Jan 21
Today's excitement was fixing a washing machine. The marina has two washers and one dryer. The dryer has never been hooked up because electricity is so expensive that Bob never felt people would want to pay what it costs to use. One of the washers broke a few months ago and needed a part. The part that broke was a little electronic switch that was attached to the motor. Of course, you can't just buy the switch, so a whole new motor assembly had to be shipped in. We got the new motor when Bob's wife was here for the holidays, but we are just getting around to installing it. Since Bob took the machine apart, I was reluctant to attack the repair without him being here. I got the new motor swapped in and then required his assistance to figure out the jigsaw puzzle of reassembling the cover and attaching wires, etc. We got it together and moved it back in place and gave it a try. It filled with water as it should and then when it should have started to agitate, it did nothing. We looked at each other and thought about what we had done, and it dawned on us that we never plugged the wiring harness onto the new motor assembly. Off came the cover again. Bob was able to get his arm in and snap the harness on without fully removing the cover. We tried again and still had nothing. We then realized that the safety switch on the lid wasn't working. Well, we don't need no stinking safety switch. So we bypassed it and voila, the machine came alive. We buttoned up the cover for the last time and moved the machine back in place. It was immediately put to use as several people were waiting to do laundry.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Jan 22
I did the shopping for burger night today. Unlike last week where I got everything at one store, I had to make several stops this time. But, I got everything we needed except the buns, which we ordered direct from the bakery and will pick up tomorrow. In the afternoon, the guy who delivers kegs of beer to us stopped by to clean the tap. He brings two kegs, one with a soapy water and one with rinse water. He took the tap apart and washed all the pieces, took the overflow bottle out and washed it, and then hooked up his kegs and flushed the tube between the keg and the tap. He comes to do this about once a month. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I do all the same stuff at least once a week, except for flushing the line itself. We had found that the tap itself with get cruddy if not cleaned every week, so his once a month schedule doesn't cut it. But we'll let him do his thing, because it keeps him in touch with us.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Jan 23
This morning's project was to put a mooring ball out. When we replaced a couple of the mooring chains a couple weeks ago, we needed to replace one of the balls too, but I couldn't get the new ball inflated. So, we just had the diver attach a float to the chain. With Bob's help, I finally got the new ball inflated yesterday, so today I'm going to swap the float for the ball. I threw the ball in the dinghy, got two big wrenches to tighten the shackle, and a couple of wire ties for extra insurance that the shackle can't unscrew. I dinghied out to the float, grabbed it and lifted it into the dinghy. I tied a line to the chain as a little extra security so I couldn't drop it in the water while I had no float on it. The old float had both the new chain and the old chain attached to it. I undid the shackle on the new chain and threw the old float back in the water. I attached the new chain to the new mooring ball and tightened it up. I put on the wire ties and tossed it overboard. I then looked for the old float, thinking I needed to detach the old chain and take the float in, but it was gone. I turned around and saw it floating merrily along, being blown towards shore by the wind. I turned the dinghy around and pursued the float, retrieving it before it got to water too shallow for the dinghy. I picked it up and found no chain on it at all. I guess the diver had just hung the end of the old chain on it when he attached the new chain, and when I tossed it back in the water, the old chain fell off. Made my job easier, although it surprised me.
Tonight is burger night. We have forty-four burgers available, and as usual, I was worried that we would have a slow night. Based on the number of people in the marina, I would have been surprised to sell more than twenty. As I was starting to cook, a taxi van pulled in. A dozen people from Prickly Bay piled out. Then a rented SUV pulled in with seven more. Next thing you knew, we had sold out of burgers. Since selling out has not been a problem since the first time we did this, we had never considered making sure that we only sold as many tickets as there were burgers. As a result our friends on At Last had purchased tickets, but not come right out to get their burgers, so when they did, we were out. I felt quite bad about this since they are marina guests. In the future, we will be making sure there are only as many tickets as burgers.
After the burger cooking was done, and the steel pan player was gone, a good portion of the crowd stuck around drinking and visiting. I was sitting at the bar, and Ashley was sitting on her stool behind the bar. She turned and looked at me with a very unusual look on her face, and mouthed the word "mouse". I stood up and looked over the bar and sure enough there was a little mouse right under her stool. He didn't seem to realize how close he was to a person, until he saw me move, and then he darted off behind the base of the bar. We knew we had the occasional mouse in here, and we had tried to catch them with sticky traps before, but I guess we need to get more serious about it.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Jan 24
I got an early wake up call this morning because the early grounds guy wasn't here when the security guard was supposed to leave. My bad. I forgot to tell the security guard that the guy wouldn't be in since he is going to Bob's house to do the yard.
