We are still watching the weather closely even though nothing is too threatening. There are a couple of storms battering the North Atlantic right now. The first is Tropical Storm Karl, which is projected to turn into a hurricane within the next 72 hours, after it passes Bermuda. The other is Tropical Storm Lisa, which is supposed to downgrade to just a Tropical Depression within the next 36 hours as it heads north. A new tropical wave is forming off of Africa and is supposed to move quickly across the Atlantic to impact the Lesser Antilles by next week. However, it is not supposed to be much of a storm, just a bunch of rain and some wind in the 25 to 30 knot range.

Before we started our passages north from Grenada at the start of this year, I had read one prediction that the Lesser Antilles should not have any hurricanes this years as it was predicting that they would all head to the north. So far, that prediction has been spot on. We still have a couple of months left into this season so anything can still happen. However, since we will be heading south next week, the concerns I had regarding being in the way of a hurricane or tropical storm will be decreasing with each mile we move south.

Besides keeping a close eye on the weather, not much is happening right now as we putter on some minor boat projects to help pass the time until Monday, when the first US Presidential Debate will be. We have opted to stay put until then so we can watch the debate on YouTube. We have such great high speed Internet here at the marina that we wish to utilize it to the max while we have it.

Right now I am puttering along making a number of anchor chain makers. These are short lengths of 10 mm blue line that I am cutting and then inserting into the chain links. They will mark every 25 feet of chain. These will be my visible markers of how much chain we let out each time we anchor. We do have a meter readout on our handheld chain counter but it tends to go blank at times: thus, the need for the visible chain markers. The old chain markers I have been using for the last so many years are finally wearing out and need replacing.

I am also puttering with our port saildrive. The gear shifter is slowing leaking some saildrive oil. I have bought a new oil seal and O-ring to replace the ones that are worn. It is my hope that replacing these will stop the slow leak.