Summer on the Long Island Sound

 Sailing competes with gardening and other pursuits and commitments, even when the boat is nearby.  We enjoyed a couple of GYC events - a lobster bake for the 4th of July weekend, when Leigh's mom was visiting, and a music night - and we went sailing three times: a few days to Old Saybrook (where our friend Peggy rents a house for a month at Fenwick, and gives a house party at the end); a Tuesday to Saturday sail to Shelter Island and back; and a two week "hit the highlights" trip to Block Island, Cuttyhunk, Martha's Vineyard, Nonamesset/Naushon, South Dartmouth, back to Block.  We didn't sail as much as we would like - there's more wind on LI Sound than in the Chesapeake, but it wasn't super-reliable in mid to late August.  We had some thoughts of doing a late season sail this week (10-14 October) but there is a long to-do list, it's on the cool side, and the wind was not going to be very consistent.

We will not be able to haul out at GYC - it's ramp, and too steep for Raconteur - so we are going to Dutch Wharf in Branford, early/mid next week.  We will be doing some preparation and offloading tomorrow.

Here are a few photos of our northern summer.

In a home slip: First time in 11 years, 6 months

Raconteur at GYC

The top photo was taken on Sunday evening, 29 May 2022, in our new home slip at Guilford Yacht Club in Guilford Connecticut. The bottom photo was taken in early December of 2010, on or around the day we brought Raconteur south from the Chesapeake to our home dock on the ICW in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We set off from there to the Bahamas and on down to the Caribbean in February, and made it to Trinidad in late June or early July of 2011.  You can find the Voyage Log in a link on the blog.    We have been in a number of places, at anchor, on moorings, in marinas, and on the hard, over all these years, but we are still wrapping our heads around having the boat only seven minutes away from the house - three minutes longer than the elevator ride in Lauderdale.

We had a great couple of days in Newport, at the Newport Shipyard marina.  They took great care of us, and despite a squally day and a half, we were quite comfortable.  It was our first time in Newport, and we fell in love with the place as many people do.  Two great breakfasts, two great dinners (some things do NOT change: We travel on our stomachs), and in the end we left a little reluctantly on Sunday for a ~11 hour motoring trip south and west. It was a great introduction to what we hope will be many happy months and years of exploring the coast of New England and the northern part of the mid-Atlantic.

Raconteur at AOTP

We have a few things to accomplish this month; Susan has gone to NH and JP is off to Europe for a week, and we will visit Florida at the end of the month to see Leigh's mom and deal with Third Flight ahead of hurricane season there.  We have a couple of parties coming up in early/mid July, and THEN we will plan a first excursion in Raconteur, Northbound.

New England: Wow

No, we did not ask Susan to walk the plank today, but isn’t this a great image?

We headed out from Guilford this morning around 0815, using a car service, and made it to Newport in time to find the launch location and early enough to grab a great breakfast at the Nitro Café  the launch took us out to the Marsgracht ahead of our scheduled 1130 launch. We got lucky - the dense fog was clearing, and there’s a front moving through overnight, so the timing was perfect. Because of the front, Susan had booked us into Newport Shipyard for three nights. We balked at the proposed rope ladder climb down, and with  the intervention of our Seven Star agent Jay (we met him for the first time today), the launch picked us up at the bottom of the floating gangplank and dropped us alongside Raconteur after she was lowered. 

We made it into the marina by 1215 - we have a perfect spot on their “working” dock - and by about 1530 or so Raconteur was a fully functioning sailboat again - decks cleaned, sails restored, dodger and Bimini re-installed, dinghy off the foredeck and onto the davits. 

This is a cool place. We will stay tonight and tomorrow night, and try to be off at or just before first light on Sunday, hoping for a rising mid-tide before sunset in the slip at Guilford Yacht Club. 

Yes, it’s all a little disorienting. 

The shipping adventure, Part One

Boat on Boat

We got back to St. Thomas on Monday the 16th, perhaps a bit earlier than we might have, as our load date and time, when it finally came through, was set for Saturday the 21st at 1500.  I easily found a room for that night at The Green Iguana, in the Mafolie area above old town Charlotte Amalie, and less easily got us onto a Sunday flight back to Miami. We had picked up a mooring at Frenchtown Bay Marina (which is mostly the base for a charter operation called Waypoints); we considered going around and anchoring near the airport but the mooring was quite comfortable and convenient, so we stayed the whole week.

