S/V L'ORIENT

Video of Concord Falls, Grenada On each island, I'm forced to submit to at least one "walk to the interior" of wherever we are. These treks invariably involve schlepping to the island's highest point, lots of steps, and the obligatory water fall. "Ooooohhh.......that's really cool........so different than the other 25 waterfalls I've recently seen." Just can't get enough of walking through the jungle This walk ended up being quite hazardous as well. As you can see from the picture, the boulders are all covered in slime and slippery moss. Kirstin and I both fell several times into the water. Even Elvis' paying a bit too close attention to Kirstin didn't stop her from dropping into the river a few times.  Elvis with his  machete (home made shotgun not returned by police, apparently) Anyway, this hike ended up being worth it due to our colorful tour guide, Elvis. Elvis is a proud herb farmer (read between the lin...

So Kirstin and I are trying to walk off last night's pizza and 4 drinks. OK, we'd have to walk to Chile to do that, but you know what I mean. We set off on our favorite jaunt ("favorite is generous.......I hate walking, but I hate nagging more). Almost immediately, a very homely dog "adopts us". That is, he begins walking with us as though he's our dog. Tail wagging, all full of enthusiasm............we name him Pee-Wee. He looks like a German Shepherd with extremely short legs. And he's ugly. Very ugly. Whatever. As we chug up and down each hill, Pee-Wee keeps up. It's going on two miles now and we're starting to worry that Pee-Wee might try to swim to our boat. Now I'd normally be convincing Kirstin that we need this dog, but there's just nothing to like about Pee-Wee. Just an ugly weird looking mutt. Then, we round a corner and three large guard dogs come racing after us as we approach the intersection. The owner left the gat...

We have now been in Grenada for over a month. Our initial plan called for this to be a mere pitstop; a time to pull the boat out and do some maintenance work before proceeding to Bonaire. We do most of our boat work ourselves but there are certain hazardous chemicals found in boat paint that kill barnacles (the toughest, most resilient little guys on the planet).........and yet are OK for us to be around? So we worked hard for six hard days on other projects while the local pros painted the bottom.  Boat looks good.......ready to sail into the sunset and......then the funniest thing happened - Tom and I both fell in love with Grenada. Initially it was the anchorages and the local people that captivated us. Then it was the other cruisers with which we became close friends. Last week we got to know the countryside a bit better and it is fascinating.  Occasionally I am able to talk Tom into playing tourist for a day. I find that the promise of food, a "short" hike and...

Unbelievable as it may sound, Kirstin and I have spent the sum total of 15 minutes apart since January. We hadn't really planned it that way, but marrying your drinking, exercise, and sports buddy allows you to multi-task and economize on the number of people in your life. Yesterday, we organized fun, yet separate days with our German friends Joern and Nate (yes, the ones with the 40 hp outboard). While Kirstin and Nate went to the spa and the beach, Joern and I went to the golf course and followed that up by watching a Euro 2012 game (Germany vs Greece..........only Germany showed up). Both Kirstin and I were forced to switch our brains to "same sex communication mode", meaning that Kirstin had someone with her who chattered back with equal intensity while Joern and I happily returned to "guy talk mode".........an economy of words. Tom- "Nice shot" Joern- "Thanks" Joern- "Bier ?" (translation- beer) Tom- "Genau" ...

The perfect couple So last night, Joern, Nate (pronounced yearn and nata), Kirstin and I were having a few drinks at the bar. OK, maybe more than a few drinks. Anyway, I've been giving Joern shit about his dinghy not being in the water (he's working on his boat in the dockyard). Anyway, somehow the four of us decided it would be a good idea to launch his dinghy while intoxicated. What could go wrong? OK, first............he's got to pump it up. Pump, pump, pump. OK good. It holds air and is good to go. Then, he lowers the outboard to me from his boat, which is on jacks. This is where the problems begin. Joern's former job is to build Airbus jets. Clearly, he feels that all vehicles (dinghies and jets) should be similarly powered. He's got a 40 hp outboard on this dinghy. As a point of comparison, his yacht has a 45 hp diesel engine. You get the picture...........it's significantly OVERPOWERED. We struggle and stagger with Joern's outboard and get it ...

It had been 8 months. Our planning, which included redundant spare toilet gaskets, diesel engine injectors, and assorted other minutia made no provision for this..............my hair. Kirstin enjoys a weird phenomenon whereby she never needs a haircut. Her hair seems to sprout, mature, then fall out at precisely the right time.........like a strangely but perfectly choreographed ballet on her head. My head, however, is another story. Unless I keep it short, a wild anarchy breaks out. Huge fins appear in back, making me look like a 1959 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. My ears disappear, and due to my mantra that one bottle of soapy-like product is like any other (so shampoo and body wash are thus perfect substitutes), my hair gets frizzy (google Sai Baba for an image of what I mean). Before... At this point, luck intervened. Arja, our Finnish friend is a hair stylist. I could immediately tell my hair annoyed her by the way she coyly told me "Tom........your hair is annoying...

