Happy Canada Day!!

Well, here we are, still in Prickley Bay, Grenada and loving it. We actually meant to leave either Monday or Tuesday (today) night but for reasons I will explain we decided to wait. It's a bit convoluted so hang in there.

We had our first "gathering" at the boat on Sunday. A friend of Julie and Graham's, Chris, stopped by to pay his respects. J & G had told him to look out for us so when he got here he made it a point to say hello. Super nice guy. Anyway, while he was on board, a couple of his friends, Rene and Cheryl, were passing by in their dinghy and so they stopped to say hello. They are from Ontario (Chris is from Whistler). Next thing we knew, 2 friends of R&C stopped by, Dave and Tom, both from the USA and then their wives, Michelle and Rose, came by in another dinghy. Great fun!!

How does this relate to going to Tobago you ask. Well, Dave, Tom and spouses are also going to Tobago and when we heard this we decided/were asked to come along - buddy boating. The original intention was to leave on Monday night as we had planned, but Monday Dave came over and told us that a Tropical Wave was forming over Dakar in Africa with a possibility of it turning into a tropical storm.

Not all tropical waves turn into storms but if conditions are right it can happen. Of course a tropical storm can become a cyclone and that is like a hurricane. If this tropical wave developed into something, it would likely be down around Tobago in which case, after we got there we would have to leave to go a bit further southwest. Final decision, wait until Friday to see what it is going to do and then act accordingly. There you go - short story made long!!

In the meantime, we have been working at stuff we wanted to get done, some of which we had intended to do in Tobago. We (mostly Cheryl) cleaned the boat thoroughly to rid ourselves of the last of the "on-the-hard" dirt. We siliconed where we needed to stop a couple of leaks we had. It has been raining down here so much that it feels like spring in Alberta, but it did help us to find leaks we had not noticed before because we had not had the amount of rain that caused them to show.

Another big thing was finishing up the block and tackle for the dinghy davits. We are almost where we want to be with that and it is now ready for the maiden voyage with the dinghy hoisted out of the water behind the boat rather than trailing us in the water or upside down on the front deck. It looks good. The only thing we need to do is replace the rope used in the tackle with wire but we can't get the wire here so will wait for Trinidad for that.

We also found out some information on places in Venezuela that we want to visit. We have been kind of reluctant to consider Venezuela because of security but after talking to people who have "been there, done that", we have found out that while there are places you really should not go, there are a lot of places that have great security and are well worth the visit. But I am getting ahead of myself and that is something I really want to avoid.

Final thoughts - regarding getting ahead of myself - both Cheryl and I came to the realization that we have not totally been able to become "live for the day" type of people YET. We had both been a little bothered the last few days and when I finally figured it out, I realized that I had been looking for problem areas in the future that may or may not exist. By that I mean that I was fretting about things like security, weather, anchorages etc etc etc for places and things we may never do. I had to re-focus and realize that right now we are going to Tobago PERIOD. No fret, no sweat about what we may or may not do after that. Talking it over with Cheryl I found that she had been doing the same thing. We'll work on it!!!

Other final thought - I found myself almost making decisions on when and where to move from here based on - wait for it - what I thought you, our faithful readers, would enjoy most. Like, "we can't stay in Grenada any longer, our readers will be getting bored of hearing the same old things" or "I wonder where people would find it interesting to read about next". Admittedly these were stray thoughts and didn't really have a chance to influence any of the decision making but when I realized that those thoughts had been floating around, it certainly reminded me of some of the old stuff I thought I had gotten rid of.

Always time for learning, always time for growth

Cheryl's final thought - Today was Canada Day and we missed our annual barbecue with family and friends. We did hoist a humungous flag (3 feet by 6 feet) that Randy and Aleitha brought for us and four smaller flags along the sides of the deck. They did attract attention from other Canadians. We also sent out Canada Day greetings to all fellow Canadians on the Grenada Net this morning. This is a broadcast on the VHF radio every morning (Monday to Saturday) for cruisers to get the weather forcast and pass on and get information 0n who is arriving, who is leaving, social activities, services required and 'Bargains from the Bilge' (anything you have that you want to sell). Today was rainy and overcast most of the day so as Griff mentioned we mainly worked inside.

THE VIEW FROM OUR COCKPIT