We had two boats leave today and two new ones come in. One of the boats in was Bob & Tanya on Saretta's Dream. They will be with us for a couple of weeks. The other boat was a Sunsail charter boat from St. Vincent. We knew they were coming, and as they entered the bay they called on the radio. We answered but they did not respond. I kept trying to call them but got no response. Eventually they called again, but when I answered they again didn't respond. Sounded like a classic case of having the volume turned down on the radio. Eventually, they were close enough to the end of the dock that I yelled to them that their radio wasn't working. Then he called again and magically it worked. We gave them instructions on what slip to come to, and I had to explain the simple instructions twice. I wasn't getting a warm fuzzy about this crew. They got near the right slip and brought the boat to a complete stop just before entering the slip. I had to yell to the captain to keep it coming before the strong crosswind blew him too far to make it in the slip. He brought it forward and Barb and I got their bow and stern line and got them tied up. I suggested they get a spring line on and they produced a line that was about 150 feet long. I tied it as a forward and aft spring and still had a lot of line on the dock. When I suggested that they put a bow line on the other side, they said the three lines we had out were the only dock lines on the boat. But, there was enough left of line that we used as the spring, that they took it across the deck, tied it to the bow cleat and had enough to get to the dock. Not the typical solution, but it worked.
Paul from Sunrunner, who is the guy who captained for FreeBirds and is now back on the island, stopped in. Now that he is back on the island, he is working for Enza Marine, one of the local boat repair companies. He had been here to work on a boat, and stopped in to say hi. He was wearing a ball cap that had Free Birds embroidered on it. He had altered the embroidery so now it looks like Free Buds. He figures he might as well salvage a nice hat out of the deal.
We had an early night today. We closed up about 19:00 and enjoyed some time on the boat.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Jan 25
Today is shopping day. There are no cruise ships in town today, so Keith the taxi driver who started the shopping trip deal came himself. For the past month or so, he has been sending other guys to do it, who don't have as nice a van and don't seem to pay as close attention to the people as he did. I assume this has been happening because he makes a lot more money taking a load of tourists from the cruise ships on a tour than he does on our trip. He had a full load today.
This weekend is the Port Louis Sailing Regatta. Part of the events is a race off Grand Anse of the local work boats. These are relatively small open boats with huge sails. A couple of them from Woburn have been practicing in the bay for the last couple of days. Today was fairly windy and gusty, and they were out there again. We watched more than once as they heeled over just shy of enough to capsize. At one point I heard the sound of a sail flogging loose in the wind. I turned to look out over the marina and saw that one of the boats had sailed right into the mangroves just south of the last dock. The guys got out and got it turned around, then jumped back in laughing as the boat took off across the bay again.
Bob spent most of the day at his house again, with the guys finishing up the yard. The weather has started to ease up a bit so boats are starting to move again. The past week or more has seen high winds and seas throughout the Windward Islands, so nobody has been moving. Two boats left us today, headed north. We had a nice happy hour with quite a few folks. During the holidays, there were lots of boats here but few people since most had left their boats to go home for the holidays. Now, more than half the boats are occupied, so there is a lot more traffic in the bar, the laundry, the bathrooms, etc.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Jan 26
We had one more boat leave today. The weather that has kept everybody pinned down has eased and will be nice for another few days. On the Coconut Telegraph SSB net, we heard our friends on Dock Queen check in from Margarita Island, Venezuela, and they said they were headed for Grenada. Their plans have been changing due to events they have to deal with back home, so we're not exactly sure what the plan is now. A record number of boats checked in with the Coconut Telegraph today. I believe there were forty check-ins. Pretty cool to see how it has grown in less than a year.
Our old "friends" on FreeBirds have finally taken their website down. I couldn't believe he left it up as long as he did after people started trashing him. I guess he didn't get the happily-ever-after ending he talked about. Last we heard the boat was still impounded in St. Maarten, but we haven't heard any direct reports lately.
We took a shopping trip this afternoon, since we never got to go Friday. There is a sailing regatta going on this weekend, and the local workboat races on Grand Anse today and tomorrow. From where we parked at the grocery store, we walked a block to Grand Anse and could see the boats racing just offshore. One had sunk and was being towed, still underwater, to shore by a power boat. We got there just in time to see the end of the last race. The boats were under full sail coming straight to the beach. As they are just ten or twenty feet from the beach, one guy dives off the bow and scrambles ashore, while the rest of the guys also jump out and turn the boat and walk it down the beach out of the way of the boats coming from behind. The guy who jumped out first has to run up to a bar, find his specific cup amongst all the cups, and then shoot rum in the cup. The first guy to finish his rum is the winner, regardless of whether his was the first boat. Gotta love sailboat racing that incorporates the drinking into the event. We only spent about twenty minutes on the beach and then walked back to the grocery store and did our shopping.
