Nov 1
Today was a bittersweet day. It's November 1st, and that means people who have been hiding from hurricanes are now insured again and can start moving north again. Dave & Sue on Pirate's Hideout left and are headed over to Spice Island Marine to haul out for two days before heading up the Eastern Caribbean, eventually to St. Maarten. Tom & Loretta, who professionally crew Fat Cat are headed back to St. Maarten for the charter season. It's been interesting getting to know them, since they aren't cruisers per se, but were hanging out for hurricane season like the rest of us. And Ernie, on Joat Mon (Jack Of All Trades Master Of None) is also headed to St. Maarten. His "cruising" is simply St. Maarten in the non-hurricane season and Grenada in the hurricane season. Three very different examples of the people we meet on boats.
We continued to learn about the day to day stuff about the marina and the bar. We got a number of e-mails from friends regarding our decision to stay here and work. One, requested a job as a bartender. Another warned me of winding up hating boating once it becomes your job. My favorite came from an old high school friend, who took the liberty of writing a log entry for me, from a few years hence:
The year is 2010 and Bob has not returned and we can't find him... Being that we are not the type of people to just get up and leave we are still here in Grenada running the Marina. We have so many friends here now that we may not leave... Most of the boats in the Marina are mine, 'cause they were such a good deal I could not pass them up.. We are looking for someone to watch the place for a week or so , so we can go home ???
In the evening, we hoped to close the bar fairly early. But, a number of people, mostly locals, were enjoying playing pool and having a good time. So, it was 21:00 before we could close the bar. This wouldn't have been too bad except that we had invited Bob, and Pia & Erling from Thora To, for dinner. We had planned this dinner before we knew we were staying, and we had planned it around a bottle of scotch. Bob drinks scotch, and we have a bottle of Chevas Regal onboard. This bottle was given to us at our going away party two and a half years ago. Since neither of us drink scotch, it has remained unopened since we left. Barb had left the bar for a while and baked a loaf of bread, prepared lasagna, and made a salad. Once we got the bar closed, the five of us moved to MoonSail for a late dinner. The food was excellent, and even though MoonSail is not the best boat for entertaining a crowd, we all enjoyed the meal and the company for a couple of hours. We sent Bob home with the rest of the bottle of Chevas.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Nov 2
Our Friday started sort of as usual. I was up early and unlocked the bar and the room where all the weed-eaters are kept. The three workers were here waiting for me. One of them took the garbage and empty bottles from the bar, while the other two got their weed-eaters and went up the hill to start cutting the grass. Bob got here a little after 07:00. We still have Bert the taxi driver scheduled to pick us up at 09:00 for our Friday shopping trip. Today will be a little different though. Pirate's Hideout is on the hard at Spice Island Marine, and one of the tasks Dave has to do is remove his props to replace the zincs. His boat has a unique system that requires a haulout to replace the zincs. Bert picked up Barb and I, took us to the boatyard, where I stayed to help Dave and Sue joined Barb to go shopping. Dave and I got the props off and new zincs on in perfect time for when the ladies returned.
When we got back to the marina and stowed the groceries, I went up to the bar where Bob and Ashley were sitting. I asked Bob if we had missed anything, and he said "two episodes of" something they were watching on TV. Guess Bob's getting into relaxing. Today is Ashley's day to leave early, so I tended bar in the afternoon. I hoped the bar would end up being an early evening, but several locals came by and were enjoying playing pool. In addition, Bob was sticking around, even though we kept encouraging him to leave. Turned out he knew that the family that owns One Life, a catamaran that has been stored here for a few months, was due back on the last flight into Grenada, after 21:00. They finally showed up, mom, dad, and four kids, with no luggage. We gave them some bottled water and a few beers and then closed the bar. We were finally back on the boat at 23:00 for a very late dinner and to bed.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Nov 3
Day three of "employment" started off bad. It brought back memories of my trucking company days when bad things happened at bad times and the business runs 24/7. At 05:45 there was a knock on the boat. John, one of the night security guys wanted to let me now that the daytime guy, Augustine, who normally relieves him wasn't here. I thanked him and told him to go on home. Since we had a late night last night, I wasn't planning on getting up quite this early, so I stumbled around for a bit getting my wits about me. At 06:15, I looked out of the boat and saw Augustine's car was here. I got off the boat and walked up the dock to make sure everything was alright. As I approached the car, I saw he was sound asleep in the car. I just left him there, knowing that occasionally, this happens. The other two guys who work here are Augustine's son Dexter and another guy who's name I still don't know. They are both off on the weekends. Before 07:00, I opened the bar and sat up there to listen to the morning radio nets and give an announcement reminding everybody about the pot-luck dinner tonight. Bob doesn't come in at 07:00 since he knows I'm here and I wondered what to do about Augustine. Abut 08:00, I heard the bleating of sheep very close. I went to the side door of the bar and there was the local flock of fifteen all huddled together in the driveway, right by Augustine's car. They had apparently been spooked by something, and they appeared to be headed for the dock. I went out the front door of the bar, circled the building and headed them off before they got to the dock. They stopped, looked at me and when I waved my arms they turned around and ran off the other way making lots of noise. I thought this might rouse Augustine, but it didn't. Finally about 08:30 Augustine woke up. I'm not trained in detecting when somebody has been over-served, but I'm pretty sure he had enjoyed his Friday night way too much. On a weekday, he does weed-eating and other maintenance stuff. On the weekend though, he empties the trash and doesn't touch gasoline powered equipment, so I just let him get about his business.
