Well this is a major blog entry for us. We have finally sold In Tune and moved into a small apartment on Grenada. It is one of the many transformations in life. When I first planned the sea adventure, I always thought that I would live on a boat for 5-7 years, and spend some time in the Caribbean. We have now achieved both of those. Having bought In Tune in Turkey, we have had 5 1/2 wonderful years living aboard - excitement, travelled half way round the world, visited over 20 countries, panicked in crises, cursed problems, celebrated achievements, but best of all has been meeting and socialising with the countless wonderful fellow cruisers. We have friends for life now in many countries.

With all of these thoughts and mixed emotions, we packed up all our meagre belongings and stepped ashore. We had had another wonderful night of live music at Nimrod's Rum Shack, so with a somewhat heavy head, we were able to achieve the move off In Tune, and into the apartment in one day. We will still need to return to In Tune one day next week to ensure everything is working after the alternator and smart charger are fitted.

The apartment is small and basic, however, we will only be here for several months, so it's fine. We are in an excellent location at Port Louis Marina, nestled between the marina docks and the forrest. It felt strange the first night in bed hearing all the sounds of the insects and animals from the forrest. We are only 50 metres walk to the bar / restaurant and excellent bakery; about 200 m walk to the supermarket. Other than that, buses pass the door every minute so we can get anywhere on the island. Our manager / host is called Basil (Fawlty?!)

Where to from here depends on this Covid disaster. We had plans to spend some time in Australia, America, and Europe, but all depends now on what's possible with all the restrictions on travel. We'll just have to wait and see what the future holds.

Early in the week I decided that I would run our systems and make sure all was working OK. Well, here goes Murphy's law again! After running the port engine for about 10 mins alarms started going off - the charge from the alternator was going haywire! To cut a long story short, the electrician couldn't fix it, so I asked him to disconnect the alternator; at least the engine would run even though not charging. I then discovered that the windlass wasn't working! This was because there was no charge going into the port engine. I have lifted the anchor once by hand myself, however, there is no way that I could do it now with my bum shoulder. I ended up getting a couple of guys from the boat yard to come and lift it for us, and we finally hauled out into the yard at Clarke's Court.

Friday night three of our friends, Gary (sax), Julian (guitar & vocals) & Dominic (percussion) had an 'opening night' (after Covid restrictions lifted) at the bar there, Cruiser's Reef. Their band is called the Leaky Seacox. 😀 We had a table with our close friends Martin & Katie from Il Bacio. Though we didn't know it until Friday night, they were celebrating their 3rd anniversary together. As usual, it ended up a great night. We brought Geri's raffle prize from the trivia night - the bottle of 10 year English Harbour rum. Geraldine of course did not have any but the rest of us soon polished off the bottle! Another great night.

We spent several days in the yard doing jobs. Everything, however, involves lifting, scrubbing, sanding, painting etc, which is not good on my stuffed shoulder. I had the alternator and voltage regulator removed and sent off to a guy on the island who specialises in fixing them, however, they are irreparable, so we are now waiting for a new alternator to be shipped from Florida.

We went to Roger's bar Sunday night for a beach party - the only 'building' on a small beach on Hog Is. is just a simple lean-to built of logs and correlated iron. No walls or floor, other than the sand, no power, nor toilets. They brought a generator for power and we dancing in the sand under the moonlight.

Not wanting to stay in the yard longer than necessary we re-launched In Tune and are now on a mooring since we still cannot use the windlass and the port engine. We wait here now until the new alternator arrives.

Sunday we took our dinghy with Martin & Katy to Le Phare Bleu and had a pleasant surprise when other friends Chris and Jan from Sapphire just happened to roll up. Katie needed to get the stitches out of her arm after she fell and gashed it about 10 days earlier. So Doctor Phil obliged! There always something happening...

My (Philip) shoulder injury is improving every day and I'm gradually getting less pain and more movement in my arm. More and more venues are opening up, so much so, that we could be out every night if we wanted, which we don't. We try to keep it to a few outings per week and move around to different ones.

Martin from Il Bacio came one day to give me a hand with a few jobs on In Tune - put the genoa back up, fixed some of the lights on the mast, and fixed the outlet valve on the port holding tank. The dinghy has been in the shop all week for repairs.

Tuesday night at Whisper Cove for pizza and live music is always a favourite. Thursday night at Nimrod's Rum Shop is great, especially now that the full house band is back, starring our friends, Gary on sax and Julian on vocals and guitar.