We had a nice small pot luck dinner tonight, with about a dozen folks present. John Pierre (a.k.a JP) told us yesterday that he was cooking for us. Barb made a cake for desert, and JP made chicken shish kebobs and fresh French bread. Since there were only a few people, and most left after dinner, we didn't do karaoke this week.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Jan 27
We had three more boats leave very early this morning. The weather continues to be good for moving, so Erica, Seahawk, and Wind Walker all took off for points north before 08:00. This leaves only a few occupied boats in the marina. Things will be much quieter for a little while. Gary, Jeannie, and Gary's son Andrew, from At Last came in mid-morning and decided a breakfast beer was in order. Breakfast drinks stretched past lunchtime, and they went back to the boat for food and naps I think. The rest of the day was very quiet until late in the afternoon when a local guy named Ray came in with his wife and daughter. Ray had a powerboat here when we arrived back in June, but he has since moved it to Canouan to charter it. Ray used to live in Missouri City, TX, right next to Sugarland where Barb lived. He travels a lot for his business, so he now spends time in Grenada as well as various places in the States. His daughter still lives in the Houston area. We enjoyed chatting with his wife and daughter about life in Houston.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Jan 28
Two of our three workers didn't show up this morning. I guess they had too much fun at the workboat races yesterday.
I made a call this morning to order beef for Wednesday. Since we sold out last week, I need about fifteen pounds. When I need that much, I try to get it direct from the plant where they package meats for the store we deal with. That way I can get large packages instead of a bunch of little packages. When I told Miss Francis what I needed, she said there was no beef available and she didn't know when there would be. Uh-oh. I immediately took off for the store, hoping perhaps there was enough of the small packages on the shelf still that I could get. I found no ground beef at all at the store. What to do now? Just for grins, I stopped by the IGA where we do our regular personal shopping to see if they had any. Normally they don't have much ground beef, and they grind theirs leaner, so we don't use it for our burgers. Well, they didn't have any fresh ground beef either, but they did have Bubba Burgers in the frozen section. Back when we first started burger night, we had debated whether to use frozen patties or make our own, and we decided on fresh because it's a lot cheaper, although it's more work. But, we also had decided, based on opinions of the cruisers here then, that the Bubba Burger brand was the only brand we would consider good enough to use. But, we haven't seen Bubba Burgers on the shelf since then. But lo and behold, there they were. Since my choices are frozen patties or cancel burger night, I bought three dozen Bubba Burgers, knowing there was already a box of twenty of a different brand in our freezer. The cost per patty is about twice our regular cost, and we will see how they match up for taste.
After I had the beef problem resolved, Barb and I both went back into town to extend our immigration visas. Last time we did this, the guy questioned why we wanted to stay longer. He didn't seem to think just because we like it here was a good enough reason, but he gave the extension. This time, it was a different officer, and he didn't question anything. We filled out our form, went downstairs and paid our money, and went back and got our stamps for another sixty days.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Jan 29
This morning, JP finally went to the doctor to have his two cuts looked at. He cut each foot badly in two separate power grinder incidents, and they are not healing well. Since he is a doctor, he doesn't like to go to hospitals, but Bob convinced him that the private hospital here was ok. When he came back about an hour and a half later, he was very happy with the treatment he got. The doctor cleaned up both wounds and then properly stitched them up.
I took a trip to town to finish shopping for other burger night supplies. Unlike a couple of weeks ago when I was able to get everything I needed at one store, today I had to make four stops to get everything. I made a stop at FedEx to drop off a package for a boat in the marina. Bob on Saretta's Dream is a retired FedEx pilot. He had filled out the form to charge the shipment to the credit card of the recipient. When I got to FedEx, I was told that Grenada is the only island in the Caribbean where they cannot accept credit card shipments. I don't know if it's because of high fraud rates or what, but I had to bring the package back.
Back at the marina, a boat had a power problem. Misfa has been here for a while, and the owners have been aboard for the last couple of weeks. When the boat was unattended, they weren't plugged it, but since they have been here they have been running a/c etc. This apparently overloaded their cord, as the end had melted and come disconnected. I replaced our cord, and Terry put a new end on his cord, and he was back in business.
Up in the bar, Barb informed me that there were three pool balls missing. A little kid had been playing with them by taking them out of the ball return and dropping them in the pockets. It turned out that, same as last time this happened, the missing balls had been put up where the coin mechanism has been removed, and they get trapped behind there. I was able to reach in and barely touch the balls and get them back.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Jan 30
We had an extremely unusual day today, and unfortunately, I can't share a lot of what made it unusual. About all I can say is that a boat that has been stored here for months, was involved in some criminal activity before it got here. We got a visit this morning from a contingent of officials from local and international police agencies. They spent the day going over the boat. I went to rent a portable air conditioner for them and got power hooked up to run it. They spent the whole day here going over the boat and interview us about what we knew about the boat, which was next to nothing. Someday perhaps I can tell more about this.
