Wednesday, July 1, 2020

St. George’s, Grenada
12.02.608 N
61.44.986 W

Dear July, I don’t want any trouble from you!  Just come in, sit down, don’t touch anything, and keep your mouth shut!

We’ve been settling in and trying out a new routine for the time that we’ll be here.  We start the day at 7:30 with a trip to the pool; I do laps while Dale and Savannah continue swim lessons.  We hit the showers on our way back to the boat as they have hot water we don’t have to make!   Then we go back to our previous routine of piano, reading, and math lessons before lunch and science in the afternoon. 

Dale was able to hire a welder that has already fixed and reinforced our steering wheel.  The Raymarine tech he located came out to look at the auto pilot problem before giving us a date of when he’ll return to fix the problem.  Sounded like he knew exactly what the issue was.  He said that he wanted to conduct a sea trial once he fixed the problem, so that means detaching ourselves from the quay wall (unplugging from electricity, taking down all of the shade cloths and opening everything back up) heading back out into the open water, conducting the sea trial, then back to the quay wall and reattaching ourselves.  I suspect that it will take longer to detach and reattach than it will to fix the problem. 

Dale and Gerry located a bakery on their scouting expeditions that I have made use of.  We’ve already tried their cinnamon rolls, baguettes, and banana nut bread.  On Fridays they also make roti’s!  I’ve put my order in for a couple that are boneless chicken. 

Dale, Savannah and I walked over to the closest grocery store.  Dale remembers it as being the one we used to shop at all the time.  My recollection was shopping at a much larger store but then it was 13 years ago, so who knows. 

Nicky found a local merchant that you order your food from that actually delivers your order to the boat; no shlepping the heavy items back in a wagon or grocery cart. We still need to do some price comparisons to see just what we’re paying for.  Both of us still have quite a bit of food in our boat stores but it’s the fresh veggies and things like milk and bread we need to replenish.  Of course, the first couple of days, we took full advantage of the restaurant here at the marina.  They have a rather limited menu and I think we’ve exhausted trying everything we’re interested in.  We’ve made arrangements to rent a car to do some more extensive exploring on Friday and to find the second hand marine shop the guys found advertised. 

I think everyone here at the marina is fighting the internet battle.  They offer “boxes” that are hardwired to the dock connection that brings the WiFi into the boat.  However, we, and many more, cannot connect to the internet even if we can connect to the box.  The local telephone company has been contacted to “ping” each box to see where the problem lies.  I’m still using Dale’s phone’s hot spot to upload my posts, check the mail and surf the web.  This morning he told me I need to stop watching the Jeanne Robertson videos I get a kick out of as I’ve gone through all the data we had purchased and he’s had to “top off” our data plan.  The last time we made this trip, we walked miles just to find a WiFi/internet connection; so I can’t complain too much that we can’t connect to the ones provided free of charge right at the back of the boat. 

We’ve kicked around the idea that it is possible to stay here though hurricane season if necessary, so we’ll be looking at what it will take.  We still need to get the boat bottom painted, the stanchion that was damaged in George Town repaired and of course, the broken port light replaced.  Other than that, not a whole lot is happening. 

Finally:  I would hate it if this CoVid pandemic kept going all the way through to tick season.  I really don’t like Corona with Lyme.