Lately - Here and Now

boat work bucket

Sept 29th 2017

So much has happened lately.  I know I still need to finish out this past cruising season, however that will have to wait.  I am just going to jump in now with the latest.  Ready?

In June we left the boat in Trinidad again for hurricane season.  As I have mentioned before, it is technically out of the "hurricane zone" but there are no guarantees in life.  WELL....this hurricane season the African wave train fired up WAY too early.  Normally it fires up in September.   Nope, not this year.  Mid June waves started rolling off Africa.  Weird, but we all just assumed they would curve north like they usually do.  However, we did stay vigilant, checking National Hurricane Center every morning.

Sure enough.....one stayed straight, not curving but heading west, heading right for Trinidad.  And it kept coming, and kept coming.  Argh!  So one week before we were set to fly back stateside, we were not only prepping the boat to leave but also prepping for a tropical storm or worse.  And while many of the activities of prepping for leaving the boat and prepping for an actual storm are the same, this storm also took away time from additional things we like to do to prep and getting a jump start on boat projects.  Argh!  For added fun, Tom re-injured his back and was out of commission.  I wasn't even sure if he could get on the plane in a week.  Big fun!  But I kept him medicated aka doped up aka sleeping 23 hrs a day so he wouldn't move around and make it worse and so his muscles could rest/heal.  It worked.  We made the plane and he didn't suffer too bad.  The tropical storm did hit but we were prepared, in part thanks to dock friends ( thank you Mark and Terry) and luckily it wasn't too bad where we are berthed.  Of course it hit at night.  I saw sustained winds of 35 knots with a high gust to 39 knots.  I know, I know.....that is nothing.  But for a girl from Kansas who is used to tornadoes and knows nothing of hurricanes, it was still a tad nerve wracking.  The best part was that the potential damaging westerly swell never arrived.  YAY!  The storm went away, we flew stateside.  HUGE thanks to fellow Caliber 40 owner Super Bill for playing Sherpa and taking Tom's carry-on bag for him.

Stateside hurricane apartment we rented

We spent June 22nd to Sept 20th stateside.  Work and fun.

Hurricanes in 2017 so far have really sucked so far.  Harvey hit Texas.  Irma grew to cat 5 and wiped Barbuda clean as well as smashing St Barths, Saint Martin/St Maarten, BVI's, USVI and then Florida Keys and parts of mainland Florida.  Right behind was hurricane Maria.  She slammed into Dominica as a cat 5, then on to St Croix and Puerto Rico - two places that were staging much needed relief supplies for the USVI and BVI's after Irma.  So much devastation and destruction.  Homes, businesses, boats, lives lost.  It is truly heartbreaking.  Relief efforts are happening but too slowly and resources are stretched thin.  More to come in another posting on this.