Day 139, Year 6 Productive Saturday
Date: Saturday, March 12, 2011
Weather: Sunny Day; Wind NE 10-15 knots
Air Temperature: Same, Same Everyday, 74 – 82 degrees F
Location: Prickly Bay, Grenada
We were up early this morning to get our headsail and staysail down before the winds build. During the night, the winds die down and then start up again as soon as the sun is up, but at 6 am things are pretty calm. So we did successfully take down the two sails. We wanted to put up the mainsail that we got back yesterday, but it got too windy before we could get that done. We’ll try again at 6 am tomorrow morning.
We did a few things on Windbird and then headed into De Big Fish restaurant at Spice Island Marine to make Skype calls. We first called Heather, Jed, Sam, and Jonah. We had a good connection and got to see the boys in action. Sam told us about a Central and South American eagle, the Harpy Eagle, that he is learning about in preschool. He also showed us his new toy model of Alvin, an underwater research vessel. Heather said they had to use bath colors to turn the bath water blue so Alvin could do a little bathtub research! Jonah is a delightful “almost” two year-old. Like Ziggy yesterday, he would point to us on the computer screen and call us by name. And instead of oranges and bananas like Ziggy, Jonah decided to feed us strawberries this morning which got a bit messy on the computer monitor. We have 42 more days before we see Ziggy, Jonah, and Sam on the beach in Vieques in Puerto Rico and we just can’t wait. We next called my sister Patsy and her husband Joe, but unfortunately a lot of people started arriving at the restaurant to watch a rugby match. The speakers were booming so loud that I could hardly hear Patsy, so I put on my headset. But unfortunately the headsets decided to finally bite the dust this morning. There has been a short in the wires for months, but today I just couldn’t wiggle anything to make them work. So our conversation was cut short. We’ll try again in a few days when we can hopefully get our wifi booster working so we can call from the boat.
From De Big Fish in the NW corner of Prickly Bay we zoomed over to Prickly Bay Marina on the E side to deliver our headsail and staysail to Douglas of Johnny Sails. We had hoped he could give us an on-the-spot estimate for replacing the Sunbrella edging on the sails, but he said he needed to take the sails to inspect them and will call us on Monday. We’re a little nervous about that this job will be too expensive, so we are thinking of alternatives “just in case.” From Prickly Bay Marina we took the dinghy back over to Spice Island Marine so we could walk to The Blue Machine, the name of the ATM out on the main road, and get a new money supply. We paid cash for the mainsail repairs and that basically wiped us out. It is probably a little less than a mile from the De Big Fish to The Blue Machine. It is along a main road, but there is a sidewalk that makes the walk safe considering the amount of traffic. We stopped at Ace Hardware on the way to buy some replacement Dremel cutting discs, walked on to The Blue Machine, and then back to Spice Island Marine. There are a number of other small businesses and the Carib Brewery along the way. Carib is one of the main beers of the southern part of the Caribbean and our favorite. We were pretty blown away with the things available in the Ace Hardware. It is just like being back home.
This afternoon I worked at starting to return a few very delinquent emails and Mark chipped away at cleaning the stainless. His brother Steve is the best stainless cleaner ever, but Mark is determined to not leave much for him to do this time. I guess we’ll just have to focus on having fun!
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| 110312 Day 139 Grenada–Walk to the Blue Machine |
