Good evening. What shall we do with a drunken sailor, what shall we do with a drunken sailor, what shall we do with a drunken sailor early in the morning? Some of the finest seafaring minds, la crème de la crème of marine thinkers have tried to find an answer to this timeless question. If on one hand a number of creative solutions have been proposed, including shaving his belly with a rusty razor, putting him either in a long boat 'til he's sober or in bed with the captain's daughter, or even in the scuppers with a hose pipe on him, a final consensus has yet to be reached.

No drunken sailors on Boundless, rest assured. The Cap'n and myself will share (yes, share) the occasional one beer - there's an interesting nano-bottle format available down here - or stretch out one bottle of wine for three days, or have a shot of rum/favorite rum drink once every death of a Pope (roughly translated from the Italian), that's it. Booze is popular in the boating world but...at our not-so-spring-chickens ages we really enjoy waking up in the morning remembering our names and not gifting precious hours to hangover.😂

Moving on, not a lot of news on the Eastern Caribbean front, we're still in Grenada, everything has been fairly quiet, relaxing even. We're still at anchor in Calivigny Cut, off the super-pretty island by the same name, a spot we've been sharing with just a few neighbors until recently (Clara Maris, a Panamanian 72-foot cat that left a couple of weeks ago, and Alchemy, a cream-colored motor yacht and cute Boaty MacBoatface who left last week to make her way back to England, where her owners are from).

Curfew is still in place, as well as masks and social distancing, but the lockdown is definitely... unlocking: food and other essential shopping and services have been accessible seven days a week and many stores and services are reopening today. The beaches are also open at selected hours for a stroll or exercise. No new cases of the virus on the island - current total 23, but no more cases in the wild -, no deaths. However, we've definitely observed some carelessness in complying with the rules, especially when it comes to mask use. Kind of a "can't happen to me" attitude.

Even with things moving towards "back to normal", we'll keep doing what we've been doing since lockdown started and before, that is, minimizing land visits. We take the dinghy to go to shore only, say, if we need to pick up a shipment at Clarke's Court Bay Marina or do a garbage run, pick-up or drop our propane tanks for refilling or shop for fresh food at a nice bottega called Meet and Meat, owned by a lovely French-Canadian couple who sailed here from Montreal in 2009 and never went back, and located in the Phare Bleu Resort, a short dinghy ride away. We're planning a larger, supermarket-shopping session in town to restock in non-perishables, as our seemingly endless supply of kalamata olives, peanut butter, cereals, capers, dried fruit and what have you going back to Liddle, Harris Teeter in NC, or even Sobey in Halifax (!), is running a little low...

We mostly stay on our boat and maintain our well-oiled routines (Shell-Rotella T4 or EV olive oil, depending on day of the week :)). Boundless, as it turns out, is both a great sailing machine and a house boat. We are mostly self sufficient, our fuel tanks are full and, knock on wood, all systems are working. One exception, the water maker has been fussy. Until recently, it's been run at half-mast due to the failure of a pump long before expiration date. The Cap'n is having a new pump shipped from the States, a rather expensive and user-unfriendly affair, including dealing with a customer's service low on empathy. He also has had to spend a fair amount of time into the starboard aft dungeon which accommodates the water maker - and doubles as sauna in the hottest times of day - to tend the thing and make it work as much as possible while we wait for the new pump. I have to say the Cap'n's Italian swearing skills have improved so much!

As the weather has gotten warmer and warmer, we set our dining table in the aft cockpit, resulting in very pleasant breakfasts, lunches, dinners and hanging out in general, basically getting even more advantage of the ample outdoors space. We've been recharging our house batteries almost exclusively using our solar panels, as the sun has been very strong. Redefining "relaxing ambient sounds", the trade winds have been blowing consistently and quite hard - with the occasional moments of lull - so much so that even our "all bark no bite" wind turbine has actually issued some serious amperage!

