Tag Archives: carricou

Purgatory Hell – Jekyll Island, GA USA, September 4, 2024

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Purgatory Hell – Jekyll Island, GA USA, September 4, 2024

It has been over 8 weeks now and we just kinda heard from insurance.  We are somehow supposed to exercise diplomacy and patience but man it is hard!  As of now here is what we know…the insurer has one quote from a salvage company and is waiting on a second one (hopefully we will get one in the next day or so) and they will “tell us what our options are.”  Let’s translate this.  It means the insurer likely wants to total the boat and is trying to get the highest bid possible for the salvage boat.  If we cannot match or beat the bid then…we have to make some tough choices.  We need to decide if we even want to keep the boat, if so how much would we offer insurance to keep her and if we cannot come to an agreement, Ron has to go down again and retrieve the rest of our personal belongings and give the boat to the insurer to do with what they will.  One decision we have made is that we are not done sailing.  I am not sure the timing or what it would look like but more adventure to come and boy have we learned a lot through this entire process.

In the meantime, we have spent our time visiting out daughters in Ohio (daughter #1 was home from Spain so we took advantage of that).  Now we are back visiting my parents preparing for Ron’s likely trip back to Grenada.  We are also watching the weather as we are still in the peak time for additional hurricanes, which may impact Ron’s trip and frankly, the boat overall.  My Mother has had some recent health concerns and my Dad needed help building a shed in his back yard. Those along with a few other projects seem to keep he and Ron busy.  Note, we currently have the RV here in Georgia and if a hurricane is on track to hit  here, we will need to move the RV inland.  But it has been great to see family, Ron and I have started running here on the island which is beautiful, and depending on the decision from insurance, we may use this as a jumping off point to head west til Christmas…

Beauty everywhere!
Drift wood beach.

As far as the people of Carriacou, they still have no power, aid relief workers and food is no longer arriving, and the looting has begun on the island bringing concern for what will be left even if we do decide to keep the boat.  So far, the boat yard has cut all the rigging we had planned to save making a fix to her even more unlikely and it is certain we will need to have her moved to Clark’s Court Grenada in order to have any work done.  With the keels damaged, no mast, and a laundry list of other issues, I am not certain the boat is seaworthy enough to “sail” her south to get all of the items done.  Not to mention Clark’s Court doesn’t have room for us nor is any of the talent available til mid-November at the earliest cutting short any sailing season we may have.  So many decisions, it will be an interesting few weeks from here.

Season 3 Comes to an End – Carricou, Grenada, April 12, 2024

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Season 3 Comes to an End – Carricou, Grenada, April 12, 2024

And just like that…it’s over.  We were both more than a little sad this season is over.  Since Christmas it seems like we have both really gotten in the groove and don’t want it to end.  However, as all good things, we have a deadline to meet and have two daughters graduating from college.  Therefore, we have a very special place to be here in early May.  Today is haul out day and our lovely Mariposa was put in her special resting place today just as the first tropical depression rolls off the coast of Africa. Being a La Nina Year it is predicted to be a very dangerous year for hurricanes, so it is probably a good thing we are hauled out and tidied up.

Sad day.
All ready for hurricane season.

We have been in Union Island the last week just hanging out, enjoying the weather, and snorkeling so I guess it’s time to do something more productive.  This week we are cleaning the boat and putting everything away for another year so she is in good shape when we head back down in October.

We were fortunate enough that while we were in Carricou to see an incredible live band front row in a little café called Lambi Queen.  They had guitar, drums, bongos, etc. and it was truly awesome.  We have not seen live music in quite a while, so it was a great treat!

Incredible groove!

Tomorrow we hop on a plane to fly back to the states for the next step in our whirl wind adventure.

I Finally Did It! – Frigate Island Bay, Union Island, April 6, 2024

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I Finally Did It! – Frigate Island Bay, Union Island, April 6, 2024

Ron has been a scuba instructor for over 10 years yet somehow, I never got certified.  Put this in perspective, my sister is certified, my nephew is certified, and 3 of the 4 daughters are certified.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it I just never really had the opportunity to with the girls.  So, we decided to rent a couple of tanks in Bequia while we were there and try it out.  It is better to have a private lesson anyways, am I right?  I got two dives in since it took me most of the first 20-minute dive to figure out how to clear my ears then I got to do another 40-minute dive.  We just went off the beach, but man was it fun!  I felt like I was swimming in a fish tank!  So cool and I will definitely try it again but likely not till next season.

Let’s try this.

Once we finished up in Bequia we hopped down and spent the next four days in Tobago Cays.  This is probably one of our favorite spots in the whole Caribbean to snorkel.  It is shallow and we were lucky to have the low west winds which made it ideal to see the outer reefs.  It was out first time seeing the outer stuff and I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the state of the coral and I think that compared to the inner reef much of it was in poor health.  Tobago Marine Park was insanely busy (being the week of Easter we should have known all the charter boats would be there) and we had anchored in Mayreau Island instead.  This ended up being much better with only a few neighbors and closer to the healthier reefs.  We snorkeled the inner reef for a few days and saw turtles, starfish, rays, sharks, and the coral was in much better health.  Such a pretty place.

