August 11 - 31

Along with the usual day to day stuff we have been doing for almost a year now, there were some highlights to the rest of August.

Carnival in Grenada is celebrated in August.  This is done so as not to compete with the world-renowned Carnival in Trinidad, which is held at the regular time in the spring which is based on Easter.  We did not go to any of the events this year, but we were impacted by the holiday anyway.  Carnival weekend is four days long.  Monday and Tuesday are public holidays, meaning almost everything is closed.  That meant we had to do all our shopping for the next burger night by Friday.  We got the meat early, Barb went ahead and made the patties and we froze them.  At the marina, Monday and Tuesday were quiet days.  A number of people did go to the parades and reported a good time.  I didn't hear of any problems at all.

The weekend of Carnival also welcomed Ashley back from her month long trip to Cuba.  She had a good time, although her luggage got lost on the way home.  It took two days for it to finally arrive.  Now that we have both Ashley and Chermella working in the bar, I worked out a schedule where one them is here every day, and both of them are here on the busy Wednesday and Saturday nights.  When we had just Ashley, there was one full day a week, and two half days that Barb or I had to physically be in the bar.  That will be easier now.

Our biggest news of the past couple of weeks is that Mom finally had her puppies!  On Monday the 25th, I got up very early to make sure some guests got their taxi to the airport ok.  Salt and Light is going home for several weeks, and their taxi was to be here at 05:45.  Salt and Light has three kids, who have been very keen on seeing the puppies born.  Every morning for the past two weeks, as I walk down the dock first thing in the morning, I have been greeted by a fatter and fatter Mom.  This morning she was not around.  Being just barely light out, I took the flashlight from the bar and started looking under buildings.  She was not under the bar, nor the office, nor the bathrooms.  I noticed Tammy was laying over by one of the old eighteen-wheeler trailers that are used for storage, and that she too had not come to greet me.  I went over and peeked under that trailer, and sure enough, there was Mom with what appeared to be six puppies.  I didn't disturb them, but went to get Michaela, Salt and Light's fourteen year old daughter.  She had been very interested in Mom's welfare for the past couple of weeks, checking on her every few hours to see if she was still pregnant.  I brought her over to the trailer and shined the flashlight in on the puppies.  She was very happy to see them and could now start her trip home knowing Mom was doing ok.  About three hours later, I went back to check on Mom again.  Either I miscounted, or she had popped a few more, because now there appeared to be nine puppies.  One all black, one all white, one white with black and brown spots on it's head, and six generic tan like Mom.  Of course the news spread quickly amongst all the boaters who have been watching Mom waddle around for the past month, and they all went over to peek in on her during the course of the day.  Late in the afternoon, I went and actually crawled halfway under the trailer (there is stuff stacked under and around this trailer making access tough) to take an official headcount.  I gently put my finger on each little head as I counted and confirmed nine little fur balls.  Considering Mom's size, the pups were pretty good sized at birth.  No wonder she was so darn fat!  The next morning, I went to check on the new family, and they weren't there.  Mom apparently didn't like all the attention and had moved them somewhere.  I crawled under to get a better look, and found them about ten feet further forward of where they had been, in a tiny alcove amongst the junk that is under the trailer.  Since I assume she moved them to be out of the spotlight, I left them alone.  Each day, Mom would come out and come to the bar for food and water.  We have been feeding her real dog food instead of scraps for the past month or so, and she scarfed down two bowls of food and drank a bunch of water.  She then boogied back to her pups, not to be seen for several more hours.  She definitely has a spring in her step again now that she isn't dragging that huge belly around.  On the fourth day, she moved the pups a couple of feet further out of sight, but I noticed that the white one was left behind.  I came back several times over the next couple of hours and confirmed that the white pup was dead.  Since I could only see the dead pup through a small crack in the junk pile, I didn't make any effort to remove it because I would have had to move the junk and risk dropping things on the other pups.  Two days later, the body disappeared.  I don't know if Mom moved it or some other critter took it away.  As I write this, it's been nine days since their birth, and as far as I know everybody else is doing ok.  I can only barely see them and I don't want to piss her off again, so I'm leaving them alone.  We are thinking about building some kind of pen to contain them once they become mobile in another week or so.  There are several pictures of the babies compliments of Mickey on Coram Deo.

