Camp Grenada, WI

"Camp Grenada, WI"

On August 8th, 2014 we made it to a year long planed destination of our adventures - Grenada, WI. We found this beautiful island the most interesting, amazing and friendliest from all other Caribbean islands, so far at least...

There are no many nice sandy beaches around here, but the mountains with dense jungles and plentiful waterfalls are very beautiful. From the tour of the island we learned that every little wild plant in the forest is actually a spice, or some kind of herb which could be used in cooking and as a natural remedy from any pains and aches. Nobody here ever could be hungry, for there are a lot of fruits and veggies growing here in different seasons. Just amazing! And the main market in St.George is full of vivid colors of the crop growing around here, and yes, there is a great Fish market which is supplied by the local fishermen every day with plenty of seafood.
Grenada has a great public transportation system - multiple lines of the little buses are running around the island and it's very cheap, starting at EC$2.50 per person one way. We found the Grenadian buses as the best entertainment and attraction of this island: the 12-14 seats buses are packed up to 17 people, have to seat literally on each other laps, the music (Soca and hip-hop) is so loud than cannot talk, buses are running on the highest speed on the hilly and windy roads - and there are NO seat belts! The bus is operated by two people - the driver and a conductor "bus boy" who's job is to get and pack as many people as they can soliciting people on the board walks. This is Kevin's dream job - once he even managed to work as a "bus boy" and he got decent amount of people on the bus: "Come, come. Bus! St.George!" using specific for this job hand gestures. That was funny, locals were laughing getting on the bus because nobody was expecting a gringo working as a conductor!
Our first anchorage in Grenada was in St.George - very pretty neat and pretty city. Just a short dinghy ride to the Carnage and you are in the middle of the town. We arrived on August 8th - right in time for yearly Carnival. And we managed actually participate in this madness! We asked the locals in the market to help us to find a place in one of the 12 Carnival's teams, and after couple hours we found still available places in Andre Agave Associates Carnival team. The costumes were pricey, but totally worth for this unique opportunity. Kevin got a place in Hip-Hop team and I was a Show girl. Costumes were very pretty, and I had to wear that beautiful feathery head peace which I was very proud of!

Amazing experience at Carnival - August 12-14 - dancing non-stop for two days! Luckily we were adviced to wear tennis shoes to prolong our ability to dance for hours without break. Each team had a huge track with huge stereo amplifiers, running very-very loud Soca music by the band of particular team and periodically you were given some alcohol and beer to wind you up for more dancing! Seems that very easy job - just dance and drink, but we were absolutely exhausted by the night of the second day. And our team won the "Best Band" contest! I got a friend from Trinidad, Cloudette, who taught me crazy dancing moves (twerking?) under sounds of loud Soca. Kevin was popular among local older female population and once I had to protect him from some aggressive lady from audience. We had so much crazy fun and just Carnival itself made it worth to travel from far Texas to Grenada.
The opening of the Carnival was on Monday night at 2am - which is called "J'Overt" - the night when people get soacked in the used machine oil and then marching on Carnage under loud sounds of Soca. The hard core participants are walking almost naked and periodically pouring the machine oil all over themselves, holding the row fish and dead rats in their mouths while blood is dripping all over. Most of the locals get very drank and sexual, the site is definitely not for the children, and in the morning all Carnage streets are black and slippery from oil (hard to walk!). By 10am that madness is done and somehow streets got cleaned for the Carnival teams competitions.

We spent couple days just relaxing after such party, and in couple days moved to Spice Island Marina - where we got hulled out and put on the hard for next 6 weeks.
At this marina we met a sailboat with two Ukrainian guys from Mikolaev - the city near my hometown! I was so happy to meat my co-patriots and speak my native language! Right away we became good friends and helped each other for next couple weeks working on our boats. That was fun, I felt like I was back into a close family. While staying in the Marina we rented a very nice apartment at "Kiki's Apartments", which was very decent price ($200 per week) with free laundry, huge living room, huge kitchen, cleaning service every week, free water, AC in each room and free wifi. We loved to stay at this apartment. It was very nice after hard work on the boat on the boatyard where is very humid and crazy hot to come back "home" and turn on AC, take very long showers, watch TV and wash dirty cloths for free!
The best part of the apartment was a bed - wide and long, and not moving (I guess, it's a standard for any land living conditions - but we have not been in such bed for 9 months).

  We were almost done with our work on the boat when Kevin broke a finger on his right hand while trying to start a generator. Then our new adventures started. We had unique opportunity to learn Grenada's life from the healthcare prospective.

Day 1: first we went to the main hospital. Emergency room was full of people and they were there for already 6 hours, there is no receptionist to take your name and nobody knows when the doctor will show up. In couple hours we lost our hope to be seen by doctor and visited a private physician (just $40 per visit) who sent us for X-ray ($75), the results we got right away in our hands, which is very convenient.

Day 2: brought results of X-ray to our physician, who send Kevin to orthopedic specialist. Doctor Douglas Noel starts his work day at 10am but at 9am there were 9 people in line waiting already. We spent very lovely day in his office and Kevin got apointement for the surgery on his finger the next day, Saturday.

Day 3: back to the public hospital, this time to another building - surgery rooms. It's Saturday and the hospital is empty (toilet is outside the building, no paper). We got lucky that there is no any emergency at that time and doctor was free to perform a surgery on Kevin (there are only 2 orthopedic doctors on the island, so, they are very busy). Kevin showed up with the huge cast covering hand and forearm. And it's crazy hot outside. But we are happy, he got a wire in his finger and it will heal in 6 weeks.

  Next day we got a flight to Dominican Republic, where we spent couple days enjoying Santo Domingo's coffee and pastries. Then a flight home - to Austin! We have not seen our daughters for 8 months and were so happy to meet with our friends again (ha, we were surprised they did not forget about us!!!).

We had a very short stay at home, just 6 days, but at the end we were already missing our boat life. I guess, somehow somewhere we lost our ability to live in a big city where everything is so efficient and life is crazy fast.

  Back in Grenada, back to work on the boat - and we had very interesting project: insulate our refrigerator with the new NASA space something.. state of the art insulation, which we carried all the way from Austin. This project took us about 4 days from start to finish, thanks to our friends from Del Max who helped Kevin (setup with his cast would not allow much) to operate saws while disassembling our fridge, and for the moral support too, because I was shocked to see my kitchen being totally destroyed.

But, as Oren says: "Do not fear!" and, in couple days we put everything in order.
 
The bottom of the boat was painted, fridge fixed, water tanks welded and second was sealed, rudder is fixed, wind vane got missing parts, bimini is extended, sail cover is patched - and we are ready to splash back in the water.

  The rest of the time in Grenada we spent in Prickley Bay with Del Max and Bendecida, and dozen of other boats. This is where you start feeling that you are a part of a big cruising community-family, make close and good friends, participate in different activities which are organized by your fellows cruisers, and just having fun while sitting at Tiki bar at the wi-fi tables like a student in the library.
We call it "Camp Grenada" which reminds us a summer camp in the youth, and it was very sad to leave behind all that fun and many friends we made there.
  The day of the "Camp Grenada" starts with the net at 7:30am every day, except of Sunday. The weather, arrivals and departures are announced, reminders of every day activities and specialities of the local businesses, the "bildge treasures" and the "shopping buses", "Umi Do" (PierIve) and volunteering in local schools, "Secret smile" calling "Endorphin II" and "High Heels" calling "Boots". We had yoga twice a week and Thi Chi led by PierIve, domino and chess competitions twice a week, Trivia game on Tuesday, Spanish conversation class with Sandra on Thursday and then latino dance, Bingo on Wednesday (you can win a cow, two goats, a rabbit, but we did not win anything), walked Hash (runners with drinking problem) on Saturdays, and by Sunday you are so exhausted that just wanted to stay on the boat and do some chores.

"Camp Grenada" is the best place to practice any major language and learn culture from different countries: cruisers here are from USA, Canada, Israel, Brazil, England, New Zeland, Australia, Austria, France, Germany, Sweden, Holland, Italy, Ukraine, Russia, Bulgaria, Columbia, Argentina, any other I missed? Bunch of us cruisers were taking evening Spanish classes at the Cultural center of Venezuelian Consulate - twice or more times a week, and they were FREE. Then we would practice a bit Spanish with Sandra on Thursdays, and I would practice my forgotten German and Ukrainian, and native Russian with Nataly, the girl from Ukraine while excercising Thi Chi.

 
But the hurricane season is over, and it's time to move on to other destinations and see other places. So far Grenada island is our most favorite from all Caribbean islands and we will keep our memories from "Camp Grenada" for long time.

Caribbean Islands Hopping in Spring - Summer 2014

April 13  - Ponce, Puerto Rico
Kevin fixed the prop problem - we hit the crab pot on the way, but we discovered another problem - little amount of diesel in the oil pan in the engine. We took all of our injectors to the diesel shop in Ponce - to check if they are licking, and sure enough the mechanic found 4 licking injectors in our collection, luckily, he is going to fix them before we move on. But the suspicion is that the main problem is in the injection pump not the injectors. On Friday, 04/18 Kevin spent some "cozy" time with our iron horse and we decided not to get the pump out but just change injectors and see if our "diesel in oil" problem will disappear...will see. Kevin found dissent dentist in Ponce to finally make a crown for his implant. Too bad we don't have insurance and have to pay full cost ~ $1000. Oh well, he needs the tooth and we will get it! Puerto Rico is a huge island and the public transportation really sucks here. So, we rented a car to drive around and check places. The best attraction so far is the long drive in the mountains - it's amazing scinery on the oceans (both sides) and the drive in the jungle, especially at night! It's creepy. Amazing to see little settlements in the mountains - the houses on the very tall sticks nobody knows how they were built, and the way puerto ricans drive here - most of the cars don't turn on the head lights, and it's very hard to see them from the sharp corners on the turns, the blood is freezing on such turns. Visited Salinas - the gastronomy place in Puerto Rico, Arecibo - not much there, but it's Juan's birth town. On our trips we saw some bizarre things: a lot of young guys are riding the horses without any sadle or padding, these animals are so miniature, that some of riders have thier feet almost on the ground; then they park their horses near houses (do they have garages for them too?) and wash them using the yard hose - in the way we washed our cars in Austin - that is just very funny!