Later in the morning, I was sitting in the bar by myself, messing around with the Direct TV box. The Direct TV we get here is the South American feed. That means lots of it is in Spanish. We get the US networks from Puerto Rico or the USVI, but they don't have sound at all. Accidentally, I got into a setup screen for the Direct TV box, and found the default language was set to Spanish. This means if a station is broadcast in multiple languages, Spanish will be what you hear. Since the US networks only broadcast in English, we heard nothing. I changed the default language to English and we had sound. While we still get some channels, like ESPN, in Spanish because they have a whole separate Latin American network, and the movie channels are still subtitled in Spanish, we now have regular US TV in English. This is probably why we watched several NASCAR races in silence, while I thought it was a licensing issue.
We had some boat activity today as well. Dave & Sue, on Pirate's Hideout, had been hauled out for two days, and are coming back to get their topsides waxed before heading north. They came into the dock about 08:30. We got them settled on the t-head at the end of our dock. Conversely, Odessa, a sixty-five foot McGregor left the dock. She has been here unoccupied all hurricane season. Bill, the former owner, was contracted by the current owner to bring the boat up to St. Maarten. He has been here a week or so getting the boat ready and is leaving today. We saw them off late in the morning. The last boat action was to pull White Squall, Bob's runabout out of the water. White Squall is a small (25 foot) power boat. Bob has a trailer that isn't really suited to transport a boat this size, but can haul it out and store it. Bob used the tractor to move the trailer into position at the boat ramp. He went and got the boat from the dock and brought it around to the ramp. He got close and threw me a line as I stood on the front of the trailer. He then worked the boat sideways as I held the line to guide the bow of the boat onto the trailer. Once on the trailer, Bob backed the tractor up. Just as the boat cleared the water, one of the trailer axles broke. We blocked the trailer in place and put in a call to the local welder to come fix the axle.
Tonight is pot-luck and karaoke night. Since most of the regular folks have headed north, we were wondering what kind of turnout we would have. I was pleasantly surprised as we again had over twenty folks show up. We had another good dinner and karaoke followed. This will be the last night of the karaoke regulars as Dave from Pirate's Hideout and Erling from Thora To will be leaving.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Nov 4
Sunday morning started a little slow. I awoke around dawn, and thought about checking for Augustine's car. I didn't though, assuming that if he wasn't here, John would have knocked by now. By 06:45, I got up anyway. When I looked out the window, Augustine's car wasn't here, and I worried that John had just left. I went up to the bar and saw Augustine up on the hill making his morning check of the grounds. By the time I unlocked the bar and went to the bathroom, Augustine was back. He appeared much better today, and offered me some sugar apples that he had gotten up on the hill. He explained that his alternator belt broke and he walked to work this morning. So, what I thought might be a problem turned out ok.
After 08:00, Bob called my new cell phone. It startled me as it vibrated in my pocket. Bob was calling in late. I teased him later that it must be odd calling to let somebody know you'd be late, when you had been a one-man-show until recently. He agreed that it was very strange.
We had a fairly quiet day, watching American football (not soccer which is called futbol here). And, the guy came to weld up the boat trailer axle. In the early evening, we got Erling & Pia from Thora To, and Dave & Sue from Pirate's Hideout to come up to the bar for farewell drink, as they are both planning to leave in the morning. As I have said before, the good news of cruising is the wonderful friends your make, and the bad news is saying goodbye, not knowing for sure if you will ever see them again.