On the weather front, we have been keeping a close eye on all the recent waves coming off of Africa.  Although it will never be in the record books, we were probably the first to sustain any damage from what became Gustav.  The wave which eventually became Gustav passed through Grenada on the afternoon of Saturday the 23rd.  It was about 16:30, and a number of us were in the bar relaxing before our weekly pot luck dinner.  We had a forecast of potential squalls with winds in the twenty knot range, but to this point had a very calm day.  The weather here always comes from the east or southeast, meaning we don't see it too long before it gets here since there is a large hill directly east of us.  We noticed the black cloud coming over the hill and thought we were in for a little squall.  Well, the wind went from nearly nothing to forty-five knots in one huge blast.  That huge wind only lasted a couple of minutes, and then it "died down" to about thirty knots for an hour or so.  Heavy rain came with that first blast, blowing across the bay in sheets, first from the southeast, and then a minute later from the north (where the wind never comes from).  I had taken a shower and was nice and dry and in clean clothes in the bar watching all this, when a call came on the VHF.  Ellinor, a boat on the end of the south dock, was calling.  I answered the call, and Anders, the owner said I needed to come down there.  I emptied my pockets of things I wanted to keep dry, like my phone and money clip, and went out in the pouring rain.  Since this squall wasn't expected, I didn't have my raincoat or hat and was soaked through within seconds of stepping outside.  When I got to the end of the dock, I found Anders and his wife on the large catamaran across from Ellinor, trying to adjust it's lines.  (The catamarans owner is away for a month.)  What had happened was the catamaran was tied primarily to the inside of the last finger pier on the dock.  When the huge gust came and quickly changed directions, the finger pier had started to break away from the main dock.  The three of us got lines and fenders from one side of the catamaran to the other and secured it to the finger pier on the cats other side.  The cat never touched the dock, and all was well when we were done.  While running around on the dock in the height of the storm, I tripped on one of the cleats and took a spill.  I almost never go down when I trip, but I was barefoot and slipped on the wet dock as I tried to recover from the trip.  I ended up doing a complete summersault out onto the main dock.  I wasn't hurt at all, but was afraid that I was going to go off the other side of the dock and into the water.  I stopped short of the edge with only my pride bruised.  The storm abated after about an hour, and we ended up still having a nice pot luck.  I don't think anybody came from the anchorage, but we had about fifteen or twenty people from the marina show up.  As for the dock, two days later, we took the finger off the main and towed it in to shore where I used the backhoe to lift it out of the water.  We got the guy who had repaired another finger (requires welding aluminum) to come over and look at it.  He plotted a way to fix and reinforce the damaged finger, but suggested that we swap it for a finger that has not been damaged for the end one.  So, we removed a second finger and brought it ashore too.  Nick reinforced the undamaged finger and it got put out on the end where the most stress is, and he repaired and reinforced the damaged one which got put back in the middle of the dock where there is less stress.  Hopefully this will be the last time we have to worry about this.

Of course there were boat projects to do.  We have had a leak in our fresh water system for over a month now.  It is apparently a tiny leak, because the only reason we know it's there is that the pressure pump kicks on for a few seconds every twenty minutes or so.  I have been dreading looking for this leak because it could be a loose clamp or pinhole anywhere downstream of the pump.  This pretty much means it could be anywhere in the system except the tanks.  A few weeks ago, I was doing a routine cleaning of the raw water strainer on the rear air conditioner when I felt something tickle my hand as I reached in to tighten a hose clamp.  I pulled my hand back thinking I had touched something electrical, although that didn't make sense as there was nothing in the area I was reaching through.  I put my hand in again and felt it again.  I got the flashlight and peered into the space where I had been reaching, and saw nothing.  I stuck my hand in again and felt it again.  Convinced this was not an electrical shock, I held my hand there and realized I was getting wet.  It turned out there was a pinhole leak in a fitting on the water heater.  This is where the water has been going.  I could have looked for hours and not found this, but here I found it by accident.  I was feeling pretty proud of myself.  Since our water heater is the original fifteen year old unit that came with the boat, I decided to replace the whole thing instead of just the leaking fitting.  It's only a matter of time before the main tank leaks, and I can easily get a new one here.  But before I do that, I need to address something else.  Our forward air conditioner quit again just after I found the leak.  I had Peter from Enza Marina come look at it, and he found the condenser was leaking Freon.  I ordered a new condenser from the manufacturer late on Friday afternoon, and begged them to FedEx it Friday.  They didn't, and then on Monday they closed for two days for tropical  storm Fay (they are in Tampa).  So, we did without the main a/c unit for a week and got the new part on Friday morning.  I was going to have to remove the rear a/c unit to get the water heater out, so I didn't want to do that until the main a/c was working.  So our new water heater sat in the cockpit until Peter got the main a/c working late Friday afternoon.  I then tackled the water heater job.  I removed the rear a/c unit and the old water heater in less than two hours.  The new water heater remarkably has the exact same mounting pattern and close to the same water and power hookups, even though it is a different brand.  I did have to run to the store and get a couple of new fittings to make things work, which meant I didn't finish in one day.  By the end of day one, we had hot water, but I was too tired to finish, and put the a/c back in the next morning.

Just to prove all is not work and there is a little time for play, Barb joined a group of about two dozen ladies on a ladies day out.  They had two busses take them north to the Belmont Estate where the chocolate factory is.  They got a tour and lesson in how cocoa is harvested and processed, and then had a nice lunch at the plantation.  On the way back through St. Georges, they stopped at Art Fabrik, a well known local store where they make and sell batik.  They were gone from mid morning until late afternoon and had a great time.

GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 9539.