We (mostly JP and Susan) then did semi-leisurely preparations for the load; we topped up the provisions and did our best to eat most of them, although we did treat ourselves to a great meal at Taco Chelle in Frenchtown on the first night.  We had already done most of the interior prep, making sure that things were not likely to fly during loading or on the journey. It's 1,430nm from the Gregerie Channel to the Narragansett Bay, give or take.

On Friday we did some cleaning, and Susan and JP took down the dodger and the bimini, battened down the mainsail (they had already done a wrap and tie on the jib), shut down the wind gen, covered and tied the winches, and got the fenders ready.  We visited the Marsgracht (the transport ship) in the afternoon to witness the proceedings; the ladders on the side of the ship looked pretty scary, and we decided that Leigh would get off with the luggage at Frenchtown Bay, drop it at the guest house, and then hang around at Crown Bay while JP and Susan took Raconteur around for her load appointment.  As it happens, Leigh got there (at the far end of the cruise center) at 1441, just in time to see Raconteur pulling around.  They got the call to come alongside, at around 1510, and I just hung around waiting for...something.  Well, the "something" was, in the end, a text from Susan at 1534: "Want a gelato?"  No ladder; they were ferried back to Crown Bay Marina (home of a delightful gelato and coffee spot) by fast dinghy.  It's not clear that the procedure by which boat owners climb rope ladders is any longer in place - I suspect the lawyers have put the kibosh on that risky sport.

I managed to capture the photo above as we were getting ready to leave Crown Bay gelato and head to the guest house, Raconteur about to be lowered onto her cradle for the trip.

We had a nice dinner at Mafolie (hotel and restaurant overlooking the city), and a quiet night, and we flew back to Miami and arrived home in Lauderdale around 1645 on Sunday - an altogether anti-climactic end to this part of the adventure.

The Marsgracht is due at Newport in the early morning of Friday the 27th; our bet is that it will be Saturday before we will be summoned for the unload.  We will take some time to put everything (or most things) back together, and then plan (WOG and WP, as the shipping line says) to make the 15 hour trip to Guilford as a passage.  

Meanwhile, here is one of the last shots of Raconteur in the beautiful turquoise waters of the Caribbean.

Francis Bay, St. John, USVI

 

An actual vacation in the USVI

Scheherezade II

We flew back to St. Thomas on the 4th of May; we took delivery of the new dinghy (a Caribe LT10, chosen by the very scientific method known as: It Was Available) on Thursday afternoon and Susan and JP spent Friday morning getting it ready for use and ensuring it could hang from the existing Cato davits.  We took a brief test spin and though we honor the Walker Bay (Scheherezade I) for her 16 years of service, we must say that the inflatable (aka Scheherezade II) is very comfortable and roomy.  In the days since, we can also say she is notably drier.

 We made a couple of provisioning runs to the excellent Moe's across from American Yacht Harbor in Red Hook; AYH very kindly kept us in the same slip for the added two nights' stay and we treated ourselves to dinner out at the very good, rather hidden Three Palms in the complex to celebrate.

On Saturday morning the 7th, we made an epic passage around to from AYH to Great Saint James, picked up a mooring in Christmas Cove, and ordered from Pizza Pi, the well-known "pizza boat" of St. Thomas, which provided dinner and two breakfasts from two delicious pizzas.

On Sunday morning, we actually sailed Raconteur around to the north side of St. John, to Maho/Francis Bay, where we lazed for three nights - unheard of for us - and yesterday we moved around about a half mile? to Leinster Bay / Waterlemon Cay.  It's a quiet week in St. John, it seems; none of the mooring fields have been full.  We will stay here another night; Susan snorkeled yesterday (she and JP snorkeled in Francis too) but I am lazy and the wind is blowing the dickens (gusts to 35).  

We've been cooking on board every day, as most of St. John is National Park, so it isn't the BVI-type experience of sailing from bar to restaurant every day.  Last night it was my mom's potato salad and my version of smash burgers; JP made a beef stir-fry one night, we fried pork chops Ree Drummond-style, and we had a fresh pasta en brodo with a Susan salad.  We are trying to use up as much of the liquor on board as we can, before the shipping adventure.

