Steve and Laura's Excellent Adventure

 I can't believe it's almost been a week since my last post! Time is flying... Since last update we've sailed several days, bringing our sailing experience to over 100 nautical miles and we celebrated Thanksgiving along with most of you.  We were even able to find turkey and all the fixin's here in Grenada!  Steve and I enjoyed a wonderful meal, but I have to admit that I was a bit homesick.  It wasn't quite the same without my mom's creamed corn and pecan pie and lots of family to eat it with. We went to a mooring neighborhood party hosted by the marina, which was fun.  Amongst the crowd were sailors from England, Holland, South Africa, France, Canada, Brazil and the US. What I found interesting was the number of them who have been right here in this Grenadian mooring for years! I've also invested in swim goggles and have been swimming laps around the boat in an attempt to get some cardio exercise.  It's too hot to do anything else! The other thing whic

  I'm happy to report that Steve and I completed our first solo sailing expedition today. We motored out of the mooring field at 10:30 and returned around 17:00, covering approximately 30 nautical miles.  The winds were between 12 and 17 knots and our typical speed was around 6 knots, with a max of 7.5 knots. Seas were 4-6 feet. I definitely felt a lot more comfortable and confident today, and in general, we executed most of the maneuvers very well.  There are still a few things that need work, of course - downwind sailing and jibing, in particular.  It really felt fantastic, though, to be out on the open water and is definitely more like what I had imagined life would be like!   The next few days will be a mix of sailing and finishing getting Starry Night ship-shape and then we hope to head to Carriacou, which is about a six hour sail, and stay there for a couple of days.  Cheers!

 I guess I was a bit optimistic when I wrote the last post. The insurance approval took a couple of days, and we ran into several more "must fix" issues which are still preventing us from doing our first sailing run with just the two of us. In the meantime, we've met several of our neighbors here in the mooring field which has been really nice. We expected the demographic of the cruising community to skew towards our age or older, and while there are plenty of us old folks around, there are also a surprising number of young families about as well. Our next door neighbors are a young couple with a 3 year boy and 2 month old baby girl, Ian and Luna! What better way to learn about physics and life in general than living on the boat! I hear the father talking to his son about concepts like friction and see them paddling about for exercise.  And then there's the family on the boat named Plan B. This couple has four children and two dogs on board!! There is a swing on the b

  Well,.we have worked very hard and learned a lot over the last two days under the expert instruction of Captain Sarah.  She's patiently walked us through everything from rigging sails, setting up reefing lines to controlling the boat using its two engines, and has run us through our paces practicing basic sailing maneuvers. Sarah is originally from near Stuttgart, Germany and lives here in Grenada now.  She has over ten thousand nautical miles under her belt and bought and refurbished her own wooden sailboat where she and her dog, Maya, live.  She is clearly an expert in sailing and everything that goes with it, including troubleshooting and issue resolution.  Grenada has proved to be a challenging learning environment since the winds are quite variable and gusty and quite dependent upon the boat's position relative to the geographic features of the island. A couple of key take-aways for us based on the last couple of days: This is a BIG boat and it has very big sails!  Raisi

 Short update from the mooring field in Prickly Bay: The bad news is that when we sailed from the boatyard to the mooring location, we found out our roller furler (that furls the headsail) was frozen.  The good news is that we wouldn't have been able to sail anyway since we're not approved by insurance to sail by ourselves until we are officially checked-out by a qualified captain, which is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday this coming week. This gave us two days at the mooring ball before we (read: Steve) to trouble-shoot and fix the issue, with a little bit of assistance from his first mate. The issue, as we both suspected, was that grit from the constant sandblasting that was going on at the boatyard had caused the bushing to seize.  Getting to the bushing in order to flush it and lubricate it was a multi-step process, requiring the patience of a saint.  Thankfully, it's cleaned, rotating, and reassembled for our sail tomorrow! While Steve was working on the furler issue,

We've beginning to learn what patience really is, and how complicated arranging all the bits and pieces required to make things happen in the sailing world is. We finally splashed today though and started our adventure with this view as we motored to our mooring.  To fill you in on the last few days and some of the gory details, the engine controllers that we were waiting for arrived on the island - as advertised - after one week, and were delivered to our boatyard the next day.  We had a new hurdle, though...finding another captain to help us splash (since we haven't been officially checked-out for insurance purposes). The captain we had originally arranged was unavailable for our new splash date due to another commitment so our local contact had to scramble to find another captain who was free. This was no mean feat since it seems that the entire COVID-wearied world has decided to charter boats and all the captains are fully booked at the moment.  As luck would have it, we we

One of the awesome things about travel is getting to know meeting people from many different countries and cultures.  This week I was talking to one of the guys working on Starry Night - Rock - about the things we hoped to do and see while in Grenada.  He offered to organize transportation and take us on a hike to Seven Sisters Falls, one of the places I wanted to visit.  We traveled by bus today to 1910 feet and enjoyed the cooler temperatures, the beautiful scenery and the company .  On the way, we stopped to visit a mona monkey and enjoy homemade rum punch. The beautiful lady pictured with me is Therisa, Rock's girlfriend, who joined us for the adventure.   The forest and terrain reminded me of North Carolina, and after a slightly slippery trek we arrived at our destination.  The water was crystal clear and exhilarating. And that's when the real fun began!  I have to admit that, while I eagerly ran up to the jumping spot to follow Therisa's lead in jumping in, it took qu

As several of my friends have pointed out, there are worse things than being "stranded" in Grenada waiting  for boat parts to arrive.  The first evening living aboard the Starry Night, I decided to go up on deck where the breeze was cool to do a little yoga at twilight. Sky painted pink and blue with sunset, and a couple of  bright planets winking above made for a beautiful beginning to our life aboard.     Since snorkeling expeditions by boat have been put on hold for a week or so, Steve and I decided to check out the snorkeling action accessible from one of the nearby beaches.  Thanks to the power of the internet, I found a quiet, public beach tucked between two resorts about a mile from our marina - Magazine Beach. The water was absolutely crystal clear and we saw plenty of life, including brain and staghorn coral, parrot fish, sergeant majors, yellow-tailed snapper, and beautiful red heart sea urchins.  To top off the day, we went to the "Container Park" which i

The boat stripe has been painted, Starry Night has been waxed, every hold is clean, the dinghy is cleaned and hoisted, we've moved out of our room at the marina, the champagne is cold, the poem for the boat renaming ritual has been written and.... Cleanest darn boat lockers anywhere...courtesy of Swabbie Laura :-D The controllers for both engines are not working. And there are none available on the entire island of Grenada. So, we will live in the boat - on the hard - for the next week until the new controllers arrive.  At least the neighbors aft of us have launched so we have a water-view this afternoon, but still not exactly the one we were hoping for. I'll keep you posted as to the new scheduled launch date and in the meantime, we're going to take the opportunity to have some fun!