We had a large group of kayakers come in from a cruise ship. I was in the process of hooking up power to a boat when they came in and descended on the bathrooms to change into bathing suits. I needed to get a transformer and came around the end of our storage building to find a lady who could not wait for the bathroom, pulling on here bathing suit just around the corner. I guess it didn't occur to her that somebody might come from the other side. My first thought was to step back and wait for her to finish, rather than embarrass her, but I was in a hurry and she shouldn't have been there in the first place, so I just walked right by her. When the kayakers returned a couple hours later, they again descended on the bathrooms to rinse off and change. We have asked the kayak company to tell them not to do this, because they leave a muddy mess behind every time. Well, apparently they didn't get the message because the bathrooms were the worst I have ever seen them once they were done.
Sarah, a powerboat that lives here went out for a few hours. It doesn't go out often, so when it does we all notice. We also had a large group of folks come in from the anchorage to be picked up by bus for an island tour. So all in all the marina was a hoppin place all morning.
I went out late in the morning to get a few last items for tonight, including the buns from the bakery. When I got back, Barb went to the boat to slice onions and tomatoes and clean the lettuce. After a little bit, she came up to the bar holding her hand. She had cut a finger quite deep while slicing the onions. While it didn't look like it needed stitches, she could not get a bandage on it by herself to stop the bleeding. I went back to the boat with her and helped her get a bandage on the cut. Since the bandage would be in her way, I offered to finish the onions and lettuce. She went up to the bar and I started slicing. Maybe you have guessed where this is going, and you'd be right. On the third slice I cut the end of my thumb. It was bleeding quite profusely, but I was able to get a bandage on it myself and finished the job. I have a bad history with onion slicing, as the only time I have had stitches was from slicing an onion years ago.
Burger night ended up being a big success again. I didn't advertise the fact that the burgers were store-bought but also didn't hide the boxes or anything. Everybody seemed to like them and I only had one complaint that they weren't seasoned the same as usual. They did cook differently, so I was having to learn on the fly how to judge the doneness. We almost sold out again, selling forty-four out of the available forty-eight. Several folks hung around after the band was done and the food was gone, and we had a nice group. Chuck & Micky from Coram Deo returned from their trip to the States just before we closed, so we helped them get all their stuff to their boat and then they came up for a drink before we closed.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Jan 31
On the Coconut Telegraph this morning, there were two emergency boat watches issued. One was from the U.S. Coast Guard looking for a boat that was overdue on a trip from the US, through Cuba, and on to the BVI. The other was one that I had heard here on the local VHF net. It is for a boat missing since January 8th on a trip from Venezuela north. It was last heard from just north of Grenada. I repeated this boat watch on the Coco Tel. We also heard on the Coco Tel that our friends on Dock Queen didn't stop in Grenada and are now in Dominica. I guess they are headed north in a hurry.
Today was a much less stressful day at the marina thank goodness. There were no big surprises. I returned the air conditioner that we rented yesterday. I had to wait for about ten minutes for the lady who runs the office at Enza marine to return from an errand. It turned out she was at the marina dropping off their technician to work on another boat. Too bad we hadn't coordinated better. One of us could have been saved a trip.
When I got back to the marina some of the officials from yesterday were here again. They wanted to know if I would mind letting them fingerprint me so they could eliminate my prints from the boat they were investigating, since I had been aboard it a few weeks ago. I didn't mind, so we did a full set of prints. The only thing I minded was that fingerprint ink doesn't come off easy.
We have been announcing for two weeks that we would be showing the Super Bowl this coming Sunday. Yesterday, a restaurant across the bay announced that they too would be showing the game, and they made a point of saying it would be on their brand new 42" flat screen TV. So, Bob went out yesterday afternoon and arranged for a 50" flat screen to be installed today. Two guys showed up this morning with it. They took down the old set and it's mounting bracket, and installed the new one. Once they had it hanging on it's mounting, they realized they had forgotten the power cord for it. So they had to go back to town for the cord. Early in the afternoon, the guy was back and hooked everything up. We had a little problem because the TV was set to run on 110v and the stereo, which we will use for sound is set to 220v. This resulted in a loud hum in the stereo, and a bad picture on the TV. Bob switched the stereo to use 110v, and the problem went away. Of course, the cabling for the new monitor is different than the old set, so our hookups for the Direct TV box, the karaoke machine, and a computer all changed a little, but we got it sorted out.
We had a later night than usual for a Thursday. Several people came in to drink and visit. At Last took Gary's son to the airport yesterday to go home, and today they picked up Jeannie's parents for a three week visit. We were still open when they returned from the airport, so they came in for a quick drink before we closed.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.