April 14 - May 4
Still in Puerto Rico! We had an amazing day trip into the jungle with a guide - did a lot of hiking, walking in the waterfalls, repelling the water fall, ziplining. It was fun. We spent a weekend with our friend Juan at his parent's house on the north shore. Finally had to use spanish to talk with parents. The food Norma (Juan's mom) made was very delisious and filling, and coffee is the best - the same way my mom prepares the coffee in the small pot with hot milk. Juan showed us his favorite places from the childhood and we met with his best friend - Karlos. Checked out beatiful beaches on the west-north shore of PR - beatiful beaches on the Atlantic side. May 1 - we made it to Salinas, staying on the anchorage - finally saving some money! The bay is very nice and quite, but the wind blows all the day staring 8:30am, and this is every day!

May 5 - May 12
One afternoon we were so surprised to see one of our "buddy boat" from Bahamas - Fidelis! Jenn and Eric finally caught up with us from the south part of Puerto Rico. The last time we saw them in Dominican Republic at Boca Chica. We spent some very nice time together sharing out recent stories and it felt so wonderfull to have somebody else to share a "sunset" drinks. We rented a car for our trip to the El Yunkey jungle in the mountains. It was fun to swimm in the huge waterfalls and hike up and down in the jungle. In Salinas we hanged out every day at the Sal Pa Dentro cruisers bar, the owners, John and Ana, are former sailors and he gave us very valuable advices on the weather and sailing on the south-east coast of Puerto Rico. Soon we left this beautiful peaceful and following his advices were sailing "hugging the coast" to get through these crasy winds and waves near puerto rico. We made it relatively fast to Veaques island, spend a night in the secluded anchorage and next day SAILED!! (no motor finally!) to Culebra island. The island is very beatiful, we enjoyed all the beaches available around, snorkled, swam but, still did not see any turtles. Since most of the places are closed for vacation in May, we mostly hang out at the Dinghy Dock Restaurant. Oh boy, drinks are not cheap in paradise!

May 12 - May 14
Last time we visited Spanish Virgin Islands we skipped this little uninhabited island Culebrita, which is only 7 nm from Culebra, but.. of course, east direction - no sailing. We were so glad that we decided to stop at this beautiful place this time. There are a lot of fun things to do (even though the only inhabitans are wild goats! many of them!) here - we practically did not get out of the water which is very accessable just via jumping from the boat. Snorkled twice a day - saw a lot of fish, sting ray and finally, Marina's dream came true - saw a lot of turtels! They would just swim around your boat starting in the early morning until dark. Hiking is also amazing in Culebrita - up on the mountain top is very old lighthouse, half broken but still accessable to the very top. The view from the very top of this building is absolutelly stunning - you see near islands, like Culebra, Veaques, St. Thomas and St.John; also you can see every corral heads in the water near the shores - amazing. Finally we saw more cruisers vs. charters here - spanish and english couples which are on their way back home to Europe. Met with intersting couple (Andriana and Spencer on Adverse Conditions) who made it twice around the world sailing everywhere for 15 years. Very impressive! As the weather conditions got better we had to leave this enchanted place... how many of such places we could find again?

May 15 - May 16
At last we made it to St.Thomas - it was not so bad, even though we motored agains the wind. The island is beatiful but it's very very turisty... a lot of cruisers and charters, bays are packed with the boats. We got some provision for our trip to BVIs and left early morning next day for Tortola island.

May 17 - May 19
We made it to BVIs finally! ( by our plans we supposed to be here a month ago...) First stop is in Tortola, customs check in. Even thought we have been to this island before, both of us could not remember anything from the first visit. Probably because we were well guided by Alen - our capitan on charter catamaran, so we even forgot what islands in BVIs we visited with him. There are so many charter boats here! We barely could identify couple cruisers around. It's a meka for charters!

May 20 - June 25
Wooho! Have not updated my dairy for about month and a half! Time flies so crazy fast! We made it through BVIs... Spent there about 3 weeks. A lot of swimming, hiking, spearfishing lobsters (got 3 little once) and just relaxing. The islands are so close to each other that there is no any problems to get from one to another in short comfortable sail. The most we liked Virgin Gorda - Savana Bay and Bitter End. BVIs were VERY expensive - moorings $30, food twice than in US, drinks are outragious... and yes, we had to fix our engine multiple times. First it was engine mounts - fixed in Nanny Cay Marina - $1600 for fixing by specialiast mechanic (luckily they had the mounts in the stock). Then we stack for a weeks in the Village Cay Marina fixing our fresh water pump - again, luckily they had a pump in stock, that was unbelievable luck! Changed fuel ingectors, drained antifriz for indefinite times.... And, of course, missed all the opportunities of the good weather to travel sourth-east to Leeward islands - St.Martin and further down. We met a lot of interesting and nice people: Carrol and Patric on Songbird, Tom - 72 years old sailor, Mark and Noel on Cavu, Kathryn and Jorge on Picaro. But they all went ahead of us and we cought up with most of them later. I don't remember what date we finally left BVIs, but we finally made it to St.Martin sometime in June. We had to motorsail again - even though weather forcast called for NE winds, we did not get it. So.. it was exhausting long overnight motorsail. We were so surprised when, after we finally dropped our anchore in Samson Bay waiting for the swing bridge to open, we heard Patric's message on VHF "Lucky Seven, welcome to St.Martin"! So, we met with our Songbird friends and spent very good time together exploring (actually, we were exploring and Carrol and Patric were showing us everything around) this beautiful island. I liked the French side more than Dutch. I could not get enough of the french island city life in the little Marigold town. The fresh amazing pastries and bread every day, delishous coffee in the cafes with sitting outside, the most beatifuly and fashionable dressed women, oh, I enjoyed there every minute! There are so many cute botiques with last fashions - I could not resist to buy one short dress, and while trying it on, I commented to myself - ohh it's too short, on what the french owner answered - hey, it's not short at all! Ok, it's a bit short for my standards, but I really love it! And, oh, those french stinky cheeses and pates, how I miss civilization! The Sint Marteen - Dutch side - is not so upscale, but it's more useful for yachters and provision is much more cheaper there. But there is a time again to depart from my new favorite place to move on to the next islands. We sailed to St.Bart - it was very beatiful and comfortable sail. We anchored in Anse Colombier - that place is very very beautiful. To bad our friends Songbird did not make it with us on the same day... Next day we moved to Augusta - capital of St.Bart, it was very rolly mooring parking, but next early morning we left St.Kitts, tried to sail, but had to use engine again, and.. our engine decided to misbehave and overheat at the end of ths trip. Kevin had to park the boat in the marina with entering on the highest RPMs because slowing down ment to overheat the engine even more - it's the same as with the speed of the car 60 m/h try to make sharp corners and stop abruptly without using your breaks (the boats don't have breaks, so stopping the boat is actually hard and requires advance skills). But we made it to the dock and did not break anything on the way. St.Kitts, then new islans and, of course, we have to fix the engine again! Seems that we are busy with our old iron horse on each stop! This time Kevin changed impeller - because we thought it's the problem. While Kevin was working I sanded our wood outside and wewhile waiting for the NE wind again to go to Dominca, we varnished outside of our boat - this time we layed 7 coats, just 2 less than it should be, but, oh well, we hope to work on it somewhere later. St.Kitts is a nice island, very friendly people, everything is very cheap. We excessively used public busses for our excursions around the island. Very pretty mountanious island. Locals are good, but they like VERY loud music which starts at 9am untill at least 2am. I guess, we are in Caribbean, and have to get used to that.

June 26 - June 30
Had a very long exhausting 23 hours trip from St.Kitts to Dominca. We had to skip Guadalupe because we are late to get to Grenada already. Actually, the first 13 hours we sailed with 6-7 m/h speed, a bit uncomfortably healing, but still good. However, near Guadalupe we had to start engine and ran it to the end of the trip to the Portmouth in Dominica. When passing the islands, we noticed that the wind start doing weird things - either dying to 7 m/h, or pick up over 30 m/h, which makes it very hard to setup sails properly. The waves in the channel between Guadalupe and Dominica were not less than 8 feet, plus the high wind... cannot use the autopilot in these conditions, so had to steer the boat all the time.. I am so glad this trip is over! Dominican island so far my favorite - it's absolutely stunning nature, there is no a picture which can catch this beauty, have to see it for yourself. We hiked a lot, saw huge waterfalls, hot sulfur springs/baths, very cold lake - swam there too, it was so cold to swim! Took a trip in the Indian river, which fairy tell beauty was used for the screening Pirates of Caribbean 2 - episod with Calypso witch. Went throught the farm of the tropical plants: banans (all kinds), mangoes, avocados, papayas, bread fruits, gooseberries, different citrus plant, cashews, cocao and coffee trees. Dominica is called a "Bread Busket" of the Caribbes, and it's so true. Currently they are building the new power plant which will use the heat from the dormant vulcano - so cool! This island has the cleanest natural water of all caribbean islands - from the mountains. We finally met here with other boats who we met in BVIs: Picaro and Cavu. But again, they left two days earlier to Martinique. We hope to catch up with them again.

