We met up for a goodbye pizza dinner with Carmen and Tom of s/v Ellida who have been on the hard here in Trini since June. They plan on heading north by Mid November. We met them through our friends Carl and Carrie, DD’s rescuers, from s/v Sanctuary. Carmen is a chiropractor and has been helping Mike and I with our various aches and pains. She also is an amazing photographer and has been giving Michael pointers on using his new Camera. You can check out some of her work at www.meanderingmoments.com. She has a zeal for Travel and Photography that is matched only by Tom’s enthusiasm for sailing and of course their passion for each other. We will miss them and look forward to meeting up again later this season. We have also enjoyed the company of our new friends Ken and Katy aboard s/v Diana. They are from St. John USVI and Ken and Mike know many of the same people. We have been busy trading books and movies with them. I can’t really say we will miss the Island of Trinidad all that much. It has given us the opportunity to upgrade, make repairs and reprovision but we will not miss the stifling windless heat(that is except when squalls would hit the anchorage), the filthy water, or the sleepless nights waking up to every small sound to check and make sure Mighty Mouse is still locked to the Davits. Due to the theft and security issues Trinidad Yachting Business are down by 50%. We hope that they will be able to do something about it but we will probably not be returning anytime soon. We had a smooth experience checking out with customs and immigration and purchased some Duty Free Wine and Spirits prior to leaving. We fortunately had an uneventful overnight passage back to Grenada. We traveled alone, always a little stressful as we are close to Venezuela a know piracy zone. It was the night of a new moon and so very dark. Hand steering for the first part of the evening wasn’t bad as we had the brightly lit Oil Dereks for reference but once we were beyond them it became more difficult as there were no reference points on the horizon. You can steer by instruments but staring at a lighted screen quickly tires the eyes. We steered a course by the stars and kept a sharp eye out for other vessels and pirates. We took 2 hour watches to keep alert as we still do not have a functioning auto helm. We compared notes the next morning and agreed that we both felt such a sense of relief to see a light turn on below during the last ½ hour of our watch and knowing that we could soon have a break. We arrived in Grenada at about 8:00am and were greeted by our friends Dave and Michelle aboard s/v DaniellStorey. We anchored DD in our same spot off the beach on the west side of Hog Island. Mike got to take one dip off the boat before he slipped while tying up the sun shade and cut his foot on the ladder. We were able to stop the bleeding fairly quickly and so we cleaned it well and I used butterfly bandages to close it up. No swimming for Mike again for a few days. How convenient for this to happen just when we needed to clean the bottom of the boat. I think he did it on purpose, the lengths some people will go to avoid scraping barnacles. We enjoyed a great reunion of sorts when we took advantage of 2 for 1 pizza night at La Phar Bleu Marina and had a great evening with Dave & Michelle from s/v Daniellstorey, Carl & Carrie from s/v Sanctuary, David and Trudie from s/v Persephone and met some new friends Ronnie and Babbie from s/v Campechano.
Living the Dream 