Our typical day includes a boat project or two - maintenance, improvements, polishing or cleaning...I won't give you too many details lest they interfere with any vision you may have of sailing as a glamorous lifestyle :) - working out and swimming (the water is magnificent!), grilling, cooking and baking (pizza and chocolate chip blondies are among the new additions to the menu!), spending some time on the computer for work, leisure, monitoring sailing/virus/weather news, and simply enjoying the views and the birds on the island singing a storm every day at around Happy Hour. I practice guitar religiously every day (I promise home recordings when Father Aeolus chills out a little!) drawings, I dabble into stargazing at night - the summer skies are fabulous, with the Southern Cross, Alpha Centauri Leo, Scorpio and Libra, among others, and other celestial bodies really popping out in certain parts of the sky even just looking from a pair of really good binoculars! I think I even got a very faint view of the Carina Nebula!

So the day goes actually pretty fast. We even have our own Movie Night and we've recently started to listen to the evening radio broadcast "Sea Stories" on the local Cruisers' Net. Every cruiser can contribute a story from her/his sailing experience, and it's been fun to build a narrative around some of the key moments of this cruise and previous roaming of the seas we've done. It's interesting to hear where some of the folks here have sailed to, every far flung corner of the world (although I believe we're still the only ones in this crowd who circumnavigated Newfoundland and sailed as far as St.Petersburg Russia) and... what they got themselves into sometimes!

Dunque, everything is well, we're very tanned and yes, the Cap'n does get a little restless not sailing at all. So does Boundless, I'm pretty sure. When you feel her tugging at the anchor chain it's almost like she's saying, "Hey, take me out for a sail you guys!". Well, sailing around from bay to bay is generally allowed, and we've definitely seen boats coming and going. However, to take a 57 ft cat out on a short recreational sail is a lot of work: hoist the large main and the genoa or the jib, roll in the genoa all the way any time you need to tack, put it all away at the end...I know it sounds "lazy", but wait till you try it!.

I admit I have my own selfish reasons for not going anywhere for now, which is I'd be a little disappointed if I found our current "parking spot" taken by another boat once we came back from a sail. It's probably an unfounded concern, as the Cut is a bit exposed and can be uncomfortable for some boats. It's worth noting however that the Grenadian government is allowing 600 (!) boats from other islands to come here.Many put their boats on the hard here for the summer but it's reasonable to assume that the ones staying in the water will ..."spread" in all available places. In terms of actually sail to another Caribbean island, many of them are are still closed or under various restrictions, or, like Antigua, are now open but not paying a lot of attention to the actual status of the virus on the island so... it ain't worth it.

Most importantly, we're waiting for the boatyard at Clarke's Court to re-open completely so we can proceed with the haul out we were supposed to do last March and get our bottom paint job done, sail drives fixed, some bits of interior varnishing, etc. (as of this writing, there's a chance we may be able to haul out on June 8). Having been still for a while, Boundless is now Proud Owner of a mini-reef growing on both hulls, including diverse forms of undersea vegetation, colorful little fish swimming around, la di da, and barnacles who have found a loving home and aren't thinking of leaving it any time soon. The anchor line too is starting to look like one of those on the vessels of the famous movie Pirates of the Caribbean. You can do many things in life, but sailing a boat with a "reef" on its bottom isn't one of them. It's damaging to the boat structure, it creates drag and kills any hope of speed.

And speed - mobility in general - is what we really need to maintain as, after much consideration and a good dollop of second-guessing, we have decided to spend the summer here instead of sailing back to the US. It simply makes more sense for us, overall. So we want to make sure that Boundless is 100% ready to leave on a moment's notice in case we need to dodge a storm or worse (Grenada is mostly outside the path of hurricanes, which is one of the reasons why a lot of people shelter or haul out their boats here). Being able to sail is a great advantage. Not to seem arrogant to Mother Nature, but, having to choose between two or more evils, we feel like we are more equipped to deal with a storm on the horizon than with a nasty virus and general lunacy on land.

Molto bene, I think that's all for now. Feel free to stop by our Galleries for new pics and... I've just realized that May 29 2020 will mark one year since we moved onboard Boundless! Wow. 😮

Stay safe!!