The ship (Marsgracht) is on its way to Port Everglades; the load date is scheduled for the 19th.  We will continue our vacation until early next week, and then make our way to the surroundings of Charlotte Amalie to execute the long list of things to do.  We have an AirBnB for the 18th and 19th, and a flight out on the 20th - if the dates hold.

Here is Susan, exercising the rusty skill of blowing the conch horn at sunset a couple of nights ago.

We made it

We headed off the dock at Port Louis just after 0600 Sunday morning after a nice night at a Greek place near the University with a couple of new cruiser friends (John on [boat name] and George on Rio), both of them round-the-world sailors.  We chatted a little among the three of us about the big differences in life and sailing choices between them and us - George has been "out here" for 14 years.

Conditions were indeed sporty Sunday morning; Chris had said it was still good to go, with little change from the prediction that Sunday would be salty but things would settle down Monday into Tuesday with re-building trades by Tuesday night.

The short story is that we sailed into Pillsbury Sound between St. Thomas and St. John around 0030 Wednesday morning, and managed to put the hook down in Frank Bay, south of Cruz Bay, by around 0200.  It was a bit of a hassle to clear on Wednesday, as the CBP Roam app works in theory (on line) but not in practice (IRL) for reasons attributed to "COVID".  We could then get the nice National Park Service discount for the mooring we had taken in Caneel, where we had a nice swim and a meal (the stuffed peppers and pumpkin soup) before a welcomed night's sleep.

The long(er) story is that when we were about four hours out of Grenada, the bar that stabilizes the davits and therefore the dinghy jumped out on one side and then (of course) the other, and Susan and JP spent the better part of four hours and many, many anxious moments to get it onto the foredeck.  I'm sure they can tell the detailed story of each sub-step in that process, but let's say it was a minor miracle that we still had the captain, the first mate and the dinghy at the end.

The weather did not really ever settle down, and we were reminded that a boat that is heeling on starboard tack in a broad reach is uncomfortable, period.  Next to impossible to cook, even to re-heat prepared foods.  Difficult to sleep, even in short intervals.  Variously wet, cold and verrrry windy, except for a few hours of no wind, contributing another couple of hours delay to the already-lost hours from the dinghy adventure.

AND.  We are here in the USVI.  Raconteur is intact though in need of a couple of repairs.  We are giving serious thought to what's next, but we have the time and resources to do that between now and the start of hurricane season.

The first photo is from a sunrise Monday morning the 21st.  This one below is from the anchorage at Frank Bay on Wednesday morning the 23rd.

Off with the morning light

 This is PredictWind’s version of our upcoming voyage. All of our predictors - this, Savvy Navvy, and Chris Parker - are in reasonable agreement that we will have a pretty sporty day one tomorrow, and a bit of settling on Monday into Tuesday, and re-strengthening Tuesday night. If all goes well, we expect to be in the lee of St. John in the late afternoon or early evening Tuesday. Next check-in, Wednesday from US territory. Wishing us fair winds and following seas. 

A tiny movement toward north

Under sail, at last

It looks like we might have a weather window to make our way the ~420nm north and west to the USVI, starting Sunday.  In preparation, we've made our way around from Prickly Bay to Port Louis Marina, to take on the last projects and have some un-rolly nights of sleep.  

It was always going to be hard to leave the Caribbean, so we are all approaching this passage with more than a little ambivalence.  We have been here 11 years and 9 months; we first arrived in Grenada in June of 2012 before we went on to Trinidad, which will turn out to be the furthest south we will have gone before heading back north.  Susan keeps saying that we can decide to kick the can down the road again, even from St. Thomas, and that is true.  But I think we are all feeling a little bit the call to "something new", and if (for the moment) that is neither south and west (to the San Blast, for example) or east (to the Med), then a season or three of New England/Florida/Bahamas may be new enough.  We have not sailed north of the Chesapeake, and there are many days, weeks and even months (if we can tolerate the temperatures) of places to explore in our Connecticut backyard.  And there will always be the option to retreat to Florida and across...and who knows from there?

I have some theory that I might try to update the voyage log; Susan has been catching up on the physical log in the last few days, so I will have a look and see if I can manage it.

We will make a little passage food - pumpkin soup - to supplement what's here, and get some saltines and ginger ale, just in case. There is the possibility, at least, of a fast, smooth passage, and we shall hope for that (and prepare otherwise).  Chris Parker will provide us with a custom forecast on Saturday, and I'll do a quick check in here before we head off.