Back on the boat, we watched the finals of the Digicell (cell phone company) talent search contest on TV. Imagine a poor quality local version of American Idol. To give you an idea of the contrast, the whole audience was sitting in plastic lawn chairs, instead of a formal assigned seating venue.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Nov 5
Today was a day for saying goodbye again. Dave & Sue on Pirate's Hideout, and Erling & Pia on Thora To both left for points north this morning. Not only have we become good friends with both couples, but they were almost the only occupied boats still in the marina, so we are quite by ourselves now.
Today is my morning to host the Coconut Telegraph on the SSB radio. We found that since some of the world changed from daylight savings time back to standard time yesterday, and we didn't, since we are always on standard time, we are now interfering with the Bahamas Air Sea Rescue Association's broadcast. They broadcast on the same frequency we do, but at 07:00. During daylight savings time 07:00 there was 07:00 here in the Atlantic Time Zone. Now 07:00 in the Eastern Time Zone (Bahamas) is the same as 08:00 here. So, being the new SSB net on the block, we switched frequencies. The only problem with this is that we might loose listeners who don't hear about the change. As I was doing check-ins, I was pleased to have as many as I have ever had, allaying any fears that people didn't get the message.
We had a fairly quiet day here today. We did have an interesting visit though. There is another marina in Clarke's Court Bay, named Whisper Cove Marina. Now, in the sense of American style marinas, they are not much of a marina. What they have is a hundred foot long pier out into the water that they Med-moor boats to. Med-mooring is when you drop your anchor and back up to the dock and secure lines from your stern to the dock. You then have to get off and on your boat from the stern For a boat like ours, with davits holding the dinghy out over the stern, that simply doesn't work. But, it's very common in the Caribbean. That is a large reason why we chose this marina to stay at, because we have forty-foot long finger piers to side-tie to. They do, however, have a bar and restaurant which directly competes with us, especially since we don't have a restaurant. We have had our burger nights here on Wednesdays, except last week. Last week, Whisper Cove announced a Halloween party. Since they did it first, and Halloween was on Wednesday, we elected to suspend burger night. Immediately after that party though, Whisper Cove announced a "pajama party" for the following Wednesday. We decided to go ahead with burger night and announced that. There are people in this area who, after three years, still harbor a grudge against Bob, the marina owner, for things that happened during and after Hurricane Ivan. They should let it go, but they seem bent on trying to bring Bob down. Anyway, Luke, the manager of Whisper Cove, came by to apologize for directly competing with us for this Wednesday. He obviously realizes that cruisers want something to do every night, and we can all share in the available business. He specifically said that he was aware that "some people want us to be enemies, but he doesn't want that to happen". We agree whole heartedly. He has to go ahead with this Wednesday since it has already been announced, but said Wednesday's were ours after this. It was nice to see he quickly realized he was being used by the vindictive "cruisers".
We had two visits from people who wanted to make reservations to stay here. One was for a year from now. I told Bob it was because they heard there was new management. Bob has spent the last couple of days trying to organize his office and get caught up on paperwork. As part of his cleanup, he found a brass ship's bell, a brass barometer, and two brass oil lamps. We hung them in the bar as decorations, along with several flags that people have left over the years. Ironically, the brass ship's bell was given to Bob by the guy who is the main grudge-holder. We hung it proudly behind the bar to ring in and out happy hour.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Nov 6
Today was a nice slow day. I guess since we have a vested interest in the marina now, we shouldn't look forward to slow days. Friends of ours from our travels south last year, Dick & Jane on Cheetah II, and John & Marsha on Non-Linear anchored just off the marina this morning. I dinghied out to check on a boat tied to one of our moorings, and stopped by Non-Linear to say hi. Later in the afternoon, all of them came in to the bar to catch up on the events since we parted company back in July.
