June 28 – September 7, 2022

I can’t believe the summer is already, by US standards, over.  It is still hot and sticky here.  September is said to be the hottest, wettest month in Grenada.  We shall see.  In the first few months, we only had the air conditioning on every now and then.  Now, if we are on the boat, the AC is on.  I generally dislike AC, but all things are relative.  Our biggest challenge is staying hydrated.  This doesn’t mean we’ve been bored though.  I can’t believe how the time is flying by.

The diving in Grenada had been excellent.  We’ve had 7 dives so far, and Jeff has gotten his Advanced Open Water Certification, which he’d been wanting for a while.  I came along on all his training except the deep water dive.  I wasn’t sure I had any business going over 100 ft deep, so I did a “black forest reef dive” with my guide Zane, while Jeff checked out a wreck.  It turns out the water is so warm and clear here, I later did a dive to 80 ft, and it was warm and bright, so I’m a bit annoyed I didn’t go for it too.  Oh well.  We’ve been using Phil and the Dive Grenada team and they are great.  They are very active in local conservation activities, and Phil is even building a special coral habitat in front of his shop made from cinderblock pyramids, which he seeds with Elkhorns and other corals.  People were pretty shocked and excited when the Elkhorns started growing really well, as coral can be difficult to cultivate.

We had a wonderful week long visit from Claire in July, and we showed her some of our favorite spots here on the island.  She particularly liked tubing a river in the rainforest with a dozen of our friends from the marina.  She was the first to leap off a high bridge, after the guide proved it was deep enough!  The only bad part of this sailing life is not seeing enough of Claire and the rest of our friends and family.  To help with that, we spent the first two weeks of August in the States.

We started out at Becky’s beautiful new home in Andover MA, then a long weekend at Haversham in Rhode Island, and then off the the Taylor Farm via Philly Airport.  The farm is looking great, and so are Peter and Lily.  It wasn’t all kayaking and drinking wine on the porch either.  We finally dealt with down sizing our storage unit, just down the road from the farm.  We have officially gone from 10×10 feet to 10×5 feet.  It was partly getting even more honest with ourselves about what we really wanted, and thinking about paying to store this stuff for ten years and then throwing it out was really helpful and motivating!

We’ve made a lot of really nice friends here in Grenada, so there’s always someone suggesting something fun to do.  Hikes to forts, rainforest adventures, hashes in the muddy bush, brewery and distillery tours, chocolate plantations, hanging out at the pool, and practicing our instruments seems to keep us very busy.  The open mike night at Nimrod’s Rum Shack was also a nice surprise.  It’s turns out several of cruisers friends are very talented.  I was worried for a French Canadian friend who planned to play guitar while singing SIA – Chandelier, I mean, it’s hard to play guitar in public, never mind hitting those high notes.  Well she did it!  The crowd went wild!

So I guess my excuse for not writing blogs is there has been not of the drama on the high seas stuff we’d gotten used to.  No more, “we almost died beating up wind in heavy seas!”, “we almost died hitting a whale”, we almost died, etc etc.  It’s been such smooth sailing, I am tapping wood not to jinx it.  Our new standing rigging went on with out a hitch, and the mast is happy.  We did a test sail or two with no issues.  We did try to test the rig a bit more the last couple weekends by entering the Round Grenada Regatta.  Billed as a 2 day event from Phare Bleu up one side to Carricou and parties, and back down the other side the next day.  Sadly it’s been postponed twice now due to lack of wind.  We will try again in a couple weeks.

The good thing about no wind is that it’s been an amazingly quiet hurricane season.  No named storms anywhere near us so far.  Some are saying it’s just a good season, and others are gloomily predicting all the bad weather confined to a single month at the end. 

I guess if I had my way, hurricane season would be over and we’d be out exploring again.  But on the other hand, marina life, with AC and getting to land without a dinghy, is pretty cushy.  We are both horribly out of sailing shape, but I think we’ve decided we are resting up now for the World ARC, when we will have to shift into high gear.  That will be 15 months straight of “loose not a minute!!”  “ Tide and time wait for no man!!”  So here were are in beautiful Port Louis waiting for tide and time (well, weather) to be right.  I think I’ll go make and Aperol Spritz and head to the pool.  Cheers.