July 1 - July 24
Have not had to log our trip adventures for almost a month! Time is going soo fast! We liked Martinique island, first staed at St.Pierre bay which is very old nice french town which was totally covered by lava in 1902 while erruption of the vulcano. The town was rebuilt soon after and every building in the town is using at least one wall from the old constructions covered by lava. Very beuatiful and pieceful place. We took public busses to explore the island, spent one day in Fort de France - big industrial and not very pretty city. But it has nice backeries and restaurants serve very delicious french food. We rented a car to drive to Marin - the area of the big marina and all sailing needs. Interesting that we met there (in the disel shop) the french girl who delivered our charter boat to St.Lucia 5 years ago! That was interesting meeting. The last night we spent in Rosseau, where we met our new friends - Del Max - young family from Israel with three young children, leaving in Boston now. Next stop was St.Lucia! We stayed at St.Lucia for more than a week, first in Rodney Bay - on the mooring in marina because of the high winds, then we moved to Pitons bay. That anchorage between Pitons was very very rolly, but it worth suffering because of the stunning view of the island at this place. We climbed to the top of Pettite Piton (about 4600 feet) with the Lee (our tour guy). We made accent in 1.5 hours and descent in 40 min. We showed very good time, better than avarage. It was very hard climbing, using every muscle of your body to pull up on ropes and crawl in the "rabit holes", but we did it! Next day we went to see active vulcano, with boiling water in the multiple little craters and took a mud bath at the sulfur springs - that was a lot of fun! While staying in the Rodney Bay - the most civilized place on the island with nice shopping malls and great supermarkets - we took busses to ride to Castries (capital) and Marigold Bay (very pretty and quiet anchorage). In Castries we spent most of the time exploring huge city market: tried a lot of different fruits, bought locally made wooden sting ray, got the spices for making a spice rum, set of spices for the cocao tee, and watermellon! We had nice cheap and delisious lunch right at the market (hopefully, we did not get any parasites at those places, because everything seems very dirty and stinky). We did not like much town Soufriere - a lot of locals beg for money and don't leave you alone, very annoying. The town is dirty and food is not great. We decided to skip St.Vincent because lately there were reported some assaults on the cruisers and next stop was Bequia. It was such a disappointment for us in Bequia! We did not find it so much cute, clean, fun and friendly as we remembered it from our first caribbean trip. Everything seemed so rundown and gray this time... a lot of beggers at any place.. so we were glad to leave this place and sailed to Mustique island. Mustique could be called "Disney World" for the white rich people. It's a private island and of course, it's absolutely crazy expansive. The anchorage was very rolly as well, however, snorkling and water are amazing. On the first night we had barbeque at some local place and after that Kevin and I went bar hopping in this little village. Kevin even got chance to play pool (and he lost), and I finally danced a lot! We had a bit uncomfortable return home: I had to drive our dinghy and Kevin fall down in the water while trying to get on the boat from dinghy, and his phone was in his pocket. In the morning he found his wet phone in the pocket and even drying it in the bag of rice did not help to bring it alive. Oh well, it's just a phone. But we had very good time, met almost all the locals in the village, who were very kind to forgiving to us, and our introduction to Grenadines life was consume "Iron Jack" - very strong homemade rum, with a glass of water after a shot. That was very painful experience! Next stop was Canouan island, and again, the anchorage was VERY rolly! While walking around a village we discovered that we actually have been in this place 5 years ago! That was surprise to us. We still cannot find a place we ate before on one of the Grenadines islands with "One Love" writing on the wall. Hmmm, we are not dreaming about that, because we still have a picture of that! After two nights we left this rolly place (after we finally got water for our boat), and went to straight to Mayreau little island, while skipping Tobago Cays (the weather did not promisse anything good, so we had to find better protected and NOT rolly anchorage). First night was a disaster - very rolly again - at the Salt Whistle Bay. It was so packed that was very hard to find any anchorage, besides the moorings were all taken. We were only US boat there, the rest were French, Dutch, Swiden, etc. But the bay is very pretty, even though the bottom of the bay is full with the trash from the charter boats. Next day we moved to Saline Bay, that was much better anchorage, less rolling and very very clean and pretty, with white sand beach and starfish on the bottom. So far, this is my favorite stop in Grenadines. We spent there couple days swimming, snorkeling, hiking and then moved to the next - Union island. Not much excitement at the Union island - we anchored in the Clifton Bay, interesting place with huge reefs around. It seems like not much protection, but the reefs are breaking any waves and it was not much rolly. We had a tropical wave while staying there - a lot of heavy winds, and Kevin did not get much sleep, every though we dropped two anchores just in case. Clifton bay is a home of the Kitesurfing school and Kevin desperately wanted to get a class, which is pricy - $200 per person for 3 hours. Even though we were here in the low season, all the classes were completely booked, so, we did not have opportunity to try kitesurfing. After weather got better we sailed to Carrriacou, Grenada.

August 1, Carriacou, Grenada
We almost made it to Grenada! Amazing how fast time is passing while hopping islands. We are staying here, in Carriacou for couple nights already. It's a neet place. Local people are very friendly and not mailcious. No need to lock your boat, shut your hatches and pull up your dinghy overnight. So far, seems very safe. Locals seem like living in the lazy mood, not caring much about cruisers. We had hard time to find place to eat at night, because locals kind of even don't care if they get some customers. We explored the island on the local bus, went to Windward village where locals build their wooden sailboats from white cedar found planty in the woods. Spent some time in Hillsborough town, the provision is not the best at this place and kind of expencive. We got here in the right time, because this week is annual 49th Regatta in Carriacou. Kevin got a place on one of the boats to help a skipper in the race.

"Lucky Seven" and our ICW adventures - Fall of 2013

We visited places which probably never would make it to the TripAdviser and other travel recommendations... But hey, this is our country and I am so glad I had an opportunity to explore more than I imagined. On Oct.10 we finally left Clear Lake Marina, near Kemah, where we stayed from July 2d 2013 up to October. It was hot, humid, no AC on the board, cockroaches, rats and dirty. Most of the people who stayed here, never take their boats further than sailing in Clear Lake and our talk about sailing to exotic places was laughed at loud. But one day, Saturday, we finally decided to get rid of both our cars at the Car Max, then got a free ride from their sails person back to the marina. Since living in Texas without a car is not possible, the next morning we sailed to Galveston and then our first big trip started. While living Galveston early morning to Lake Victoria I got sick, so don't remember much, but here are some notes I found from my diary - just 20 days of driving on ICW, but you can get a picture...

Day 9 - Sun, Oct.20 - Lake Charles, Texas
We parked at only marina (not sure about the name), at the fuel dock since there are not designated docks for sailboats in this area. We docked next to the Coast Guards, which was very convenient for us. Marina was clean, an owner was nice. The only inconvenience was the Section 8 housing right next to the marina and to walk to the buses and the main roads we would need to walk a "green mile" as we called it. The marina owners said it's not so dangerous as used to be, there are no murders and assaults with guns around here are not very common anymore. That was a bit relieve for us... During one night Marina heard a woman's screams in Section 8, was not sure if needed to call for help our neighboring Coast Guards (Lake Charles Coast Guard station is the next dock to our boat), or to load our gun. Screams stopped but Marina could not sleep all night. Night was very cold - 46F, uhh, Kevin finally asked for a blanket!! Next morning we found "lost" women's panties on our "green mile" walk. No questions asked... Since we are trapped in Lake Charles waiting for the engine parts, we continued discovering this little town via walking with our backpacks. Ended up in Starbucks for free wifi catching up with our blog and other stuff. As strange it's sound we are really enjoying walking - nice exercise and can see more around than just driving.

Day 10 - Mon, Oct.21, Lake Charles, TX
This is a big day for us - we might get alternator fixed today. We walked caring in our backpacks both original and replacement alternator to Auto Electric and Magnito Shop and it was a miracle that an owner happened to have our missing part! We got lucky. He also checked our original alternator and verified that yes, it was broken. We rushed back to the boat to try new alternator, Kevin put it all together, we started our engine, and .. there is no exhaust water coming out! Piece by piece we checked all the cooling system of engine, looked through manuals and diesel engine books trying to troubleshoot a problem, until we disconnected and connected back the last unchecked hose - water finally ran from exhaust. We were so happy! However, seems Monday is not our very lucky day... and Kevin yelled "stop engine" - he noticed a crack in the exhaust housing filter. Well, now we need to find a replacement for our cracked piece, or otherwise we cannot go anywhere. Unfortunately, cannot get this piece earlier than Thursday. At the evening we finally decided to use our dinghy to drive around and made it to "Jag's Bistro" - it's only place in Lake Charles on the waterfront, no cleats on the docks, but can tie your dinghy around poles. We got some seafood and couple drinks, it's so nice to be back in civilization!

