Thoughts and More Grenada

First thing right off the bat - it is absolutely great having Julie, Graham, Alex and Amelia here. We could get spoiled with having people we love so close and it could slow us down BUT we need to get "on the road again" .

We have taken turns visiting back and forth and it is so much fun when the kids come out and swim off the boat. They were out the other day and played with some friends they had made from Zen, a cataraman from Rhode Island. Cheryl and I had met them previously and so when they (Zen) went out to St Davids to get some work done, we told Julile and Graham to keep an eye out for them. The kids are the same age as Millie and Alex but the girl is older and the boy younger.

It is also fun to go out to Westerhall where the Perry's apartment is. It is a really nice 4-plex set way back off the main road up a dirt lane. It is brand new and so seems out of place in the "jungle" but there are lots of new houses and apartments that are similarly placed in other parts of Grenada. When we were out there last time we helped the kids with their home schooling a bit and at other times Millie has taken us for a walk to show us all the different food plants/trees around the place and Alex is still showing me the ins and outs of electronic games.

We also met the Perry's at Grand Anse one day. It is a beautiful beach - the type that the advertising posters show when they are trying to attract tourists.

As much as we enjoy being here with the Perrys, we are also anxious to get underway on the next leg of our journey and begin again to visit places we haven't previously been. This brings up other thoughts of the journey that I will share with you.

When we began our adventure, people asked us about pirates and security and being safe. My answer - still a valid one I think - is that if you take care and use precautions and stay away from certain areas, the chance of being threatened or accosted or whatever can be minimized. Our intent initially when we got this far south and got into the less safe zones such as Trinidad and particularly Venezuela was to take all the precautions and not sail in certain areas and make sure we always sailed with other boats etc etc.

After being in Trinidad and trying to decide where we wanted to spend the rest of the hurricane season, we have had a change - not so much of viewpoints but of priorities. As you had previously heard, Trinidad has a lot of violence. While there we became accustomed to thinking of security first - walk in groups, don't go certain places after dark, take a stick in case of feral dogs. This is not to say that all places in Trinidad were like that but before making any plans, security was certainly one of the first things you took into consideration. We had no intention of waiting out the hurricane season down there as some people do so it became a matter of deciding what we did want to do. Our first opportunity - to travel up the Macareo River - was put to rest when Trinidad stopped selling fuel to yachts - or to any foreign flagged vessel. Since we had picked up some parts for Artemo in Trinidad that we needed to deliver to Grenada we were able to fill in that gap but then what?

As I said above, originally I had opted for the idea that it would be alright to visit Venezuela if we took the proper precautions - lift and lock the dinghy every night, lock our lazarettes (deck lockers), make sure everything on deck was chain locked, sleep with the boat locked down and don't go out at night. We had thought we would leave Grenada, travel to Los Tostigos in convoy with other boats and then to Margarita the same way. We could then decide whether we wanted to go to Laguna Grande and Medrigal Village, then Tortuga and finally leave Venezuela via the outer islands for the Netherland Antilles.

After a good deal of discussion regarding the whole scenario as I have just painted it, Cheryl and I both realized that this is not what we signed up for. Sure we could do all of those things in order to visit Venezuela but it would be kind of like deciding that there was a beautiful museum well worth seeing in the middle of an area populated by thieves and murderers. If we took the proper precautions, went in a group, didn't stray from the path leading directly from point A to point B, didn't go at night and realize that we would always be looking looking over our shoulders and in the end could still get robbed, we would likely find the museum fascinating, BUT..............

Bottom line is we signed up to sail on a magical journey, part of this journey being the freedom to choose options that would provide us the most memorable adventure possible - in a positive way!!! The possibilites for options are endless so from this point on, we have decided to let the Gods of Wind, Storm and the Sea be the providers of all the stressors we will encounter. Our focus will be on seeking the beauty and wonder that lies in wait. Flowery? - you bet - but heartfelt!!

One last thing - I feel sadness when, through the research we do regarding where we are going and what we are doing, a recurring theme is the seeming increase in the need to tend to the safety factors of our voyage. I speak to people who sailed here and many other places 10-20-25 years ago and it was not always like this. My belief in the basic goodness of humanity, however, tempered with the knowledge that we can't live in the past and we can't bury our heads in the sand, tells me that this is still for the most part a pretty precious world we live in and we need to work to keep it that way.