Here is Raconteur, on the hook in Prickly Bay. Isn't she beautiful?

West Indies Beer Company (Island Life)

 Yesterday’s dinghy/walk excursion was to West Indies Beer Company, a Grenada brewpub along the road to PBM, before Spice Affair, Aziz, and the Calabash resort. JP and Susan have been a few times, but this was a first for me. The beer is excellent, it’s a fun atmosphere even on a hot Sunday afternoon, and speaking of hot, we shared a small order of hot wings with blue cheese dip and bought a Christmas cake (very moist fruitcake) from the market guy who was just wrapping up for the day). We walked and dinghied back, and had an excellent swim before our g&t happy hour on deck. Merguez on the grill, with doctored couscous (onion, grated carrot, island herbs in butter). Very satisfying Sunday supper. 

These are the days that make me second guess leaving. But then I also think about Guilford and Old Saybrook and the summer party at Fenwick, and that has its temptations too. As my mom says, and I repeat regularly- you can have anything but you can’t have everything. 

Awaiting the effects of a Saharan sand storm this week - something that has happened to the boat but not to us in past seasons. 

Hanging in Prickly, etc.

Our car whilst cruising

It's a bit rolly here - not unusual for Prickly Bay - but we are settled in for the moment.  We made an excursion yesterday to Spiceland mall using the local bus/taxi service so that I could try to remedy my vision limitations (I left my prescription glasses behind, didn't bring enough contact lenses, and sat on my prescription sunglasses).  I MIGHT be able to get a pair of prescription glasses while we are still here, though it's not 100% certain that they will arrive in conjunction with our awaited weather window (though that may not happen at all).

Joni was able to get the Florida documentation today, and is sending it to Island Dreams, so we will have solved that problem for moving on and/or returning to the US.  Phew.

Today we dinghied to Prickly Bay Marina, and then had a nice walk over to one of our favorite spots, Secret Harbor, where we had (soft) drinks, a nice breezy corner couch, and a couple of hours of internet.  Such a sweet place; Whisper Cove is our other "Brigadoon" marina here.

Last night I made a NYT recipe that seemed tailor made for boat cooking: San Francisco-Style Vietnamese-American Garlic Noodles.  It was both delicious AND good for boat cooking, as it cooks the pasta in an inch and a half of water in a skillet.  

"These noodles, adapted from the cookbook "The Wok" by J. Kenji López-Alt, and based on the noodle dish originally created and served by Helene An at San Francisco’s Thanh Long restaurant, are extraordinarily simple and delicious on their own..." [I added some cut-up leftover roast chicken from our local French butcher].4  tablespoons unsalted butter

20  medium garlic cloves, minced or smashed in a mortar and pestle

4  teaspoons oyster sauce

2  teaspoons light soy sauce or shoyu

2  teaspoons fish sauce

1  pound dry spaghetti

1  ounce grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano (heaping 1/4 cup)

 A small handful of thinly sliced scallions (optional)

Melt the butter in a wok or saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant but not browned, about 2 minutes. Add the oyster sauce, soy sauce and fish sauce, and stir to combine. Remove from the heat.

Meanwhile, bring 1 1/2 inches of water to a boil in a 12-​inch skillet or sauté pan over high heat. (Alternatively, heat up just enough water to cover the spaghetti in a large Dutch oven or saucepan.) Add the pasta, stir a few times to make sure it’s not clumping, and cook, stirring occasionally, until just shy of al dente (about 2 minutes short of the recommended cook time on the package).

Using tongs, transfer the cooked pasta to the garlic sauce, along with whatever water clings to it. (Reserve the pasta water in the skillet.) Increase the heat to high, add the cheese to the wok, and stir with a wooden spatula or spoon and toss vigorously until the sauce is creamy and emulsified, about 30 seconds. If the sauce looks too watery, let it keep reducing. If it looks greasy, splash some more cooking water into it and let it re-​emulsify. Stir in the scallions (if using), and serve immediately.

Raconteur, afloat

The yard was right on time yesterday morning, and with only a couple of glitches (bad hose clamp, leaking from the shaft that required the SIMSCO guys to come on board while we were still in the sling to replace and tighten, respectively), we motored off into Prickly Bay just after 1130 and Susan and JP had the hook down in a very good spot at noon.