Day 11 - Tu, Oct.22,Lake Charles, TX
Another idle day spent in Lake Charles...Kevin might get a little job today working on network setup at apartment complex. To get there we decided to ride our dinghy instead of walking. The water way to McNeese University from BowTie is very nice - a lot of huge beautiful houses on both sides of the river, but the water is very dirty with litter - we even saw a dead squirrel, would not want to end up in this water. There was not any "parking" suitable places for our dinghy, so we returned back. Later we took dinghy to Casino De Lauberginue (????) and spent wonderful time there - however, seems luck is not on our side lately, gambling did not go well and after losing $10 we returned back home. At this point seems that we exhausted all the attractions in Lake Charles! But we still have to be here until our engine part will show up - hopefully on Thursday.

Day 12 - Wed, Oct.23, Lake Charles, TX
We rented a car today, yea, it's kind of cheating, but we really wanted to visit Tabasco factory. It's a bit off the way from ICW and we planned to go there, but because we are late on our original schedule to make it to New Orleans, we decided to drive to Avery Island (where Tabasco factory is). Drive was boring, about 2 hours from Lake Charles. Even driving a boat on ICW is more exciting that this drive. Along I-10 HW we saw a lot of Casinos situated right in the gas stations! And a lot of eateries with typical south Louisiana food: boudins and cracklings. The Avery Island looked like oasis: very green and well kept. Kevin was excited to try all varieties of the Tabasco sauce currently produced. We even tried tabasco ice cream at the Country Store - interesting taste... Then we drove/walked through Jungle Gardens created by the founder and owner of the Tabasco factory. In our quest of finding alligators we perused every marked "Marsh trail" on the map of this island. They should be somewhere! It's been 6th day in Louisiana and we still did not find any alligators, we were determined to find one! While carefully walking marsh trails we finally spotted an alligator, what excitement it was for us! The poor little creature (about 4 feet long) was scared of us more than we were scared of him, and hid immediately under the tree. Then we realized that this environment is not a zoo! and we might stamped on another bigger one.. Very carefully we traced our steps back to the main road and Kevin wanted me to walk ahead (my husband is such a gentleman!). Further on the little lake we spotted more alligators, they were backing on the sun and not separated from public by the fence! The nearby sing "Alligators are dangerous" finally took us back to reality and scared we ran back to the car and closed doors - we decided not to take chances with nature. After Avery Island trip we went straight to the laundromat - we had a lot of laundry to do for past week, spent there $20 on the "state of the art" washing and drying machines. Then we found wifi in Starbucks and plotted our further trip to New Orleans, this time was well spent, we are finally learning to plan ahead for possible stops, bridges, locks, etc. on the way. Shopped for groceries for the next week, ate dinner at Mexican restaurant, and went far beyond our budget again... On the way home we drove through our "green mile" (as we call our section 8 neighborhood)! It feels good driving vs. walking through there.

Day 13 - Thu, Oct.24, Lake Charles, TX
Well, it's time to say "goodbye" to civilization - took our rented car back. We are back to walking with heavy backpacks! Nice workout opportunity (we keep saying that to ourselves to feel better). In BigK Kevin bought a toilet sit - he wants to make "patio toilet" on our boat, so we would not need to use our compost bucket. Will see how that will go... In the afternoon we received engine part we awaited for since Tuesday. And, we are back to work on our engine. While fixing first problem, we found another one, then another one, and finally figured out why our heater is not working. To fix it would take very long time and we decided that we can go on without a water heater, at least until the next big stop. Alright, we are back in business and leaving tomorrow!

Day 14 - Fri, Oct.25
Big day today! We finally leaving Lake Charles after 7 days we spent here. We are already 6 days behind our original schedule, but that's ok, we actually enjoyed time spent in this little town, walking we learned all the places tourist would go in the little industrial oasis. Thanks to our BowTie marina - they were very friendly to us and patient. Hey, it was our home for 7 nights (the last night we got for free!). On ICW we passed the first locks and even did not have to wait for our turn. It was fast. Drove about 7 hours and dropped an anchor at Mermentaou River. We had some engine overheating problem, but Kevin added anti-freeze and engine survived the last hour of our trip. At least we know where the problem is and Kevin refitted connections, so tomorrow we should not lose any anti-freeze (as we hope!) This anchorage is nice and very beautiful... And we are still trying to spot some alligators... no luck..

Day 15 - Sat, Oct. 26
We spent nice quite night at Mermentaou River anchorage, serenity, beautiful scenery on the water in the morning. On the way to Shell Morgan Landing passed another locks, uneventfully arrived to the docks. We tried to contact Shell Morgan Landing by phone (no services) and by VHF radio (no answer), but the owner saw us approaching and helped us with docking. Kudos to Kevin: he finally figured out communications on VHF with passing bargers and tugs, switching to right channels in time and not afraid to talk with skippers (ch.11, 13, 14 - all except of ch.16! mean communication with local traffic, locks and bridges operators). However, Marina still doesn't feel comfortable talking on VHF and, doesn't understands anything what they are saying - too much slang and southern accent.

Day 16 - Sun, Oct. 27
The night at Shell Morgan Landing was very loud - it's just a stop in the industrial wharf area with big weird looking boats. But, at least it was safe and this place had restrooms and showers! Just for $20/night! It's was so nice to take warm shower after couple days of not washing. We started very early today just with sunrise (about 7:15 am), we still don't feel comfortable to travel in the dark, even though we have reliable chart plotter. The scenery of ICW is the same on the way to Morgan City - marshes and swamps with trees coverd by spanish moss, and we were still looking for alligators.. did not spot any on the busy ICW "streets". We docked at the Morgan City Pleasure Docks - parked behind a row of fisherman shrimp boats and immediatelly made friends with a drunk skipper of one of those boats. There are no any amenities at this place, but at least we thought it's safer than on anchor. The city docks are right in the middle of the old downtown, which is only about 2 blocks (Kevin related this city with Georgetown). All the businesses were closed on Sunday, so..no internet connection for us today either... We found a convinient store in the very bad poor drug area of the city, the guy at the store mentioned to us not to walk around after dark, so trip back through this drug area of the city was a bit intence. On the way back to docks we found Rita May restaurant with very authentic black south Louiana cooking. Even the restaurant was closed, the old black lady - owner - let us in and gave us "really quick whatever is left in the kitchen". We had shrimp stew and seafood gumbo - that was very HOT, but delisious food! We made it back to the boat and locked all the hatches and the entrance door, turned off the lights and I heard Keving was loading AK just in case. The night was very loud - to much work was going on in this industrial city at night, heard couple times the lift bridge going down for the trains, a lot of horns going off, car traffic.

Day 17 - Mon, Oct.28
Started early today. We were ready to leave the docks but the railroad lift bridge came down again. At about 7:30 we are back on ICW. The destination for today is Huma - and we really really need to find internet connection there. Closer to Huma we noticed more industrial traffic, locks, lift/open bridges and Kevin handled it as a professional talking with people in charge on VHF. Well, sometimes they don't answer... especially in the time you really need the answer if the lift bridge will be still open when you will be under it, or should we wait for another opening? Or, what is the hight of the fixed bridge ahead of us? is that 70" or 40"? Unfortunately this information is not on our chart plotter and we are guessing most of the time - first Kevin counts how many length of one car you can place under the bridge (one car - about 10"), so, if that's 6 then we are ok to go under the bridge! Harder is when there are only tracks with gasoline are passing on the bridge, those could be only 2 lengths, yea... the things we have to figure out from the memory of our kindergarten age. We made it to Huma Municipal City Docks - they are located right in the middle of the public park/picknic area, right off the ICW. Since Huma is seems very industrial town we did not see any downtown. The center of the city is huge Hospital - which restrooms we used extencivelly (nice to sit on the normal water flashing toilet!) The Hospital was 4 min walk from our boat. Searching for the wifi we found cafe Liberty, however, had to leave soon - closed at 3pm. Seems everything in Huma is closed at 3pm. The grocery shopping did not get well either - the South Louisiana Groseries store doesn't exist anymore even though it's still in YP and on the map's info. In the closeby gas station we asked where we can buy groceries - the answer was "do you want to buy chicken for what? to cook? we have fried chicken here for sale, do you want salad, what salad?" Anyways, our long walking trip with backpacks in 100F in sun was not very productive, but we found "Wash and wear" laundromat right near our boat. So, at least we washed our clothes and had amazing converstaion with the loisianians - some of the conversations are stretching your mind way too far and you start loving your own life very much. This docking place was just $25/night and pretty safe.

Tu, Oct.29
Restroom trip to the Hospital, coffe, breakfast and we are off again. We counted for a short day today (should be 5 hours),but it took us 9 hours to get to the mile marker 15 IGWW. Turns out that the place we wanted to anchore is taking currently by a business, so we had to look for a new place for overnight ad-hoc - and found "Jo's Landing" docking. It's a bit off the ICW, about 5 mi going in the side channel (LaFettite), but depth is about 14" and we did not have problems to dock at Jo's.

Trying to start a new blog of our travels while staying in Grenada for indefinite time

It's been already more than a year since we are living on our beautiful Valiant 40" Lucky Seven monohull. We managed to change our regular lives from the comfortable living in Austin suburb and regular paychecks to the "leave-aboard full time cruisers". On July 2d, 2013, after 1.5 years of dedicated fixing, reconstructing, breaking, investing 200% of the price into newly bought 30 year old boat, our Lucky Seven finally splashed in the waters of the Golf of Mexico, in the Clear Lake Marina. We were happy, scarred, confused of unknown and looking forward for our new life. Soon after, we elaborated ourselves from a house, our cat Johny II of 12 years, a condo, three cars, phone bills, jobs and everything else which could keep us back in Austin. Our two daughters are grown up already, living separately, visiting home once in two months, seems were ok with us to go, and somewhere excited to visit us at some exotic places sometime. Since October 4, 2013, we sailed more than 4000 miles starting from Galveston in Golf of Mexico, via ICU through Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Bahamas, Hispaniola, Leeward and Windward islands, and finally settled in Grenada, West Indies. We "lost" our old blog, and, so, we will try to start again and will try to keep up with it more regularly than we had before. Also, we will try to reconstruct some of our memories of the past year travels.

