Paul's Update

Hello everyone, I have not posted as promised so I thought I would give you a quick synopsis from the beginning. Our flight down was uneventful until we reached Barbados. Our luggage was to be transferred from US Air to Liat Air for us, we went through Customs and Immigration and on to the Liat counter to check in and get our boarding passes. The nice people at Liat then informed us that our baggage would not be transferred and that we would have to go back through customs and pick it up ourselves. We found our baggage but no scuba tanks that Dave had paid $100.00 US each to have shipped. We made a claim for the tanks and ran back to the Liat counter. By the time our luggage was checked it was 5:00 pm, our flight was to leave at 5:20pm and we still had to go through security. After security we ran to our gate to find out that they were in the process of taking our luggage off of the plane, we would have to wait until tomorrow for the next flight and probably repay for the flight. We were standing there feeling very upset when a young fellow came running across the tarmac, they were letting us on after all. What a relief!!!!! We arrived at Daruma around 9:00pm had a dinner of trail mix and a bottle of wine that the previous owner had left for us, then turned in for the night after what turned out to be an exhausting day.

The first morning Dave and Traci went to pick up a rental car and get some groceries, I stayed behind to start doing some work. I started by scrubbing down the decks, but after about an hour and a half I was beat, head pounding and dripping wet. It was going to take some time to get acclimatised to the Grenada sun. The night before while in bed we heard a lot of noise, snapping and popping something like a fireplace crackling. It turns out that it was the barnacles on the hull. The boat had been sitting in the water since the spring so there was about 2 inches of growth on the hull, a combination of barnacles and moss, even feather dusters which we use to pay a lot of money for when we had our salt water aquarium. It took Dave and I between 2 and 3 days to clean the bottom using putty knives, and all of our muscle at times to get the barnacles off. I would never have believed that it could be such a difficult job. As Dave and I continued to work on the boat Traci scrubbed and scrubbed inside the hot boat day after day.
By the end of the week things were coming together and we were waiting for Shannon the arrive, but one of her flights were canceled so we had to pick here up on Friday night. We went to the airport to get her and we were a little concerned when we did not see her flight on the schedule, but she did arrive on time and everything was fine.

We went sailing for the first time on Sunday afternoon and it was a great experience as it was likely one of the roughest days that we will experience, the winds were blowing a steady 28 knots gusting to 35 knots. It teaches you very quickly the power of good old mother nature. ( 35 knots is about 40 miles per hour.) Most of our sailing has been in 18 to 20 knots of wind and we are consistently cruising at about 8 knots. The sailing has been a little difficult as we have been sail very close to the wind, but as we go north it gets easier as we will be heading more north westerly rather then north east. So that gives you a little more information about the beginning of the trip and I will try to add my two cents as Shannon continues to type the Blog.
I wrote this note while aboard Daruma in the bay at Fort de France, Martinique.
Take care everyone, Paul