We had made two trips from the apartment, bringing most of the rest of our stuff on board (we missed Susan's pillow, and I had a load drying in the w/d combo at the apartment), before the start of the crane operation.  We got most of it put away, at least things that would rattle around during the transfer, and then climbed down for a roti snack from the guy who comes to the Budget Marine parking every (work) day, and watched Raconteur lumber across the yard.  It's always scary, but they did a great job.

Once the hook was down, we unpacked everything else (clothes and linens), Susan made the beds, and JP did some additional systems checking.  He may have found the source of the leak in the forward head, and that is a project for another day.

Susan and JP dinghied to Prickly Bay, theoretically to check in and to pick up our propane tank.  All Customs and Immigration are now centralized, to Port Louis, so we will do that today before we give back the apartment and the car.

We all got in a first swim (or three) in the Caribbean, which is my main goal for the whole thing, if I'm honest.

I got ambitious (sort of) and made Callalloo soup to go with the tuna salad we had planned for supper; the tuna salad was tasty but a bit wet, and the soup was a welcome return to the boat.  Rum and LLB (now called something weird, like "Cool"?) for our on deck happy hour.  

So today I am at the apartment while JP and Susan go to Clarkes Court to pick up the serviced life raft, waiting for the clothes to dry and charging various devices (and taking advantage of the internet service). We will then head to Port Louis to clear the boat and crew, make a provisioning top up, do a couple more errands, and then leave the car for Alamo to retrieve at Budget.

I have several photos and videos of yesterday, but I'll have to load them later as there is some kind of synch problem/delay between the phone and the Mac. Here's Pooh, safely tucked for the transfer.

 

A useful bonus day

"Starting from scratch"

Having postponed the launch from today (Tuesday) to tomorrow, we had a nice dinner at Cherry Sushi in the Container Park (a short walk from the apartment), and crashed relatively early.  I finished listening to A Gentleman in Moscow, which I had started ages ago and then picked up again on the plane trip down to Grenada a week ago.  I will miss it.

We had a breakfast of leftover ramen from last night, and headed out to make a brief boat stop and then to provision, at the Marketing Board and the IGA (stopped for doubles after).  With the help of the dinghy davits (the dinghy is still at ground level), we hoisted the luggage on our first stop and the groceries when we went back for lunch.  It's a lot of work but on balance easier than trying to bring all that out to the boat from shore in the dinghy itself after we launch.

I've started eyeing the weather more closely, and the truth is it's not clear there WILL be passage window in March - so we may leave her in Grenada (at a marina) instead of St. Thomas (at a marina).  We shall see.  We haven't mad individual contact with Chris Parker (or his minions) since we have to stay here to resolve the documentation and get the EPIRB anyway.

We will go over early tomorrow; splash is scheduled for 10.  We're keeping the car and the apartment as planned until Thursday, but if all goes well we will drop the hook somewhere and overnight on board.

Convenience and comfort postponement

Turbulence did get both sails up today; the mainsail this morning and the jib this afternoon, when the wind was theoretically a bit lighter (I think they furled that jib in competition level time).  We checked off a bunch of other small items that needed to be tested, ordered a new EPIRB to replace the (semi?) dead one, to be delivered in a few days, went on a so-far fruitless search for the latest Certificate of Documentation that should have arrived in Lauderdale in November, put the anchor and chain back into its locker, stripped the remaining sheets from the two bunks to wash them (they've been protecting the mattresses), and even made a stop at CK's for some non-perishables.  We arrived back to the apartment around 1730, and are doing some wash and thinking of walking over to the Container Park (restaurants, bar, ice cream, coffee shop, all in shipping containers, a Grenada feature since sometime in our early years here.  There's a sushi place, so that is the target, but there are other choices if that's a no-go.  

Last night we ate at the Dodgy Dock at True Blue.  Our very first stop in Grenada was there in June of 2011; the photo above was taken then.  We sat nearby this 12 Degrees North sign last night, and I was reminded of this photo.  It seems impossible that it is nearly 12 years ago.  We stopped here only for a couple or three days, and staged outside the Hog Island anchorage before making the overnight passage to Trinidad and our southernmost point in our Caribbean voyages.  We've had a couple of little siren calls in that direction yesterday; our family friends there are hoping we will swing south again, and our Toronto friends on Receta are at the marina or dock in Chagaraumas doing some maintenance, but not planning to cruise themselves.

