Greetings from Grenada! We have a had a wonderful month sailing the Grenadines (the islands south of St Lucia). Grandma Nades has been with us the whole time and has coped admirably with all the boating stuff . Without complaint she has managed the lack of creature comforts ie showers off the back and the general boating life especially getting in and out of a small leaking dinghy. Not bad for a 75 year old!! Being a retired school teacher, she has also assisted hugely with the schoolwork and worked wonders with Jesse and his timetables!! She has also been right into the baking and daily the assortment of bread, bikkies and meals has been impressive. We spend a lot of time on the boat and food becomes a real focus so one of the main pastimes becomes cooking which has actually been a lot of fun with the kids. The other great highligt of the past month has been the beautiful sights we have seen - lots of beautiful anchorages, swimming with turtles, snorkelling with sharks and having a very social time with lots of other boats we have met along the way.
Next up, we will explore some outer islands of Venezuela followed by Bonaire, Curacao and Aruba (the ABCs) then Cartagena on the Colombian coast, the San Blas Islands and then Panama.
The kids are in good form - we celebrated a lovely birthday for Zoe who turned 7 recently! The other news is that we have purchased a new outboard engine (15 horsepower) and Caribe hard bottom dinghy. For the non-boaties read "fast"!!!!! The old dinghy puttered along and managed to get us saturated the whole time. The new dinghy is fast and furious and a helluva lot of fun. Predictably, Captain Tykes spends every waking hour asking if he can go for a ride in it and glues himself to the helm whenever he is in it. Predictably, his mum continues to freak out at the speed and to tell him to slow down on each trip.
That's about it for now. xx the Nika crew