Shannon Arrives Safely

I am here safe and sound from a long trip with a layover in Toronto as my 6am flight to Toronto was cancelled so unable to make my connections all the way through to Grenada,,,, stayed at the Four Points Sheridan. Had an uneventful night and made the successful journey on Friday. Traci has cleaned this boat all week and Paul and Dave have worked on all things mechanical. Hot, hot, hot, and I don't mean hot people here, I mean 100 degrees F. And the nights are bad!! I came down 5 days after the other three on purpose so they can inform me what extra things to bring. I brought down an Xtreme cooler I bought at Wal-Mart and filled it up with sheets, mattress covers, air fresheners, baking soda, snorkels and Jiff peanut butter for Dave. Traci was in heaven sleeping on 300 tread cound sheets on Friday night. Daruma smells heavenly now.

We went out for our first sail yesterday in extremely rough weather with Bernhard, the previous owner (Daruma is docked at his house). Dave and Paul learned everything while Traci and I hung on tight, with Traci with a blue bucket, that we have designated as the “barf” bucket. We enjoyed the sail as 90% of the time we will be in much calmer waters, but to be tested like that with a seasoned sailor aboard made it all worthwhile.

I did send a pic to our blog yesterday but unfortunately, the internet is not reliable and all my text was lost in cyberspace. So, I'm actually typing this in a word doc and will try to copy and paste. Today we went to the one grocery store and provisioned with food, wine and beer. We have about 2 weeks worth of food incase we don't provision again until we pick up James in Guadeloupe. We are filling up with water as I type this. We are leaving first thing in the morning for Carricou which is just a short distance away and still a part of Grenada. We are not sure on internet there so you may not get a blog entry for a few days. After Carricou we will sail/motor (we have two motors) over to St. Vincent and the Grenadines as we want to snorkel big time.

There is a boat of local men right near Daruma that go out every day to catch/dive for conch for a couple of hours, then come back and whack those shells to get the “meat” out. They must supply the local markets and restaurants. We went out for lunch today in a restaurant and Paul had conch. He loved it.

I am sitting on the back cockpit of Daruma right now and enjoying the breeze. Thanks for the emails, we do try to reply but if we don't it is because all of a sudden no internet. This is the Caribbean and everything is unpredictable.

Stay tuned to our next blog and pictures, which may come separately.