The highlight of last week, if not the whole year though, was taking our prize from winning the trivia competition. Seven of us - Gary (sax player), wife Venessa (Aussie guitar & vocals), Martin (Swiss), girlfriend Katie (UK), Geri & I, and Julian (Welsh, guitar & vocals). We arrived just as the sun set over Port Louis Marina in the main town of St George's aboard the S/V Ananda. The Ananda is an 82 ft Swan. If you are interested in the yacht, here is an example:
https://www.supersailyachts.com/yacht-details/sailing-yachts/swan-82--kallima--956

Skipper David (UK) greeted us, and 3 crew - chef Flora (UK/Indonesian), Dwight (Grenada) - cocktail waiter, and Max (Chinese) - food waitress. Aside from Flora's magnificent 6 course banquet - 2 appetisers, 2 main courses (mahi mahi, and rack of lamb and two desserts, we enjoyed lots of music and alcohol - cocktails, wine, rums etc. Definitely a night to remember only ending in the early hours of the morning. Fortunately, this time no accidents!

Plans for this coming week include picking up the dinghy and bimini from repairs. In Tune is booked in next Thursday for the test sail from the buyer, and on Friday haul-out into the yard for the buyer's surveyor inspection. We'll see, after that, whether the sale goes through.

Coming socials include Wednesday evening aboard Il Bacio for lasagne night, and Friday night is the first live music opening at Crew's Inn bar at Clarke's Court Marina with Gary & the band.

Despite Covid-19 we try to make the best of life here. Best wishes to all.

Dear family and friends,

Well, it's been a pretty big week, and I'm struggling to write to you today, but more of that later.

We have an interested buyer for In Tune, and since the buyer is from USA, and they cannot fly here, they did a live video tour. So we had spent a fair bit of time during the week sorting things out for that. The video inspection went well, so the next thing is that we have to haul out and let a surveyor go over it. That is planned to be later this month. No doubt there will be a list of things that need to be fixed.

I also had the electrician come during the week to install the new battery charger I bought last week, so that's all done now - $1,000 even though we will probably never use it! (It is only used when in marina or boatyard to connect to mains power.)

Thursday night saw the re-opening of Nimrod's Rum Shop, a tiny local bar which has an outside area that they set up for live music. It's quite a semi-professional set up with mike's and speakers etc. Well, the night turned into a lot of fun, but also a bit of a disaster. My fault - rushing to get out with my guitar etc into the dinghy, I slipped on the wet small transom step that we use to get into the dinghy. I managed to stop my fall by hanging on, however, that became the injury - I have pulled my left shoulder pretty badly. I have obviously torn something - muscle, tendon or ligament, and cannot lift my arm up. (Geraldine did the same thing some time ago, but did not hurt herself as badly.) So I am just resting and have my arm in a sling at present. The story gets worse because we were on our way to Nimord's to do the music. My friends, after giving me several beers while I was busy setting up, then thought that I needed a couple of good glasses of whiskey to fix the pain in my shoulder! So by the time I got to do my 3 songs, I was half-whacked, not having had time for any dinner! I just managed to be able to play guitar and get through it, even with mistakes! I did the song Shallow, sung by Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga from the movie A Star is Born. One of our friends here on Jupiter 2 is the Filipina friend of Geraldine, Sabrina, and she was previously a professional singer. What transpired was just like in the movie - I was the old washed-up drunk musician who could hardly get through his act, and then when Sabrina came on the do the Lady Gaga section, she lit up the whole audience, just like in the movie. Geri has uploaded the video on FB. It was all down hill from there! With my bad shoulder I was having trouble doing anything, so our friends Martin & Katie from Il Bacio helped Geri drive the dinghy back and getting me and all my stuff back on board In Tune etc. They were so good to stay the night just in case Geri needed any help. (She was upset, crying, and more of a mess than I was!)

Needless to say that Friday was recovery and will probably be so for quite a while until this shoulder heals. I'm using ice, Voltarin, and keeping it in a sling most of the time - Except for last night, which was another big night! We had agreed with Vanessa and Gary, whom we had aboard In Tune for dinner a few weeks ago, to make up a table with them, Katy & Martin, to do a Trivia Quiz night at Whisper Cove Marina. It was to be a charity fund-raising night for the GSPCA. (Like RSPCA) Gary is the boat broker who has In Tune listing and is also a semi-professional musician (sax) He played with another guy, Julian on guitar, who was also on our quiz table. We paid to do the quiz and they had a raffle etc to raise the money. Well, to cut another long story short, our table ended up winning the quiz! The prize is a 5 course dinner, including drinks, from a professional chef, aboard the vessel Ananda, worth US $600. Venessa has taken the voucher and will organise a date that suits us all. Then to top it off, Geraldine was one of the raffle winners, choosing a bottle of reserve 10 year aged rum from Antigua. (Even though she doesn't drink of course! Bless her heart. Geri says that will be more fun sharing the rum with all of us, than having an exclusive massage for one, another prize.) So it seems that we will be more big nights again soon!