Marina writes again

March 11- 13
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The first stop in Dominican Republic - Isla Beata. As soon as we dropped our anchores late afternoon (the ride here was very rough! we were going about 3.5 - 4 mi/hours at most, with the waves and wind right at the bow, very exhausting) the boat with coast guard officials showed up and got in for checking our documents. Kevin and Rork presented the coast guard with a little "present" - a bottle of rum and he was very very happy about that. Uhh, keep officials happy!
Next morning we went ashore - to visit a little fishermen village and our "friend" coast guard. As we showed up, they put four chairs for us and a coast guard set in the front of us and asked if would like coffee. Of course we would like coffee!
His wife prepared coffee for everybody in the outside "kitchen" and we enjoyed it very much. Then we were asked if we would like a coconut, oh yes, of course we would like a coconut! Some young guy cut 4 coconuts from the nearby palm and cut them open for us. That was delicious. We tried to make a conversation with coast guard and his helpers, but it did not go far - our Spanich is limited and his English is NONE. We thanks for great hospitality and went for a walk around this little village. We bought some fresh fish for our dinner, even though it was not cheap, and we did not have our money changed yet from dollars to pecos. Dinner was great!
Next day we left this cute place for another long overnight passage to Barahona.
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March 14 - 19
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We got heavy rain during our night trip to Barahona, and seas were rough as well. So, we are exhausted at tired again....
We made it to the channel at about 4:30am - it's too early to enter the place we are not sure about and which has cargo ships traffic.
So, we drifted around for couple hours, just waiting for the sun to rise at 7am.
As soon as we anchored our boats, a boat with officials, coast guards, showed up first at Rork's and then our place. They checked documents and inside of the boat, and made Kevin to put his dinghy down. In an hour we got checked in and were ready to explore this town.
It's a relatively big industrial city - with cargo ships transporting sugar canes and something else, lyminar mines and some other industries. People here are NOT begging for anything, this is such a nice change! Seems everybody here is happy and doing fine, even though it's dirty on the streets - the trash is everywhere! Dominicans really love music - merenge, salsa, regaton. You can hear this music in every corner of city you go. We got new cim cards for the phones, some internet time, went to the supermercado and market, walked a lot in the town. We got a local guy Fernando to guide us around the town and since he speaks very well English, he could help us with translation and actually, teach us Spanish a bit. Kevin and Rork are slowly getting up to speed with Spanish, yea, that is helpful.
On the March 15th our friends "Island Perl", Rork and Sherry, left at night to Boca Chica where they have to meet their visitors and spent some time with Sherry's oldest child. It was so sad to separate! We had such a great and fun time together, helped each other, did all our trip planning together, but it's time for separation besides we have plans to sail down south anyway.
We said our "good byes" and we hope to sail together again maybe next year, will see....
On the next morning we had to be on the shore at 8:30am for our car trip to the Lago Enriquillo (a huge lake) with one of the coast guards and a friend of our guide Fernando. The trip was long, about 6 hours around the lake, but we have seen so much! The dominical nature, other cities, villages, parks and just how people live. We ate at the little places - just fried everything and drunk a lot of beer, including our driver-coast guard Ivan. We would stop about every hour at some bar on the way for a huge bottle of Presidente beer to share for three. And... we did not have seat belts on the back seats, and... everybody drives here crazy, and.. we saw one semi overturned in the ditch (how much beer he had while he was driving?????). But we made it safe back to our boat afternoon.
The trip was nice, but we did not see any crocodiles in the Lago Enriquillo, just saw a lot of uaguanas, very fat once.
We hand out couple more days in Barahona, with our new friend Fernando (who speaks English) and custom guys. Most of the days we spent in the bar on the corner across Customs, this bar belongs to one of the customs guy's wife. So, we met there all their family, talked, drun rum, practiced our limited Spanish with locals. We got new friends - two boats from Germany, and I had to practice my limited German finally. And finally on Wed.19th we got our "dispachio" in the morning and all our new local friends came over at 7am to the shore to say last "good byes" to us.
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March 19 - 24
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And we are off again in the seas, sailing to a new stop - Las Salinas. This is a nice clean little town of fishermen and nearby port workers. This place is much more off than Barahona - there are a lot nice big houses in the town, seems as the weekend spot for richer people from the big cities.
We anchored near our German friends we met at Barahona. It was nice reunion, and guys were very glad to see us. We met one italian boat with polish lady Hanna as a crew member, also a couple from England. Most of the days we were spending at the Hotel Salinas open patio cafe, drinking beer, coffee (nice!) and talking with all sailors cruisers, exchanging infromation. Yea, this is totally a new group of the cruisers - first of all, there are no any US sailors anymore, but mostly people from Germany and Belgium.
We got a new jock now when coming to talk with our new sailor friends - "what language are we speaking today?" Definitelly, English is in minority here, who would think so? But no matter which country and nationality are cruisers, everybody is very nice and friendly and helps with anything they can if you need to. It's amazing "brotherhood"!
We took a local bus to the nearby city Bani - very nice and very clean city. Ate there in the cafeteria with the local workers and I was afraid to get some bacteria, but seems worked out well. We still did not find a place where to buy coffee beans, weird, because they grow coffee here.
Three nights in the row we are not sleeping - Las Salinas town seems is having some kind of celebration this weekend. And, on the temproraly built stage in town they start playing latino music every night from 9pm till at least 2am. And, it friking LOUD!!!! Very LOUD. I love latino music, but not that loud and not in such quantaties, and we already learned all the songs they are playing all over and over again. I hope somebody is actually dancing all night, at least it would not be in vain. We never made it there to the party. We are still gringos and even locals are tolerating us, not sure we would not get in trouble when they are under alhocol or other influence. While I am working on the streets I get a lot of not healthy attention, I am rubio now (sun effect on my hair) and there no other blonds around. Kevin said we need to buy me more baggy cloths to cover me up, but it's soo hot here!
All native English people left from this place and now we "officially" joined the German club! All the cruisers are speaking German, but they still like us and it's fun to talk with new people (luckily they all speak at least some English).


march 26,
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Today we went into Santo Domingo. Spent most of our time walking the streets of the old town. It seems to be safe, at least during the day. The nights are supposed to be kinda rough. We won't go out at those times. We have to walk over a floating bridge to the city. The water in the marina is more poluted than we have ever seen. But that doesn't stop the locals from fishing in it. We decided to not eat any fresh fish while we are here. You would not believe how much trash is in the water. It is so bad, the marina we are at actually put up a blocker so the trash will not come in. All that did was trap the trash inside and trap some outside. There are no other cruising boats here, just us. There is one boat from Pensacola, FL, but it looks like it's been here a while. The water in the bathrooms does not work. So showers will be taken on the boat. We need more fresh water. This is going to be challenging also. Hopefully we can take a taxi to the store and get some. The city is kinda dirty, not as dirty as the water, but still a little trashy. The tourist place is nice. but once you venture off those streets, things go downhill. We managed to see a couple museums. One was Don Diego, Christopher Columbus' son. His palace is right on the bay and can be seen from our boat. We can actually see the boat from the palace, but our cameras' batteries were dead. We also found the La Hispanola School. This is were we signed up to take Spanish lessons. Our classes start in the morning at 8:30. We had to take a test so they could judge our levels. So...now we go to class for four hours per day every day util Friday. Then we might get the weekend off and we can go back on Monday if we like. It really depends on how long we can handle this marina. The marina is a little rough. So far so well, nothing has been stolen, but it can happen at any time. Maybe after class tomorrow we will go see Christopher Columbus's park and tower they built for him.
Lots of walking around and practicing our spanish with people as we try to order and ask venders for things. It is challenging, but we are getting better. Soon we will be able to understand what they are saying back to us. Right now, it is hard to understand. Lots of tourists in this area, not where the marina is, but across the bay. There was a cruise ship here yesterday, but he left sometime last night. It was not a beautiful cruise ship, it was a cruise ship that is outdated and now has a Panama home port. It needed a paint job. Our boat will need a paint job too after we leave this place. I can only imagine what the bottom will look like.

Tomorrow will be a busy day but should be fun.