I checked in with Chris Parker's Eastern Caribbean forecast today and it was a bit disheartening: no good sailing northbound for at least a week - extremely sporty to totally unpleasant, not to say a little dangerous.  So...a little time on our hands.  We did decide to postpone the launch from tomorrow to Wednesday; I will try to take advantage and do some shopping and cooking here at the apartment.  It's a bit of a toss up, given schlepping and a lightly equipped kitchen, but I'll bring the pressure cooker and that tips the balance in favor of spacious and air conditioned.

One problem solved, aka It's Always Something

It took JP and Susan around four hours, and many steps, but they were able to remove the old foot switches for the windlass (the wires were totally fried) and to install brand new ones.  AND - now the windlass works again, BOTH up and down. For every noun on yesterday's list, there are a dozen or more verbs.

The dinghy is nearly ready to be lifted onto the davits; the pontoons are in good shape and have been installed.  I cleaned the forward cabin and saloon sole and deployed the indestructible Claire Murray rugs that I (rather foolishly, since they are not in any way intended for this use) bought 15-plus years ago.  By tomorrow night, on the eve of our planned splash, she will almost look like a livable boat again.

I started looking at possible float plans; we have some wish to visit the Grenadines, and SVG does allow vaccinated travelers to take an antigen test within 24 hours of arrival, so that is doable. Dominica is a sort of not-quite midpoint (to the USVI) and THEY allow vaccinated travelers to take an antigen test within 48 hours of arrival, so that too is possible, even from here.  We are told St. Lucia, which we like a lot and which has very good marine services should we need them, is rather difficult, and since they are a 24 hour antigen test protocol, not really practical from here, and we don't want to be spending time in the small islands of SVG trying to get a test.

I saw from an old post that one year JP and Susan got her ready to splash in three or four days, and that included a weekend.  I don't even know how that was possible. On Day Five, we still have a few unknowns on the way to the planned Tuesday splash; we haven't checked navigation lights or tested the refrigerator/freezer, and we have learned that the EPIRB (see liferaft lesson post) isn't working, so we need to find out how to get it serviced before we head offshore. Did I mention: It's Always Something?

Boat preparation, day four of six (maybe)

It's been a long time since I've participated in the splashing or the hauling of Raconteur; perhaps since the end of 2012?  [correction: it was at the end of 2014]. JP and Susan have done it each time since, under a range of circumstances.  Of course, the last round was not long before the pandemic, after almost two years, because we were building the house, ahead of the pandemic-shortened season when they could only get her as ready as possible at Port Louis Marina, before the amazing crew at Island Dreams could bring her around to the yard.

We stopped in to see them yesterday, and got to meet Anita (one of the owners) for the first time, though of course we've been in touch throughout.  She gave us an abbreviated version of what THEY went through to get permission for Marc to go out (at all) and to get the various stranded/abandoned boats into safe harbor...involving a fortuitous phone number for a sympathetic official.  Grenada, after the same initial chaos that was universal, did a pretty darn good job keeping its yachting industry intact and supporting both the local community that makes a living from it and the cruisers and others who found themselves in a range of challenging circumstances.  It was nice to be able to thank them in person.

The list of boat tasks is more or less endless; Susan has a list from the last splash preparation (ah, those innocent days) and I haven't attempted to keep any kind of comprehensive list myself.  It seems that every single element of the boat needs something: engine, dinghy engine, dinghy and its parts, anchor chain, windlass, electronics, bottom, sides, deck, lifelines, lines, linens, rugs, clothes, food and drink, dishes, glasses, pots and pans, appliances, fuels (diesel for jerrycans, gasoline for the dinghy), plumbing (leak: forward head), electrical (I'm looking at you, windlass), life raft (see yesterday's post)...

The forward head leak we can live with, if necessary, as there is the other head; we may get to the fix or not before we splash.  The windlass - involving fried electrical lines - will be the focus of tomorrow's work effort, as it is really not fun to anchor without it.  

P.S. The red-keeled yacht in the photo is the boat of Swiss friends who also managed to get themselves back to Europe sometime after JP and Susan got to the US.  We have yet to hear their story; they were in Carriacou as of early April of 2020, and we know they have been back home since (we think) sometime that summer. She looks good.

