy lifting and Lene is resting him to avoid potential heat prostration, and giving him lots of liquids. Flu like symptoms plus heat sap energy, which may be why progress has been so slow.

Roger smiling after scrubbing off the outer layer of the old bottom paint into a slurry, some of which seems to have landed on him. Another rag for the rag bag.


Another problem has been the solar panels,which have not been working. We did get the anchor windlass rebuilt and are awaiting an Herve, a great electronics tech, who can hopefully get out chartplotter and autopilot to work again. Apparently the problem is in the wiring by which the components of this system talk to each other. We had been in Prickly Bay before and hence were able to navigate there without the benefit of electronics, but we would rather not make a habit of it.

The kitties stayed with us in an air conditioned bungalow for the first 12 days. Here is Whitty on the veranda.

They have transitioned rather well to their new floating home, where they lived for six months last winter: Oh yeah, this again. They do suffer a bit in the heat -- wearing fur coats. Lene jumped in to save a loudly mewling strongly swimming Alphie a couple mornings ago. We think she tied to jump from the Bimini (sun shade) to the dinghy, whose big rubber tube, hanging off the back of the boat, was slippery with the morning dew.