March 29,
We walked and we walked and we walked. Spent the day walking and eatting and dropped off our clothes at the lavandaria. The clothes should be ready on monday after 2pm. Today we walked along the shoreline passed the hotels and casinos. Then we went up one block and walked back. Passed some car lots and many homes. After we got back to El Conde, we started walking agin in the same direction, this time to the Mercado Nacional. Along the way we found a huge park with lots of security and places for children to play. They also had gym equipment outside. Marina wanted to work out, but decided not to. After leaving the tourist section, el conde, the neighborhoods seeemed a little cleaner, but the crime, we were told, was just as bad. Again someone told marina to remove her necklace. (when we go back to the boat, we took the necklace off) The area we made it to was supposed to be the restaurant area, but we did not see too many restaurants. The next area was the shopping district, but it was getting late, so we went to the grocery store. The grocery store is huge and also has other stores on the other floors. The grocery store occupied the entire second floor and looked much like a Whole Foods of type. Not quite as much in selection as whole foods, but still had everything one would want. We bought some items and 20 liters of water, then took the cab home. We also stopped and ate a meditaranian restaurant. It was nice, but a little expensive at $72. After the Grocery store we took a cab back to the boat and unloaded our groceries on to the boat. Poured th water into the boat and then, shortly there after, Marina screamed. We found a stowaway. It was a rather large cockroach in the closet. Not quite sure why he was in the closet, but we managed to kill him. The theory is, this marina has lots of trash laying around and probably made his way onto the boat either via a rope tied to the dock, or on the grocery bags when we set them on the ground to load them on the boat. Maybe on the water jugs? We really want to believe this was the only one and we have never seen one since or after. So far so well, but we are watching. When we leave here, we thing these types of things will stop. Very certain this place is part of the problem. It isjust dirty. Spent the night on the boat, we did not go to the music playing near Don Diego's house, we were too tired from walking all day. Tomorrow we will go to the Faro de Colon.
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April 5-10
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Sailed to Boca Chica - it's nice and very cute Marina here. Not too expencive either. It has restrooms, showers, laundry, a little nice restraurant - everything you need to take a break from the dirty stay in Santo Domingo!
We sailed with Estee - our new friend from the Language School in Santo Domingo, she is Dutch from Amsterdam, and very young.
Unfortunately, the sail from Santo Domingo to Boca Chica was not pleasant and Estee got a bit seasick on the way here. But we made it.
She spent one night with us on the board and we celebrated Marina's 48th birthday together next day, it was nice to have somebody other than Kevin say "Happy Birthday" ;-)
We met with our old friends - Journey (Monica and Johnatan) and Fidelis (Eric and Jinn), had a dinner with you and hand out around in the Boca Chica little beach town.
Our neighbores in marina were two Dutch brothers (Ron and Ben) on the amazing weird huge boat - originally made as "mine sweeper", but rebuilt later as a civil ship withtout guns. We became very good friends with them and spent fun and full of laugh "happy hour" nights on their boat. It was so sad to separate with them,because it's not so easy to find people you click right away while you are cruising.
But, oh well, we have to sail to Puerto Rico and hope to see our new friends sometime somewhere again...

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April 12 ...
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We made it to Puerto Rico!!! It took us almost 40 exhausting hours to sail to Ponce (the port on the south of the island) and cross dangerous Mona passage - the deepest part of Atlantic Ocean. The ride was VERY rough, especially on entering the channel to Ponce. But we survived two sleepless nights and days with just couple problems - this time kind of serious problems: engine overheated and we ran over a huge crab pot! That was terrifying! But our "Lucky 7" survived both and continue working as a tank ;-). We spent absolutely amazing time in Boca Chica - the last stop in Dominican Republic. It was my birthday and we celebrated it with a lot of new and old friends. Our Holland young friend, Estee, sailed with us from Santo Domingo and we met two wonderful and very funny brothers from Holland and spent very very funny night on their one of the kind boat. It's 1960 built in Amsterdam mine finder rebuilt into cruising boat, huge! Now away from US cruisers we meet a lot of people from different countries - so much fun! And... I am so glad that I am not the only one now speaking English with heavy accent ;-)
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April 13...
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Kevin fixed the prop problem - we hit the crab pot on the way, but we discovered another problem - little amount of disel in the oil pan in the engine. We took all of our injectors to the disel shop in Ponce - to check if they are licking, and sure enough the mechanic found 4 licking injectors in our collection, luckily, he is going to fix them before we move on. But the suspicion is that the main problem is in the injection pump not the injectors. On Friday, 04/18 Keving spent some "cozy" time with our iron horse and we decided not to get the pump out but just change injectors and see if our "disel in oil" problem will disappear...will see.
Kevin found disent dentist in Ponce to finally make a crown for his implant. Too bad we don't have insurance and have to pay full cost ~ $1000. Oh well, he needs the tooth and we will get it!
Puerto Rico is a huge island and the public transportation realy sucks here. So, we rented a car to drive around and check places.
The best attraction so far is the long drive in the mountains - it's amazing sceenery on the oceans (both sides) and the drive itslef in the jungle, especially at night! It's creepy. Amazing to see little settlements in the mountains - the houses on the very tall sticks nobody knows how they were built, and the way puerto ricans drive here - most of the cars don't turn on the head lights, and it's very hard to see them from the sharp corners on the turns, the blood is freezing on such turns. Visited Salinas - the gastronomy place in Puerto Rico, Arecibo - not much there, but it's Juan's birth town.
On our trips we saw some bizarre things: a lot of young guys are riding the horses without any sadle or padding, these animals are so miniature, that some of riders have thier feet almost on the ground; then they park their horses near houses (do they have garages for them too?) and wash them using the yard hose - in the way we washed our cars in Austin - that is just very funny!

More Bahamas and onto DR

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Feb.2
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The best part of staying at Warderick Exuma Park is that we have "happy hour" every night. Since cruisers don't have a perseption of the
weekdays, every day could be a Friday - and consequentially, it means "Happy Hour"! We usually start at 5pm and everybody leaves like by
the order around 7pm, when it's already really dark around and we nobody wants complications on the water in the dark.
These happy hours are great for exchanging information on where and what to explore further, also, you actually make friends and try to
keep up with them while traveling your own route (yes, we meet with Southern Belle on almost each island! independently of difference of ours
or theirs plans). At the last happy hour we learned that we absolutelly HAVE to stop at Cambrige Cays for snorkling in the caves and see
Reachel's Baths. So... no civilization for another couple days then..., more vegetarian dinners, meanning getting fatter for Marina. The
good news is we can finally fish again outside of the park boundaries.
Today the wind is no better, of course, it's South Eeast again, exactly the direction we are traveling. But Kevin decides to go anyway
because I had meltdown today morning feeling trapped in one place for long time. The trip was not pleasant at all, even motorsailing was
tough and we barelly were making 4nm/h. We had to change our plans for the anchorage, because landing near Cambrigde Cays was impossible,
or dangerous with our lack of experience, due to the very shallow approach to the anchoring spot.
So, first we made it to the private Bell Island with huge three villas and groomed beach and waited there for the slack time before low tide.
We decided to land at the Compass Cay, the best technical choice for us in this cituation. Crossing the channel took some time and a lot
of effort from out "iron horse" in the engine room! But we safely anchored near the Compas Cay Marina in very beautiful and quite little bay.
We managed to the very expensive ($2.50 a foot) Marina, paid $10 per person to get out on the shore (!!!), walked around a bit, used the
restroom with AC working (it's been too long without AC!!!!), tried to shop at the Marina's store - $5 for a bottle of beer, no rum,
the lettuce in their refrigerator was NOT for sale - we settled on the beer. At 6:30 pm Marina has a potluck, of course, we attended (since
we don't have much left in our food storage, we made popcorn) this event hopping to meet more new people. That was big disappointment!
Well, we should expected that by the look at the megayachts and huge motorboats parked here. From all the people at the event (around 20 people)
only one lady was happy to talk with us, she was German and I tried to use German as much as I can (remember), but luckily she could speak
some English too. She was a grandma for the kids of the Marina's manager, leaving in one of the villas on the island and visiting this island
every year.
But, the food at party was great! Grilled lobsters, chicken, fried fish... Yam...
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Feb.3
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Big plans for today - in the morning went for a hike around the island to see Rachel's Baths. It was very nice about 3 hours event, we felt
so happy to finally walk again, even in sand and on the reef hills. On the way we saw some ruins - seems that originally it was a
big house which might be destroyed by hurricane recently. Interesting, that one of the workers at the marina build there open air gym!
With the punching bag, weights, bench press, etc. Cool!
We decided to have our lunch at the marina's little shop - and, oh boy, $15 for a hamburger... I had a bottle of Guiness and powerbar for
lunch.
Afternoon at the low tide we managed to snorkle in the reef's caves Rocky Dundas - that was amazing site with stalctites and stalgmites
in the cave. We could not explore this site at the best because seas were not very calm, but still we got a good feel of this cave.
Talked with our friends (Island Perl) on VHF, they are in Black Point, and we really want to see them, but there are couple more stops we
want to make before.
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Feb.4-6
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Waiting for the high tide to leave Compass Cays and sail (or motor) to Big Major Cay - the island of the swimming pigs!
After motorsailing and anchoring among hundreds boats we dinghy to the nearby Stainley Cay. We finally filled up gas for the dinghy,
got some disel in jerry can, got 20 gallons of water and bought phone minutes at the local BTC office. Funny, the BTC (bahamian phone
service) office works 2-4 pm, the grocery stores work whoknowswhat hours but definitelly 2-4. Between three grocery stores on the island we got some fresh (well, it's relatively fresh) produce, some chicken, yogurt, bread and rum. Wow, we can have great dinners with drinks! In the Isles General store Kevin bought fishing spear with the sling to fish for lobsters and fish. Good luck, Kevin!
On the way back to our anchorage, we stopped by at the marina's bar to get some food (not prepaired by me finally!), drinks and meet some people. We met with a couple of about our age from North Carolina who worked at IBM too, and at the same location where we worked
with Kevin in RTP. Wow, such a coincidence. The difference is only that we travel by a sailboat, but they use faster means for that - little airplane which they fixed themselves. It was very nice meeting surprise.
Next day in the morining we made it to the island with swimming pigs and that was so funny and exciding! These pigs are huge, about 500 lbs and they practically attack the dinghy to get some food. So far, this island is Marina's favorite. Well, after seeing pigs we did not get much more excitment because we decided to spend some time on our "internet" work - updating a blog, answering emails, calling
by skype. Kevin finally got online chat help for the company which manages our voice mail (since our USA service is not working here anymore), but at the most important point the power went off on the whole island, bummer again! It's about two weeks and we still
cannot use our data minutes on our phone because pin numbers are not valid...Not sure how people claim that they can work remotelly on
the islands, we would say - this is a myth!
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Feb.6-8
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Made it to the Little Farmer's Cay - the home of the February First Friday party and C-Type sail races. Our friends, Rork and Sherry, made it here too, that was very nice reunion after we separated in Nassau. We had very exciting and fun time at this place, and Kevin and Rork got great education on spearfishing. Thanks to the very nice young local guy who took us on a spearfishing adventure on the nearby corral reefs. He got for us six huge lobsters and caught a huge fish for himself. Rock was so lucky to get another lobster too!
The girsl, Sherry and I, had to stay most of the time on the dinghy and drive when it driffed too far from the fishing place, and still
we were able to snorkle a bit. Afternoon, we had to go to the Ocean Cabin Bar - the place of entertainment. We both were judges and participants for the party games at this bar - wet T-shirt contest, guys buns and legs contest, eggtoss and plunger game - that was too
much fun!
We had an amazing lobster dinner at our boat that night! Next morning we went fishing ourselves, without our guide, and did not have much luck - Rork caught only one lobster and Kevin none (however, he practiced with his spear to kill lionfish).
Afternoon the whole island was full of the visitors from the other islands for the C-Type sailing race - there were couple hundred people on the island with only 60 original citizens.
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Feb.9-10
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Time to move again - at some point we have to make it to the civilization, do laundry, buy normal food and, most important, get the cash. Not many places in past two weeks accepting credit cards, and we did not expected that.
Left Farmer's Cay and landed at Lee Stocking Cay, near the former Caribbean Marine Research Center - this is our midstop before Georgetown. As soon as we parked, Rork and Kevin were eager to go to spearfishing again. It's a beatiful place here with some good reef.
As soon as we stopped at the best reef for fishing, Kevin spotted a huge shark cruising near him, so, in panic guys got back on the dinghy and decided not to go back in the water again. Our mistake - we went in the high tide time when sharks are coming from Exumas Sound to Exumas Banks throug the cuts to get some food. We did not want to become their dinner, and, we did not catch anything for dinner. Macaroni and lentils again...
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Feb.11..13
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We are in the oasis of civilization - Emerald Bay Marina. It's very nice marina, only $1 per foot a day. And, there is an amazing state of the a;om, great spacious restrooms and showers, huge TV in the community room at the marina with great expensive
furniture where we have happy hours almost every day. It's a DREAM spot to "lick our wounds".
Every day I was doing lundry - washed almost everything from our boat, including pillows and blankets. It's absolutelly amazing feeling
to sleep in the clean bed and in dry clean cloths. We found very cheap liqure store in walking distance and couple grocery stores.
Chicken for dinner, finally!
Nearby resort has nice and busy restaurant (not counting tonns of the bugs eating you while you eat - use "Get Off!") where we had couple dinners with our friends from "Island Perl" and "Joerney". Kevin even had chance to start limbo game on the beach while locals
were playing drums (of course, he won!). We tried to hunt for lobsters and fish, but not successfully.. however, we found a bunch of huge coconuts in the nearby golf course and Kevin extracted coconut water to mix with rum.
But the weather is getting better, so we can move further south to Georgetown. So sad to leave this clean place...
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Feb.14..22