Life raft training

We acquired a Windsor life raft years ago, before we set off for the Caribbean for the first time.  We have been faithful in having it serviced and re-certified (there's an expiration date), and that was, by coincidence, due this month, March of 2022.  When we brought it to Sea Safety Services at Clarke's Court Bay, the co-owner, Donal Kavanagh, offered to give us some training around its proper use.  He spent about 45 minutes with us, going over the life raft itself, but much more importantly, he gave us a very clear picture of how to up your chances of surviving an incident (the loss of the main ship) using one.  There were four things - everything else, he says, is "extra" (for morale, or a modicum of reduction in discomfort) - that, taken together, give a very good chance of survival. One, the life raft; two and three, which are really equal "two", the EPIRB and water; and four, taking care to clip yourself (with life jacket, of course) to the painter on the life raft, secured to the ship until everyone is safely aboard the raft.  It's all very logical; without water, you have a very short window; without the EPIRB, it will be random chance that someone finds you.  He helped us see clearly that those are the two things in the ditch bag - the SOLAS requirements (for flares, for example) don't really play out in "the real world".  It turns out everyone (us included) keeps the EPIRB at or near the nav station, but where it belongs before setting off on a passage is in the ditch bag that will ALSO be clipped to the painter and brought to the raft.  And the jerry can(s) of water can just ride along until you go on passage, when they need to be handy to the raft and the ditch bag.

May we never need any of this information - but it was pretty reassuring that even if SAR took a little while to find you, they almost certainly WILL find you before the water runs out - as long as you have water!.  And hearing where the raft will be, and how you get to it safely (and that the strongest person should always GO FIRST, never mind that women and children thing) was also very helpful. Thank you, Donal - if you need dinghy or life raft services in Grenada, highly recommend.

P.S. Donal told a sweet story about his then-very young son asking about putting his "pookie" into their ditch bag; since then he has agreed that a morale-improving item would be important to consider, and Pooh was very relieved to hear it.

Arrived Sweet Grenada

 

We had a nice, uneventful flight from Miami to Maurice Bishop Airport yesterday. We’re staying at an apartment I found on AirBnB, not far from Spice Island Marine; we wandered over to Schwarma King in the edge of the Container Park (where we went after for ice cream and a very good rum shot) and then crashed. This morning we made our way (in a very nice new rental SUV) to Spice Island and Raconteur. She is in remarkably good shape (bottom painting was in progress); we got a few first chores done, in progress, or ordered. Dinner tonight at Aziz (delicious); off to find a water leak tomorrow morning, and to continue the chores. We will hope to splash by the middle of next week, to find out what else needs doing, and then to make an actual plan for the first northbound leg.  We have to be back in SoFla by the end of the month, as we will do a quick trip to Europe in early April, so we will have to find a place to leave her (again). If (still a big if) we decide to join the Salty Dawg Homebound rally, they are scheduled with a tentative start of 10 May from Antigua or the Virgins and a target of the US east coast - 10-14 days, plus extra to reach New England.  The skipper rightly says we don't really have a plan at all yet - just some ideas.

In theory, RaconteurNorthbound

We have hatched a plan to try to bring Raconteur from Grenada (she has been safely tucked at Spice Island Marine since mid-April 2020) to Guilford, Connecticut (where we have a slip waiting for her) this spring.  First step will be to get her ready to splash in early March, splash her around the 10th, and then after figuring out what else is needful, bring her as far as the USVI before heading back Stateside  so that we can make our way to Europe in early April.  Then, we would join the Salty Dawg Homeward Bound Rally that plans to leave the USVI on or around 10 May for the US east coast.  The plan would be to be in Guilford before Memorial Day.  JP will say I'm jinxing it by posting, and perhaps I am.  After what would be 11 years in June, it will be really hard to leave the beautiful blue waters of the Caribbean behind, but we are ready (we think) for some New England sailing for a few years (a few summers, I suppose) and for having the boat a few minutes from our front door.

We love her still, and look forward to the long-haul adventure and the prospect of anchoring off Fenwick (in Old Saybrook) for the summer party of an old friend in early July.  Send us lots of fair winds and following seas, please.

A little reminder of sweet Grenada (Carriacou??) in the meantime.