Ghosted – Sackets Harbor Lake Ontario, USA, July 14, 2025

Posted on July 15, 2025 by Sally

Ghosted – Sackets Harbor Lake Ontario, USA, July 14, 2025

Yes, I have ghosted you. Sorry. It has been a busy two months and we have managed to haul out the boat and put her away for the season, pick up the RV and get her up and running, visit my parents, have dinner with my brother, spend July 4^th weekend in Columbus, Ohio visiting daughter #3, and now…we are on our way to Maine! Thus far this season we have had three storms, but only Chantal has hit the states as a tropical storm. Being that this is mid-July I feel pretty lucky!

As far as RV work, Ron has managed to change the oil, touch up the paint, reseal the outside to fix a small leak, and a load of service items that were due to keep us on the road. Doing this work in a campsite lot is a bit tricky since you’re not permitted to do any major work on their property.

We picked up the RV in Brunswick, GA and after a few days with my parents we headed north stopping along the way though South Carolina, North Caroline, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and now we are in New York. While it is beautiful here, our hike in NY ended up being dive bombed with deet flies. Unfortunately, my “perfume” (OFF!) made no difference what-so-ever. In addition to being snorkel snobs I think we are hiking snobs too.

We managed to hike our way up the coast without a bug issue till we got here, and it is slightly reminiscent of Upper Peninsula Michigan except there are mosquitos that are a nuisance. Oh well. I guess we had better get used to the new things we are going to see and experience since Maine and most of New England will be new for us. I am excited to see the sights the next couple of weeks before we turn around and head back to Ohio to hopefully see daughters #1, #2, & 4. Exciting times here on Mariposa.

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

Posted on September 6, 2024 by Sally

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…

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.

Decision Fatigue – Jolly Harbour, Antigua, February 23, 2024

Posted on March 1, 2024 by Sally

Decision Fatigue – Jolly Harbour, Antigua, February 23, 2024

We have been moving pretty quickly lately and you may be wondering why we are suddenly heading south again after all the talk of going to Brunswick, Georgia for the off season. Since our guest left, we have been spending a lot of time discussing our off season plan and what we are going to do for that 6 month period. After kicking around ideas we think we have made one of the necessary choices. We considered:

#1 – spending a month in each place we wanted to visit including Georgia, Ohio, and a couple of other states

#2 – Getting an apartment again in Ohio

#3 – Spending the off season in Georgia at a marina on the boat

#4 – Turning around, hauling out again on Grenada, and buying an RV to travel in for the next few years.

You can guess where we ended up since we have turned around. It turns out that when we consider insurance, haul out prices, storage prices for the boat, flights, and the time we have left, Grenada won out. It was cheaper there, we had flights with points, buying an RV was cheaper than rent, we could still travel (which we both wanted to do), we could easily see family more often, we only have 2 more months of sailing season, and lastly it was a La Nina year. This means hurricane season was supposed to be terrible and we didn’t want to chance leaving the boat in the water. We were only one-third of the way to Brunswick and realistically needed more time to choose the right weather to make it back to the states.

Whew! It was a lot of analyzing but we now officially have a plan and after taking the last available window to go east back to Antigua (for at least the next month), we are in a place to pull this off and set ourselves up to have some fun in the process. Neither of us loved the southern islands but we have decided to give them another try. We didn’t dislike everywhere but would be a bit more choosey about where we decided to stay and frankly slow down a bit in those better places.

We left St. John where the winds had clocked around to the south and it was so bad neither of us got any sleep but got up and left for Antigua anyway. It was the only day the weather would let us leave and we couldn’t miss it. Our weather service (Chris Parker) assured us there would not be another chance for potentially another month or more and there was no time to waste.

So, we start again in Jolly Harbor, where the best Mexican food is the southern Caribbean is! Not a bad place to be. After a few days of rest recovering from our last overnight sail this season we filled up on our required Mexican and made the small hop down to Guadeloupe and then Iles Des Saintes. We were very lucky on our sail down we saw a baby whale and he was about 5 feet from the boat! He was incredible!

Our first stop was Deshaies, Guadeloupe where they have the most beautiful botanical garden. It was home to the flamingos! We felt very lucky and have gotten to see some amazing things this week!