We left Rodney Bay at 0830. It was a lovely morning and for the first time in a long time, we left when we were totally ready. We puttered, we had coffee, I relocated my bed, Greig secured the dinghy and the deck, and when we couldn’t think of anything else that needed to be done, we flashed the engine (it started on the first try) and slipped the mooring ball. This was to be our last leg of the season and very exciting to us.

No sooner had we left the harbour, we raised the sails and put on the autohelm. Not even an hour later, we heard a clunk and then the autohelm stopped working. While I steered, Greig removed everything out of the starboard lazarette to access the autohelm. It seems that the ram had disconnected from the steering quadrant. An hour later and a few cuss words, Greig had us up and running again. Trying to stay with the positive theme, thank you lord that it was a boat problem that did not require money nor time to fix. Also, while Greig was removing all of the items out of the lazarette, he discovered two boxes of beer, we didn’t know we had in the deepest darkest depths.

Once fixed, we had an amazing sail all through the day, passing by the Pitons at the other end of St. Lucia and St. Vincent. We sailed all through the night passing by Bequia, the Grenedines and Tobago Cays and Carricou. At sunrise our course took us on the eastern side of Grenada. Unfortunately, we were not in the lee anymore, which made the ride very bumpy and at sometimes a little wild. We had to start our shiny new iron gennie for the last part of our journey, which was OK with us because we wanted to get the sails in before turning into Hartman Bay.

We looked into the harbour and saw a forest of masts. We weren’t sure that after all this distance, there was going to be any room for us. But we needn’t have worried, as when we started to come in, everyone was saying hello and greeting us, even people we didn’t know! Apparently our story had preceded us, and it seemed like everyone in the harbour had been waiting for us to arrive. What a great feeling to be back with friends.

We found a spot to put the anchor down wiggling in between two other boats. We had made it! For those who like statistics, here you go: 10 countries, 4,392.1 nautical miles, 669 hours of motoring (why did we buy a sailboat?), calculated at 5 knots, that’s 3,345 nautical miles of motoring. 76% of the time, we were motoring or motor sailing, no wonder the engine gave up the ghost! As for the budget for this year, don’t ask, it ain’t pretty.

One year less a day, we sailed out of Loyalist Cove Marina to start our trip with a few weeks on the lake with friends and family. One year later, we ticked off, sail our own sailboat to Grenada off our bucket list. It has been quite an adventure. We need to look at that our bucket list again for next year’s challenge.