About the only excitement of the day was when we realized the septic tank appeared to be full. There is an overflow pipe that goes into the bay, which was draining water. The pump-out company came and emptied the tank. We think the tank overflowed because the men's room toilet stuck in the flush mode and filled the tank with fresh water faster than the leach field could absorb it. But we also discovered things floating in the septic tank that shouldn't be there, so we made some signs for the bathrooms that said don't flush anything you didn't eat first, or toilet paper.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Nov 7
I worried about tonight for several days. Tonight is burger night. I'm worried for two reasons. Even though Whisper Cove, said they didn't want to compete head-to-head, they already announced their pajama party so it will go on, and a lot of boats have headed north since hurricane season is over. Also, I will be cooking the burgers. On our two very successful burger nights, Dave from Pirate's Hideout did the cooking, but he is gone now, so it's up to me. Barb is going to cook the fries while I cook the burgers. Barb did most of the prep work, including, slicing onions, slicing tomatoes, ripping up lettuce, making the burgers, and ensuring we had enough ketchup, mayo, and mustard. I was only responsible for the burger grilling. Since I like mine dead and slightly warm, I wasn't prepared for the number of orders I got for Medium-well or well done. But, after all was said and done, I got lots of compliments. So either I did OK, or everybody was too polite to say anything else.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Nov 8
Today was a long day. I was up at 07:00 to open the bar and let the grounds guy empty the trash etc. There was not much happening in the marina, but I have to be available all day. There was a boat expected in today, and I found he had come in by himself before I got up. Ashley, the bartender was here until 16:00 and didn't have much to do all day either. Just after she went home though, several local folks showed up. Eventually, there were about a dozen of them here. They were having a good time playing pool and visiting, and stayed until 23:00.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Nov 9
Today is shopping day. Since Dave & Sue are gone, and now we have the use of a spare car Bob has, we won't be needing Bert the taxi guy anymore. The car we are using has not been used in some time, so this will be a checkout ride as well. We got to the store with no problem. I remembered to stay left and didn't hit anything. We did notice that the front tires need some air, and if we turned the a/c on, the fan belt squealed. It also runs a little rough, but it runs. We did our shopping and headed back to the marina with a stop at an ATM. Once back at the marina, I found that Bob had a shorter belt for the a/c, which I installed. I also got more air in the front tires.
It was another slow day. Late in the afternoon, a sailboat came in which has been here before, but with a different name and owner. When we first got to Grenada last July, the boat was here and was being sold. The new owner took it away and put in on the hard over at Spice Island Marine where we had our bottom job done while he went back to the States. We never met the new owner, but have become friends with the old owner who has purchased a home here in Grenada and keeps his new tour boat here at the marina. The new owners, Riley & Lucy came up to the bar after we got them docked and we chatted for a bit. Turns out they are from Houston. He works on offshore oil rigs and works five weeks then is off five weeks. They plan to get the boat up to Puerto Rico where they will live aboard.
We got to close up early this evening and spend a little time relaxing before crashing.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.
Nov 10
Fortunately I got to bed relatively early last night, because I got an early wake up knock at 05:45. The guy who relieves the night security guard was late again, so the security guard wanted to let me know he was leaving. I thanked him and went back to sleep until 07:00. When I got up at 07:00, the guy who was late had arrived. I unlocked the bar so he could do his chores. I noticed that the boat that came in by himself a couple days ago had also left by himself. We were expecting him to leave today, but not this early.
About 08:30 I got a call on the VHF from a boat looking for a slip for a few days. He was already approaching the marina so I went out and took his lines. He was just secure when a heavy rain shower came through. I ran up to the bar to close windows and got soaked in the process. After the shower passed, we got another call on the VHF from a second boat requesting a slip. I met him on the dock and got him secure too. Then I started working on hooking up transformers for the boat that came in last night and the two that came in today. There are several different combinations of plugs on boats, multiple options of plugs on the docks, and different combinations of plugs on the transformers. So, each time we hook up a boat with a transformer, it's a jigsaw puzzle. It took a while, but I got them all sorted out. A little after noon, our friends Jim & Amanda on Adventure Bound called to say they were approaching. We were expecting them, so we went and took their lines as they came in. Adventure Bound had already started north a week ago, but Jim has to fly back to Canada to deal with a family emergency, so they came back here so Amanda and the boat will be secure in a marina. All in all, the day was a lot like real work.
This evening is our weekly pot luck dinner. We had about twenty attendees and then had our Saturday night karaoke session. In the past weeks, there have been three of us doing the majority of the singing, and the other two guys left this past week. This left me recruiting heavily for new talent. We were able to get Tom from Sojourn to sing a few songs, and a single hander from the anchorage sang a couple. Of course Bob and I sang a bunch. We did close it down relatively early though, and were back home by 21:00.
GPS N 12-00.639 W 061-44.360 Nautical miles traveled today 0. Total miles 9539.