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Published: April 10th 2012
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Getting the "Car" Ready
The night before we left for the US it poured and the next morning Bob was standing in very high water inside the dinghy. One of the first tasks before being able to get the luggage in the dinghy was to pump it dry. This is part of the fun of the cruising life. Going Home or Coming Home??
Sorry about the time lapse between our last blog entry and now, but we have been busy at both of “our homes”. As we had mentioned we traveled back to the US so Janice could have some surgery on her wrist, the “regular” Dr. and dentist appointments, and see family. When we are going to travel back to the US we always refer to “going home”, but then after we have been in the US for some time, we always start looking forward to “going home” back to Tsamaya. It definitely gets confusing. When we are back in the US it is great getting a chance to see sisters, Mom, Aunts, Uncles, nieces and nephews and catching up with what is happening with everyone. We also enjoyed being able to jump in a car (thanks Mom for the loaner!) and run to the stores to buy what we needed (or think we need to bring back to the boat), get to the Dr. appointments and have a chance to visit with family. Every time we're back in the States we have to be careful when we go into a store as there is
Great to spend time with Mom
It was great to have a chance to spend some time with Mom – she looked great here when attending the baby shower for our niece, Laura. Wish we had more time to visit with you Mom!! so much selection that if you're not careful you start picking up things you don't really need. When we got back to the boat we both sat here and tried to figure out why we brought it back with us. A 40 foot boat sounds big but there is a limit and we think we're there with this last trip. We had to include warmer clothes this time for our travels to Europe this coming year. That really has put our closet “over the top”. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time this trip to travel farther afield to visit our friends – hopefully we can catch up with them next time we are back in the US. We were fortunate enough to be home to help Bob’s sister celebrate her birthday as well as see Janice’s niece’s at a baby shower. Just one more reminder of how life goes on “back home”.
We packed in quite a bit during the time back in the US and enjoyed our stay there (thanks Sue & Jamie for the hospitality), but we also realized that we were ready to come back “home” to Tsamaya and Sailor. We were fortunate to
A fun evening!
Enjoyed a great evening out with friends, Bev & Kip with Janice’s sister Sue and brother-in-law Jamie. Always a fun group! have one of the people that worked at the marina take care of Sailor in our absence, but she still seemed happy to see us back. We went to the US with 2 suitcases and came back to St. Lucia with 4 very
full bags. One of the first chores we had when we returned to Tsamaya was to find a home for everything we brought back. That took a couple of days to accomplish, but we made it! We returned to Tsamaya on Thursday, March 29th and we worked very long hours through the following Tuesday getting some projects done on the boat. Bob had to go up the mast quite a few times to install new equipment we brought back with us (a horn for the fog horn to be heard). Of course no project is simple as he had to move the location of a light on the mast to make room for the horn, but we got it done. We had to leave the dinghy in the water while we were gone and after 3 1/2 weeks it was covered with sea growth, and you almost need a hammer and chisel to get that
The "Naylon" women
It was great to have a chance to get a photo of all the Naylon women together at Laura's baby shower. stuff off the bottom of the dinghy. But it's white again and that means the dinghy will move quite a bit faster without all that growth. Provisioning the boat was also a job that we had to do; we had emptied the refrigerator before leaving. The bottom of the boat like the bottom of the dinghy had collected quite a few hitchhikers of the barnacle type. So after leaving the marina we went out to the Bay and anchored where the water is clear and Bob can scrape the barnacles off the boat. He used to use a plastic putty knife but a friend recommended a snow scraper and it works like the charm. The long handle makes it easier to reach and the scraper pops the barnacles right off the hull. It takes about an hour and a half to two hours to get the hull smooth again. It's definitely one of Bob's favorite jobs (it rates right up there with hitting your thumb with a hammer repeatedly). Of course while scraping the bottom Bob attracts a lot of spectators, mostly silver jacks but occasionally a barracuda all coming in for a possible snack.
We are
Hall of Springs - Saratoga
We enjoyed our time walking around the Hall of Springs in Saratoga - believe it or not in all the time we lived in the area we never got there. now in St. Ane, Martinique on anchor after a pleasant 4 ½ hour sail from St. Lucia. It is always nice to be in the French islands, you can always buy great baguettes, cheese and wine ( very inexpensively) so what else do you need!!
We are fortunate to have time again with our great friends, Denise & Jean-Pierre on Absaroque as well as Chris and Ann on Mr. Mac. Tonight we had a get together on the stern of our boat with another beautiful sunset. We found out that other friends, Rebecca and Mike on Zero to Cruising just anchored nearby, haven’t seen them since we left Grenada in July’11. We are always reminded that this is a small community of cruisers and sooner or later our paths cross again. Of course this means another opportunity to do sundowners on the back of the boat, catching up on each other's travels and picking up pointers on where to go and where to anchor for the best Wi-Fi.
Our plans had been to leave this anchorage and head north to Guadeloupe next Monday, BUT … since arriving in Martinique we found that Janice’s wallet is missing
Treated ourselves to new glasses
Bob found out that he definitely needed a change of prescription so got new glasses while home with of course credit cards in it. Needless to say, Janice has been busy on Skype with the credit card companies cancelling them and requesting new ones. Now we will have to wait for them to be sent. As Bob said this isn’t a bad place to be “stuck”. We just heard of a couple of nice hikes we can take here so will do those in the next few days. Luckily we don’t need money for hiking and we do have some Euros so we aren’t destitute for now!
Well, things keep changing. Just heard more of the weather and decided to make the move tomorrow to Guadaloupe. Will have our cards sent to Antiqua. It will definitely keep our spending down without them! Luckily we have US $ on board so we can still get a few provisions on the way.
Sorry we don’t have many photos to post this time – we got out of the habit back in the US of taking blog photos so will work on more for the next entry.
Thanks for the many email messages inquiring about our whereabouts and how the surgery went. Just sorry we couldn’t get
It was nice to celebrate with you
It was nice that we were home at the right time to help Bob's sister Sue celebrate her birthday with family to see many of you this time and will try to get more timely with blog updates. The one downside of the French islands is that wi-fi isn’t easily accessible from the boat so it does slow down responses to emails and the blog update process. When we leave here we will be headed to another French island so this will be the way of wi-fi for a little while.
Hope everyone had a nice Easter celebration where ever you were. Even though we weren’t able to touch base with you, we were thinking of you – take care and as always keep those comments coming – we love to hear from you!
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