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We actually sailed (!) all the way to Georgetown, that was very pleasant trip. By the description from other cruisers Georgetown seems to be a city well compaired to Madrid or Paris! Will see...
Today is Valentine's Day and we are going to famous Chat and Chill to.. well, chat and chill with other cruisers, and dance! they had valentine dance at the bar. It was fun! We met with crew, Will and Stephany, of one of the megayaht parked at the marina. Next day we met the bar and Kevin made sure to be invited to their boat, while the owners were not there. It was very nice excursion: the machine room is very impressive, as a jacusi on the deck! We went dance after in the nearby bar and ... Kevin started Limbo game again! To his
disappointment he did not win this time, but he got very famous on the island - next days people on the street greated him as a "Limbo guy". Not everything just a play around here: we had to provision our boat, get cash from the bank's ATM ($100 in a time and $3 for service), purchase more phone minutes from BTC, connect to internet and do some work and checking on things, skyping, etc. Well... internet is really bad around here and it takes very strong nerves and great patience to do anything online.
While staying in this capital of Exumas (there are maybe about 100 people leaving here, looks more like a village with one beatup road and couple old cars, the only concreate buildings belong to two banks and BTC phone office) Kevin was able to earn $50 from the boat he
offered to change zincs on the prop via free diving and holding breath for some time under the water and. We spent this money on the same day in the nearby bar... The other day Kevin's ability to play pool paid off well - he got a second place in the pool tournament with the prize $15, which payed for our drinks, but the drive home in the dinghy at night was absolutelly horrable!
We play voleyball at the Voleyball beach, take long walks on the island, talk with other cruisers who is going further south to Caribbeans, swim, drink and .. wait for two packages to arrive (supposed to show up couple days ago, but hey, it's island time....)
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Feb.23
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Sad day for us today! All our friends are left in the morning to the next islands - Conseption and Rum Cays, but we have to stay in Georgetown because we did not get our packages sent DHL OVERNIGHT(!) to the shipping spot at the store Top2Bottom. Well, the overnight grown into a week now, and it's a possibility to get them maybe (please please please) tomorrow, on Monday.
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Feb.24 -27
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We got our packages on the Monday morning, two of them! Rushing to Georgetown to get more free water, gas and some other provision.
In two hours we were on the road, finally leaving this city (as we call it Sun City, considering the avarage age of cruisers here is 67).
Running with full sails and hard working engine with 7nm/hour to make it to the next stop - Long Island north tip - at the day light.
It's very dangerous to anchore later than 4 pm because you cannot see any corral heads and reefs in your parking spot. And, every island is just inpested with those corral heads - meanning, one wrong move and you get either stack in corrals or get a hole in the hull of your boat.
Next day in early morning we sail further, to the middle of the Long Island - it's 40 hours of motorsail. But the good news is that we finally were able to catch up with our "boddy boats" - Island Perl and Journey. We parked at the marina (expensive, $2 a foot), but needed to top up on fuel and water before southern islands which don't have much provision to offer.
It was a great day - Kevin caught a HUGE mahi-mahi!!! It will feed us and our friends for at least couplde weeks. We had 5 mahi-mahi on the hook, but were able to get out only one in the cockpit. The las fish broke the line and took our "lucky" bate, which we got as a present many years ago from the caribbean poor fisherman. Oh well, we hope we could find another lucky one soon.
At night we had amazing dinner with the fresh grilled fish and decided to more south tomorrow - need to use a great window of good weather.
Approaching the next island - Crooked Island - we hit the corral head! Oh boy, we hope that corral did not damage our hull.
This is was the best example of "not to do" - anchoring at the time when sun is not over your head!
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Feb. 27
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Leaving at 5:40 am, before even light, so we can make it earlier to the next stop - Acklins Island - we don't want to hit the corral head anymore!
We made it safe to the anchorage this time, did not hit any corral reefs, but it took us four attempts to securely anchore the boat!
Each time our anchore would hit just a corral or a rock on the bottom, instead of sand. We were parking more than one hour!
Kevin had to dive to check the anchore and surraundings and just to be sure, we had to set our second anchore. That was some work!
Thanks our friends, they got their dinghy down to help us.
It's a beatiful anchorage, such a serenity! Only two of our boats in the whole bay and water is amazingly clear and calm. We got very
good night sleep!
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Feb. 28- March 2
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The weather is dictating us to move ahead to our last island in Bahamas - Great Inguana. And, it's a bit far, so we have to go overnight. Leaving at 3pm our beatiful anchorage in Acklins Island, so we can make it before the weather gets really nasty - by early morning in Great Inguana.
The first part of the trip, from 3pm to about 6am next day, was not so bad. We got rained, and some squals with lightning passed us without any harm. We had to double reef the main because in the night (no moon!) it was hard to predict where we get gails. All the trip we had to motorsail because wind was not enough to get us moving no sails only.
The last part of the trip, near the Mattew Town in Great Inguana, we got some really big following seas, it was a bit scarry. I even had to wake up Kevin before his watch duty to take the helm. But we made it safe and did not get any water in the boat.
We looked for the safe anchorage for couple hours, because of the northerly winds and this island is not very protected from this type of wind. It was a bit nervebreaking to get through one narrow cut in the corral reefs to get to the anchorage, besides, visibility for navigation between the reefs was very poor since sun just started rising. But we made it save and anchored fine, now we can relax, get morning coffee and breakfas. Oh that feels good!
We stayed at this secluded place for couple days enjoying swimming, diving and catching lobsters. Kevin caught the biggest "walking" lobster we have ever seen! Rork had to help him to carry this huge sea animal to our dinghy. And, of course, we had absolutelly amizing and feeling dinner (and next day lunch) with lobsters.
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March 3 - 5
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These are our last days in Bahamas, we are waiting for favorable weather to sail to Haiti. We moved to the new anchoroge at Mattew Town which is better protected from the easterlies winds. Explored all the town back and force, and yes, we found wifi finally.
It took us the whole day to get diesel and water to provision our boats for the next long run. Poor Kevin and Rork, they had to carry, then drive dinghy multiple times to the boats from the govermental dock at Mattew Town using just 4 jerry cans.
And at 4 pm we are off to the new unkown for us destination - Haiti!
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March 6-7
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At last we are in Haiti! The place which USA goverment is not suggesting to visit at all, and insurances do not cover damage of the boats traveled in Haiti. We were very cautions approaching in the early morning unknown land (the charts don't have good info on the shores of Haiti either). We picked Pointe de la Perla bay for landing, at least just to hang out and sleep after overnight passage.
Closer to that place we were greeted by a bunch of the haitian fishing boats, and one of the fishermen (his name is College) started speaking English with us. We were so greatly surprised and happy, because none of us four speaks any French.
College showed us where we can drop our anchors, said no problem, stay, right at the shore off the beatiful little fishining village.
The scenery of this village is amaizing: situated on the beach, with houses (namely hutts) built right on the beach, behind the beach there are tall mountains of different hights, beatiful blue water. The place is just from the fairy tail, really a pearl.
It seems we were back in time, at least 200 - 300 years back in time. The village doesn't have electricity, no running water (they have a well with rain water which as we understood doesn't have clean drinking water - the villagers boil their water trying to clean it from cholera), and all haitians live like a big family, very close community.
While we were anchoring, the whole population of the village gathered on the beach watching us - including babies, children, grown ups and elderlies. As we learned, they don't have much white visitors by the boats, maybe once in couple months.
Then our new friend College came with his boat to pick us up to take to the shore so we can visit his village. Such a hospitality!
We gave candy to kids and their faces were so happy while putting a treasured pieces of sugar in their mouths - we guessed, they don't have much treats at all. All population is skinny and fit, seems not much food other than fish they get around. There were a lot of goats around, and their milk is sold to the big nearby city - the way they support themselves.