Our SOS - Thanks Dad! It sounds easy.........."let's just go the Caribbean, relax, cut our ties to the rat race". The reality can be a bit different. Certain governmental tax agencies don't allow citizens to just disappear for a year. For that matter, neither do Athleta, Victoria's Secret, and Mastercard. Thank God for our SOS (Shoreside Operations and Support) group. My mom and dad have managed our pile of mail and correspondence we never could have expected. They have filled out numerous documents, made multiple trips to the post office and basically managed much of our shore life. It does set up some awkward future moments. Since Herb (my dad) responded to our audit issue for us, I'm imagining the next time we show up in Wisconsin and one of us is wearing a new shirt - "Sure you can afford that?" On this Father's Day, we want to give a special thank you to him for always helping us out and embracing our crazy sailing life. You truly ar...

We're still on the south coast of Grenada. Most of the seasonal cruisers have now pulled their boats out of the water for hurricane season, leaving only the hard-core and crazy on the water. Not sure which group we belong to. The interesting thing is that the bay now reminds me of visiting my grandmother in Leisure Village in Lakehurst, NJ. We all get together each night..........nothing but time on our hands. We watch Euro-2012 together...........dinner parties...........cocktail hour.............and just sit around and chat about nothing. A quick drive-by on the dinghy turns into 4 hours and 3 rum punches. Arja working her magic in our normally underused galley Our homies are "the Germans" (Joern and Nate)........"Finns" (Henti and Arja)..........and our old Annapolis acquaintances (Linda and Tim). His name is Tim Ball; curiously, he named his boat "Matsu" after the goddess of something. Never figured some smar-tass like me would start ca...

"Tom, you didn't ruin my brown towel did you?"  What ? Are you F____ing kidding me ? "No, mahn.........bottom paint eez $400 US per gallon". Gulp. We needed four gallons, too. I eyed the door of the store and the security camera. Could I just pick them up and run. No chance. Each gallon is packed with barnacle killing chemicals and weighs like 25 lbs. Maybe 25 years ago but no way now. "Kirstin, put this under your shirt"............no, that won't work. My pulse started racing. Damn, I picked the wrong day to give up muscle relaxers, didn't I ? Well, boats are boats, right ? Kirstin and I are back in the water after completing our half-time maintenance. Based on a bad dream, I ended up re-checking to make sure I had screwed the propellor on as tightly as was possible.........things like that. While on the hard, we've met some amazing people. Joern and Renate are these super cool Germans who commiserated with us during our boat wo...

Kirstin and I were completely exhausted from our boat work. So what should we do? Oh, yeah........we're on vacation for a year. It's cocktail time. So we go across the bay to the Tiki Bar, aka the town square for the non-sketchy part of the island. Why did we chose that? Well, there are only two options that involve a reasonable chance of personal survival after dark, and Barracuda was performing there. Who is Barracuda? Well, he looks just like the guy from the Autoland Dealership in New Jersey who sold me a defective Dodge Colt in 1984. Italian looking, overweight, jet-black hair with graying temples.........you know; when your car salesman rubs his hands on his forehead and says he has to talk to the manager.........Barracuda is that manager. Anyway, he's also an awesome guitar player.........with one unusual flourish. He adds a ten minute guitar solo to every song.............even songs you only hear at weddings.........."Cel-e-brate good times c'mo...

Zombie sighting Sometimes the only response is the simplest.....................today, we're up early to have the boat hauled out of the water. Kirstin goes topside to secure some rigging. "Anything interesting up there ?" Her response is "nothing interesting except for a black zombie coming towards our boat". OK, very few things can cause me to spit out Honey Nut Cheerios, but black zombies are one of them. I didn't even have an AK-47, which I'm pretty sure is the only way to kill a zombie. Zombie!! Not 10 minutes later, another first for our Caribbean trip. "You have to come out here.............we're witness to the sea-faring version of the "walk of shame". And we were. The boat next to us (a really cool 65 foot classic yacht) was crewed by a 20 something Australian captain and his bro-friend. By the way, the Australian has flip flop strap tattoos so he doesn't have to wear shoes - we have seen him on several di...

We celebrated the start of hurricane season in the same way we celebrate everything.........with chardonnay and pizza. Last night, the sky got a bit spooky, the leaves on the trees were blowing and rattling in an unnerving way. I asked our server (our new friend Kamile) what was going on and she just said "hurricane season". Yikes.  So it really surprised us that some old friends from the Caribbean 1500 (the regatta we participated in.......Hampton to Tortola) e-mailed to say that they got their boat trashed in.........Hampton, VA.They sailed from Canada to Grenada and most of the way back only to have problems in the Chesapeake, of all places.  It seems that a tornado swept through the marina and damaged their boat quite a bit. Dancing Lizard (their boat) is going to be limping for a while. None of our homies are in this particular bay, but we were able to witness a major brawl on board the Italian boat next door. We think that one of the crew dropped their main outbo...