Monday I have the dinghy booked in for repair (air leak etc) so they are loaning us a dinghy for the week while they take mine to fix.

As I write this we have a rain storm coming through giving the boat a good wash-down. After all, it is the rainy season, and Grenada needs the rain.

All the restrictions from Covid are pretty-well lifted here now as there are no reported cases, though of course, masks and hand sanitiser are compulsory everywhere. The main issue is still money - I am getting about 40% now of my regular income and having to dip into saving each month. Oh well, I guess that's what we have savings for.

Love and very best wishes to you all.

Here we are with another disaster coming our way. Will there be any end to this? We sailed down to Grenada, essentially for two reasons:
Grenada was the only island in the Caribbean that allowed yachts to enter during this coronavirus pandemic
It was almost out of the hurricane belt, and was relatively safe from hurricanes. They have not had a hurricane here for 16 years.
Here we go with my confounded luck again - we now have a hurricane coming!
We have been watching it for several days now, but it is now almost certain that we will get hit by hurricane Gonzalo late Saturday. Right now it is rated as a tropical storm, but expected to be a hurricane by the time it reaches us. I know we need to prepare for this, but never having been through one before II'm not sure what preparation we need. So, in preparation:

1. We moved the boat yesterday morning from anchor to a mooring nearby. We have put three independent layers of lines on to the mooring buoy to hold us. The mooring is a sand screw and is maintained rated to 70 knot winds.
2. We have also laid out our anchor with 50 metres of chain at about a 30 - 40 degree angle to provide extra holding.
3. I have rigged up the second anchor ready to drop should we need it
4. We were up at 0600 this morning and took down the genoa. in low winds
5. The main sail is too much for the two of us to pack up, so I have bound it in the lazy bag with several layers of lines.
6. I've removed the bimini, flags, canvas, blinds and all material relatively loose
7. When we have finished tomorrow, I will secure the dinghy with extra lines

The we sit and wait! I expect that we will be up all Saturday night to keep an anchor watch and keep an eye on everything

I'm a bit worried about this, but what can you do? I'll do a part 2 to this blog next week when we have, hopefully, survived.
Best wishes to all.

PART2
Well, we did have some luck after all! Tropical storm Gonzalo did not end up building into a hurricane as forecast initially. Gonzalo ended up easing and passing about 70 NM south of us - between here and Trinidad at about 1300 Saturday our time. (Pic) The losers were those who chose to sail to Trinidad to avoid it!

Earlier, at about 0400 Saturday, we were hit by the first severe squall - strong wind and heavy rain, but did not last very long. This continued intermittently through Saturday morning. While everyone was hunkered down in their boats, I thought I'd take advantage of the situation and went outide in my bathers to scrub the deck (no pic!) given the benefit of a good rinse-off. Once Gonzalo had passed, we just had some strongish wind in the afternoon and not much rain.

In the end, not a major event, but I'm happy. The next couple of days will probably be spent putting things back to normal. Thank you to the many of you who sent kind supportive words through the blog post. Best wishes from In Tune.

Well we arrived safe and sound in St George's, Grenada. The passage took 3.5 days and 3 nights. All in all, in it was a tiring, but not bad trip. Our course was SSE so we were constantly close hauled to sail upwind as much as possible. The first two nights were a bit rough with 20 + (low 20's) knots of wind and 1 - 2 metre seas. The second day we almost lost the wind completely for 3 hours and took the opportunity to motor eastwards to get a better wind angle. Day 3 was a mixed bag - bad wind angle in the morning forced us off course, but afternoon and last night were near perfect. Though they didn't identify themselves, on the 3rd night we were circled by what I think was a police or coast guard boat which was unnerving for a while. On long passages like this with just the two of us we don't have a strict watch schedule - pretty well I do everything until late evening and Geri, bless her heart, does most of the night time. We arrived in Grenada around lunch time - about 4 hours later than I had estimated, the delay caused by the issues above. Anyway, tired, but without any problems, we were happy to be here.

We 'checked into' quarantine, and have now almost completed the 2 weeks (another 2 weeks!!!) in quarantine on the boat. Tomorrow Tues 16th they give us a Covid-19 test, and if we pass that, we are free! We have pretty good wifi in the anchorage, so even once we have cleared through customs and immigration, I plan to stay here for a while in the St George's anchorage. At least we will be able to go ashore!