Vacations suck. Only because they have to end and it’s back to the grind. On a boat returning to shore the real treat is yet to come.

Good slow sail today. Good wind angle, good wave angle… But for 5 hrs not a word was spoken between the crew. We aren’t mad at each other, we aren’t all hung over from kicking the locals but in straight dominoes. It’s just that we are winding down.

We had 6 foot seas and a beam reach today, normally we would have been pushing it, for,more speed but it didn’t matter we only had 35 miles to go and 2 days to put things away, such that it’s still a clean boat when we return.

On past, non boating vacations, the penultimate night is the party night for the dreaded plane ride from hell home. Sure, we will drink lots to drown the sorrows of the ending vacation, but it will be more for hydration between tasks.

Weekend sailing cleaning the boat is fun. Leaving a boat for months is a chore. We will knock it out tho.

We coasted in grabbed a ball, flukey winds but we grabbed it first try and secured the boat. I jump off to go clear in. No dice the don’t work weekends or at least thats what the bartender said as I ordered a cold beer. I asked if it was okay if we came ashore for dinner since my crew was done with my cooking. Another Grenada Marine worker said sure, this is Grenada Marine. So back to the boat not technically in the country yet.

It hot in this bay, winds are not consistent with the tides. We will do circles while attached to the mooring ball.

Slowly putz on the boat and undo the main sail between cold beverages. Ya gotta reward yourself for small accomplishments. There are 14 places the main sail attaches to the mast. Good thing we bought 2 cases of nourishment yesterday.

5pm its dinner time we had had a snack on board but needed to relax on shore. So we split a dinner order 3 ways and made friends with our favorite bartender from last season. Whom unfortunately has tomorrow off. We will make do.

Back to the boat for some long showers, to await clearing in to the country and getting the boat hauled out. Should be interesting. 🙂

13 hour travel day, 3 flights and a long taxi drive to Oyster Pond. What a pleasant surprise to be picked up by Denis our boat’s caretaker while we were away. Such a nice surprise to arrive to a clean boat, open her up and not have “stale boat” smell and all appear to be great order. Wore out the boys loading the 6 bags of boat parts (mostly speakers and an amp) on to the boat–so once loaded we headed straight to the bar for some holiday beer! Good to be back at the Dingy Dock bar!!

Sometimes 2 bags per person just ain’t enough when traveling. Good thing the planes have large wings.

Why is it that the good stuff weighs the most? Well, okay it’s the boat parts that are the heavy cargo. So much so that we had to enlist another traveler to bring some gear.

This is a big mule run. St Marten is a duty free island so there are no extra import or duty fees on items brought in for boats. Some places have an exemption for vessel in transit but there is a bit of paper work to go through so this trip we are dragging lots of spares and some improvements along. It all equates to 200+ lbs of gear. New shifting cable as a spare, new macerator as the starboard side hasn’t worked in years, and a new sound system to make the lake boys proud. Tho, will have to bring the subwoofers on another trip, probably when the solar panels get upgraded to play the deep base notes. The interior speakers deteriorated on the last trip and the outside speakers from the canaries were just about the only thing they had on the island to make the trip across the Atlantic. Not a necessity but we will also have some bow speakers for lounging on the trampoline. Should be a fun install.

Course some other odds and ends to do some routine maintenance, so looking forward to some water time and chilaxing on the hook in some bays on the way south to avoid the hurricane zone.

Arriving Dallas where the other 1/3 of the boat luggage comes on board. Sure hope that our taxi driver brings a van.

Breakfast….