Jimmy's Birthday, Blue Water Sailing Magazine, etc...

An apology to our regular readers for not getting any updates out to you recently. We know it has been awhile so here's what we've been up to for the last 10 days or so.

November 5th was Jim's birthday. What do you get a man who lives on a small boat? Well for Jim it's Rum. Jim really enjoys aged rum that is sipped like you would a fine cognac. Here he is with his present, a bottle of 15 year old El Dorado Rum and a box of rum chocolates. Both turned out to be excellent!

For Jim's birthday, we decided to do one of his favorite things, spend the day on the beach. We headed to Grand Anse Beach where we rented beach chairs, drank cold beer and swam in the ocean. When we first arrived the beach was fairly busy as there were two cruise ships in port. But shortly after we arrived the water taxis appeared to whisk the tourists away to the ship and the beach became quiet and peaceful again.

Here's the birthday-boy. St. George's and the cruise ships are in the background.


See how lovely and quiet it is when the tourists go home.

That evening we headed over to the Tiki Bar to meet some friends and have pizza. Then it was over to Half Moon where Becky surprised Jim with a birthday cake.

Jim and Joe enjoying cake, brandy and conversation.

Joe and Becky and Randy and Lynn on High States arrived in Grenada on November 1st. They, along with lots of other friends chose Trinidad for the hurricane season. Boats are starting to move around again as the threat of hurricanes in the southern Caribbean comes to an end.

We had planned on leaving Grenada about now but discovered a problem that will keep us here a few more weeks. While Jim was scrubbing the marine growth off of our prop he noticed that the cutlass bearing is working it's way out. Unfortunately, this means hauling Merengue out of the water to replace the bearing. Hopefully it will be accomplished quickly. The plan is to lift Merengue, do the repair while she is hanging in the sling and have her back in the water in about an hour. But the boatyard is booked solid for the next two weeks and can't get to us until the 26th. So we get to enjoy Grenada for a little longer.

I had some good news recently. I submitted an article to Blue Water Sailing Magazine several months ago and they are interested in publishing it. I just learned that it has been scheduled for the January 2009 issue. So get that subscription now or rush out to the newsstand. Hope you enjoy it!

We've received some interesting feedback on our blog. We were surprised and pleased to receive a comment last week from France. Apparently there are lots of readers out there. It got us thinking about beginning our 3rd year of cruising and the updates to this site. What would you like to read about? What pictures would you like to see? We'd like to hear from you.