Up close and personal
Eating lunch
Green coral for acres

Once the winds changed and started to increase, we had to leave and jump over to Union Island.  It was a short 4-hour sail south and we are now only 6 miles from Carricou where we plan to haul out mid-April.  We picked up a free mooring in Frigate Island Bay and had decided to wait out the upcoming blow here and start some of our boat work.  Last year we killed ourselves in the heat doing much of our boat work after we were hauled out.  This year we were going to be much smarter and do much of the work while we were still in the water where it was significantly cooler, and we could snorkel every afternoon!  This entire week has been dedicated to cleaning and vinegaring the whole boat, engine work, cleaning out all our provisions, and in the next few days taking down the sails and any outside windage in case of a hurricane. 

This sucks X2! (There are two engines)

Ron is a follower of Colorado University’s Hurricane prediction for the year, and it’s supposed to be a doosy!  They have predicted this to be an extremely active season due to the warmer than normal ocean temperatures combined with La Nina.  They predict 23 storms, 11 hurricanes, and 5 major hurricanes so we will see.  I think we are both relieved to be hauling out a bit early even though our timing was based on a totally different factor – 2 of our daughter’s college graduation is May 1st.  Although Grenada is technically out of the hurricane zone, hurricanes have hit there in the past. Thankfully they tend to bend northward before making a direct hit.  They end up with some residual effect but unless we go south to Trinidad (which is not as safe), it is the best we are going to get.  So we are finishing up the year and getting ready to put her to bed!

Sailing Season III Wrap Up  – Columbus, Ohio, June 11, 2023 (Capt. View).

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Sailing Season III Wrap Up  – Columbus, Ohio, June 11, 2023 (Capt. View).

The 2023 cruising season for Mariposa has come to an end. Saying it was a year of adventure is an understatement. We first endured a direct hit from hurricane Nicole as we sat on a morning ball at Vero Beach. We then quickly dashed over to the crystal clear water of the Bahamas to explore as much of that island as we could before heading south. When it was time to head south we bashed windward into the trade winds through what is called the thorny path until we reached our final destination – Carriacou a small Island in Grenada. The thorny path reputation lives up to its name. Basically, you wait for a cold front to blow off the southern US which in turn drops the intensity of the trade winds. The best weather windows seemed to come few and far between this year so when you got one you had to take it ready or not. As in most things in life we got some right and we got some wrong.

From our starring point of St. Augustine, Florida we traveled over 2700 nautical miles, used about 380 gallons of diesel and surprisingly, broke nothing major on Mariposa. During those times we visited 13 countries, where we tried our best to integrate into the history and culture of the incredible people we met along the way. Over this trip we did several multi day passages the longest of which was 415 miles taking a little over 76 hours. During this time we dodged numerous fish traps, cruise ships, squalls, and the random charter boats here and there. The highs where insanely high and the lows where equally as low. Thankfully the lows were few and far between. To supplement our learning we taught ourselves a few French curse words, which has become very handy.

It is funny our first year in the Bahamas we were told by several cruisers we were too new at this, should not attempt this passage, perhaps join a salty dog rally. Blah blah blah. Well, we are not really rally kinds of people and it takes away the independence sailing gives you. I am not even sure we are buddy boat kind of people for many of the same reasons.

With a bit of hard work, patience for weather, and a healthy dose of being able to fix most things on the boat it is all doable. We just have to believe in ourselves and not listen to the boats that never leave the dock.  It has been an Incredible voyage and cannot wait to pick up where we left off in a few months.

Now onto a few fun facts from things we learned this season:

  • It is very easy it is to get a driver’s license abroad and Ron has two now
  • Ron had lost not only his phone(threw in the water) but also his wallet (which was later found)
  • I have lost 4 pairs of sunglasses in the ocean…you’d think I would learn
  • How incredibly prevalent sexual abuse against women is in the Caribbean
  • You cannot substitute flour for sugar when making cookies
  • Many of the islands are still recovering from IRMA and MARIA
  • Dolphins and whales are always an event on the boat
  • We have not seen any snow in the last 12 months
  • 120v hair clippers don’t work in 220v outlets very long
  • There are more charter boats south of BVI than we ever thought possible
  • You should never anchor in the middle of a mooring field – it makes you a jerk
  • The French, French-Canadians, and French West Indies are all pretty rude and have little self-awareness
  • We have earned our first swallow tattoo for sailing 5000+ miles over the last 3 years
  • Buddy Boating is not a thing and if you are not 100% self-reliant, you shouldn’t be out here.
  • 9 months of time away from the family is just too long and we have been out here enough to know.  Next year we plan to be home for some time around Christmas.  We started to feel the burn and somehow the islands started to blur in April.  The “another bloody beach” syndrome is real.
  • We have no idea what we are doing and where we are going next year on the boat and have discussed several ideas on this with no decision yet. It’s nice not to have a plan…yet.

It’s nice to be home…at least for a while.