July, 2010

During early July, I continued my quest for a small air conditioner. Finally, I ordered a small GE unit, 6,000 BTU, window air conditioner from Sam’s Club in Miami. Their price was just $149. My daughter Michelle helped me find a “Less-Than-Container” shipper, Tropical Shipping, also of Miami. They send a boat from Miami to Grenada every Thursday. After navigating the intricacies of getting this item picked up by a local freight hauler from Sam’s Club - Miami, getting it processed for export at Tropical Shipping, getting permission from Grenada Customs to “add to (my) ship’s inventory”, paying Grenada VAT and Customs handling charges, paying Tropical Shipping, retrieving my new a/c via taxi, I finally started up my new window a/c on Tuesday, July 27^th. My total cost for the a/c, freight and all charges was $282.46. We’ve been living in sublime, mosquitoless, cool air ever since.

Probably the highlight of July, after the air conditioner, was a visit from some more very dear friends. First, let me stress that all the sailors we’ve met have been pretty nice folks. It’s sort of Darwinian selection out here at sea that real crabs would be shunned by the rest of the sailors and would not be well treated by the islanders. They would get discouraged and give up sailing. Even so, every once in a while, you meet people that are just a cut above the rest. They seem extremely intelligent and are interested in the same things you are, but bring a world of stories and anecdotes from somewhere else. We’ve gathered several such couples amongst our list of friends. These particular people are Ralf and Jenny of Johannesburg, South Africa. They sail a 45 ton, 62 foot steel ketch. Her hull is 10 mm steel plate. She was built to survive collisions with ice in the polar seas. Ralf’s career has been in electronics and computers, and he’s rigged this boat, S/V Imvubu, with a world of computer controls and redundant power supplies. He even installed an induction range in Jenny’s galley. Jenny, by the way, owns a software company specializing in insurance software.

We met Ralf and Jenny in Chaguaramas Bay, Trinidad, last May. They left before we did and sailed north to St. Lucia where they met relatives from Africa and Europe. They stayed in contact with us by e-mail and planned their trip back toward Trinidad, leaving a few days to stop in Grenada to be with us. We took them out to eat once. We fed them in the boat once. We visited in each others’ boats several times. I took Jenny on a long walk through the forest and across Hogg Island. They were on a schedule and had to continue on down to Trinidad after a few days. 

The balance of July was mostly just work. I had a fair amount of business activity from home, and I watched grain market’s carefully to try to market the last of 2009 crops and make some incremental sales of 2010 crops.

I should mention, too, that there’s continuing activity within the cruising community and adjacent marinas and restaurants. Joan and I partake of some of it. Here at our marina, in their Oasis Bar, Tuesday night is movie night, Wednesday night is hamburger night, along with live-performance music, either by Grenadians or talented cruisers and assorted Ex-Pats. Friday night is fish & chips night. Saturday night is potluck. Sunday afternoon is dominos. Several times this summer, the marina has sponsored cricket matches amongst the cruisers. There have been afternoon seminars on boat canvas projects, general boat maintenance, on cruising to Venezuela, on water painting and jewelry making. Other marina’s and restaurants have menu specials on scheduled nights. Every Tuesday and Thursday noon, an elderly Grenadian lady serves roti across the bay in Woburn, and we rarely miss this treat. I usually dinghy over and get them as take-out and bring them back to the boat to eat in air-conditioned comfort. Every Friday, a taxi operator brings a rather large bus to our marina where folks gather from all over Clark’s Court Bay and the Hogg Island anchorage for a trip into Grand Anse Shopping Center, where the IGA supermarket is located, along with a hardware store and a number of mall boutique-type stores and a bookstore. There’s a food court here, as well as several nearby small restaurants, so we always eat out along with grocery shopping. There’s a KFC here for us when we get a hankering for US fast food. For staying in touch with each other, the cruisers all over the island get together every morning except Sunday, at 07:30 on marine VHF channel 68 on the Cruisers’ Net. First, there’s security and safety massages, then marine weather forecasts, then a buy-sell-swap session, then a social calendar session, and finally, offers and advertisements from Grenada business serving the cruiser community. The activity I describe in this paragraph is ongoing. We can partake if we wish. Our marina has two washers and no dryers. About once per week, I do one or two loads of laundry. Joan usually hangs the clothes on lines I run between the shrouds and inner forestay. When it’s rainy, we hang clothes under the bimini or inside the cabin. About once every two weeks, we give each other haircuts. We’ve also completed sanding, oiling and buffing of all of our interior wood. So, in addition to the white sand beaches, the swaying palm trees, the rum punch, the tropical sunsets, the bikini girls, there’s a whole lot of plain domesticity to this cruising life.