The pastor proudly showed us a community church (which remineded an old hutt), there were old benches for villagers and a set of drums, which pastor plays during their masses. Next we visited their newly rebuilt school and College asked what we can do for church and school, they really wanted us to give them some paint for school. But we don't have any paint on the boat, and if we had, not in the big amounts. So, we donated what we could - some cloths, shoes, paper, pencils, some dry food. Each of our boats donated an old sails for their community fishing boats. We felt bad that we could not give much more to these nice people.
Funny, we were treated as some higher up officials from United Nations, they had placed four chairs on the beach for us to sit and all the villagers stopped all their chores to stay around us and just... looked at us. We even were presented with the last four bottles of President beer, which they kept in only freezer in their village (they have couple little solar panels for it's operation).
Kevin started entertaining children by playing some games - jumping rope and limbo. Everybody were so happy and laughing - that you can understand without any words!
The anchorage was very rocky at night, and we left the next morning to the next Haity stop.
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March 8-10
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We had very long overnight passage, 32 hours long and arrived at La Vache at around 3:30 pm. We were very exhausted when we entered this bay. The anchorage is beautifully situated in just some hundred feet from the village on the beach. There are a lot of selfmade sailing boats (without ANY motors) sailing in the bay around us and some are dragged on the shore.
At the moment we arrived, haitian boys of ages 6 to 16 attacked us on their selfmade "dugout" canues, or on the worn out paddle boards. And, of course, everybody is just paddling, no engines! There are already 6 of thoses little floating devices hanging at our boat and we here French from any direction: "Madam, laundry", "buy our bread", "do you need to clean the boat", "trash?","give me something", etc. Ohhh, it's so annoying especially when you try to anchor for already third time! (anchor is not getting set in this bottom for some reason). Then one big boat with an engine hits our boat on the side (the water taxi) with some official guy on board who demands $5 to pay him right now! Oh well, ok, here is $5 and get lost. Ignoring all this caccophony is just impossible and I lose my temper and yell "everybody shut up! get off my boat!". Yes, they all finally shut up, but all the floating devices were still haning out on the sides of our boat.
This anchorage was much better, calmer and we all get good night sleep. Until...at about 5 am one of the neighboring boats started dragging to the shore. Villagers came to help to stop and move this boat to other safer place. It was very nice of them to help without asking anything in the return.
We arranged with local teenage boys purchase and delivery of disel for both boats from the bigger city - Las Cays (5 mi away). We were so glad we did not have to do that ourselves!
Rork put their dinghy down and took us all to the shore. It was so nice to be on the sturdy ground again, finally!
First thing first - we need to find wifi. Surprised we found an "internet cafe" in this primitive farmer/fishermen settlement, considering that this place doesn't have electric power and running water. Funny. The internet place belongs to the young haitian with couple brothers and he has solar pannels to keep his place running.
Very quickly we were disappointed with the speed of internet (very very slow) and went for a walk with our new haitian friends to check around. The life of haitians is very primitive. Most of them have selfmade sailboats for fishing, women are farming, taking care of cows and goats, and childres and houshold. Women don't smile in Haiti! we figured they have very tough life.
The La Vache island is very beatiful and very green. To bad that mangoes are not ripe yet... we tried to visit a nice house where some canadian lives, but he was not home, or just did not want to talk with us... We are back to internet cafe and found our dinner ready on the table (we asked them before if they can feed us). We had a white rice, fried plantains and fried little fish (the whole fish with head and eyes and tail). Food was delicious. After we almost finished, the gate opened and a bunch (about 10 or so) little 7-8 years old girls showed up all dressed up with some kind of pink. It was bizar and very funny. They sat at our table and we offered them to eat whatever we did not finish at the table... well, they ate the rest of the dinner as well they cleaned our plates too! Poor girls, seems they don't have much food to eat very often. Then Kevin, of course, started to game - call out your name holding the hands.. that was hillarious because none of girls understood anything said in English.
It's time to get to the boats and to our surprise we could not find our dinghy parked on the beach (wherever we left it) and we started to worry that Rork's dinghy was stollen! In about 20 min it showed up, with Justin (one of our haitian helpers) driving it. We were so frustrated that haitian boys took a dinghy without permission! It was not very plesant accident... At they explained later they used a dinghy to drive one of the boys with injured foot to the hospital. Maybe, or maybe it's not true, but we were glad to have Rork's dinghy back. Next day we left very frustrated this pretty place, we felt that we were cheated when dinghy was used without permission...
So, we are back on the road, and the next step is Dominican Republic.
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March 11- 13
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The first stop in Dominican Republic - Isla Beata. As soon as we dropped our anchores late afternoon (the ride here was very rough! we were going about 3.5 - 4 mi/hours at most, with the waves and wind right at the bow, very exhausting) the boat with coast guard officials showed up and got in for checking our documents. Kevin and Rork presented the coast guard with a little "present" - a bottle of rum and he was very very happy about that. Uhh, keep officials happy!
Next morning we went ashore - to visit a little fishermen village and our "friend" coast guard. As we showed up, they put four chairs for us and a coast guard set in the front of us and asked if would like coffee. Of course we would like coffee!
His wife prepared coffee for everybody in the outside "kitchen" and we enjoyed it very much. Then we were asked if we would like a coconut, oh yes, of course we would like a coconut! Some young guy cut 4 coconuts from the nearby palm and cut them open for us. That was delicious. We tried to make a conversation with coast guard and his helpers, but it did not go far - our Spanich is limited and his English is NONE. We thanks for great hospitality and went for a walk around this little village. We bought some fresh fish for our dinner, even though it was not cheap, and we did not have our money changed yet from dollars to pecos. Dinner was great!
Next day we left this cute place for another long overnight passage to Barahona.
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March 14 - 17
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We got heavy rain during our night trip to Barahona, and seas were rough as well. So, we are exhausted at tired again....
We made it to the channel at about 4:30am - it's too early to enter the place we are not sure about and which has cargo ships traffic.
So, we drifted around for couple hours, just waiting for the sun to rise at 7am.
As soon as we anchored our boats, a boat with officials, coast guards, showed up first at Rork's and then our place. They checked documents and inside of the boat, and made Kevin to put his dinghy down. In an hour we got checked in and were ready to explore this town.
It's a relatively big industrial city - with cargo ships transporting sugar canes and something else, lyminar mines and some other industries. People here are NOT begging for anything, this is such a nice change! Seems everybody here is happy and doing fine, even though it's dirty on the streets - the trash is everywhere! Dominicans really love music - merenge, salsa, regaton. You can hear this music in every corner of city you go. We got new cim cards for the phones, some internet time, went to the supermercado and market, walked a lot in the town. We got a local guy Fernando to guide us around the town and since he speaks very well English, he could help us with translation and actually, teach us Spanish a bit. Kevin and Rork are slowly getting up to speed with Spanish, yea, that is helpful.
On the March 15th our friends "Island Perl", Rork and Sherry, left at night to Boca Chica where they have to meet their visitors and spent some time with Sherry's oldest child. It was so sad to separate! We had such a great and fun time together, helped each other, did all our trip planning together, but it's time for separation besides we have plans to sail down south anyway.
We said our "good byes" and we hope to sail together again maybe next year, will see....
On the next morning we had to be on the shore at 8:30am for our car trip to the Lago Enriquillo (a huge lake) with one of the coast guards and a friend of our guide Fernando. The trip was long, about 6 hours around the lake, but we have seen so much! The dominical nature, other cities, villages, parks and just how people live. We ate at the little places - just fried everything and drunk a lot of beer, including our driver-coast guard Ivan. We would stop about every hour at some bar on the way for a huge bottle of Presidente beer to share for three. And... we did not have seat belts on the back seats, and... everybody drives here crazy, and.. we saw one semi overturned in the ditch (how much beer he had while he was driving?????). But we made it safe back to our boat afternoon.