At times, it's pretty hard to believe that we left Queen City Yacht Club (Toronto) 5 years ago. It's even harder to believe how many people choose to read our blog! We thank you for your interest and sharing some of your stories with us. We have met some of you on our travels, and others have become pen pals via email.

It is time for our annual...um..."naval" gazing, and look back at some of the things that we have learned. This is an overall thread, as Ken has a more technical blog in mind.
You can never seem to have enough fans, as in the kind that blow air on you . We are not a big boat, but we have 9 fans in place (3 in the bunk) to make the hot months easier to handle. They are all "Caframo Ultimate 757" fans. We like them because they push a good amount of air, they don't draw much power, and the blades are very easy to clean since they don't have a guard (but they are safe if you get a body part into them). The newer rendition has a much more robust mounting system which makes them run more quietly. Overall, they are a simple design and seem to have a decent life expectancy, which is important when they might run for 12 hours or so a day...and hey, their head office is in Owen Sound, Ontario Canada.

Sun shades, making the cockpit much more comfortable. We finally got around to getting our shades up around the cockpit and on the main window of the dodger. They don't block much breeze, and the shade factor certainly makes the cockpit more comfortable. They even provide a measure of privacy, too. However, in the hottest days of the tropical summer, we still tend to bail for the comfort of below decks with the fans running. And, thankfully, the water is always available for swimming. In addition to this, some kind of hatch tent is nice to have. It cuts down the direct sunlight into the boat, and buys us time when the rain starts up to get the hatch closed (we have one on the main hatch in the saloon area). A white hull and decks go a long way to help us keep our cool.

A pressure cooker is a worthwhile investment, but then you need to use it. Never mind the horror stories from the old days, modern pressure cookers have great safety features. I can do a roast in 45 minutes, or do other things in a fraction of the time that it normally takes. This is great to cut down the use of cooking fuel (propane, butane, or for those that need a generator for electric stoves, diesel) and it cuts down the heating of the cabin.

Don't just collect it, display it. We have picked up little bits and piece of art in the last couple of years, and have FINALLY got around to getting it up in the boat. While it may not be perfectly placed (there are only so many places to mount pictures on our boat), we can enjoy them all of the time now, rather than just shifting them from one place to another when they were in the way.

Feel free to just do your own thing. During the hurricane season here in Grenada, there are tons of social events available to get you off of your boat. Don't feel like you need to do all of them, as you will drive yourself crazy. Sometimes it is just cheaper to stay at home and enjoy dinner there, and probably easier on your liver. For us, this also extends to buddy boating. We found the last year of cruising was more satisfying as we did what we wanted to do, on our timetable. We tended to find friends along the way, and ran into old friends, too. We feel that following the herd can put unnecessary time restraints on you.

Breakfast and brunch, a nice way to entertain. Ken and I have come to enjoy inviting people for a morning meal. Generally it is cooler for the food prep, and it is just something different. And honestly, breakfast tends to be an easier meal to prepare, and it is a novelty for many people to do that instead of dinner. Nobody has complained about it yet. And since we aren't big drinkers, it actually limits the occasional feeling of awkwardness of having heavy drinkers over when you don't have an interest in pounding them back yourself.

Medical and Dental care is affordable and decent in the islands, or it can be. I wouldn't look for open heart surgery in Grenada, I will admit that, but we have had excellent success with our doctors here in Grenada, and have found it quite affordable, for the general stuff and checkups. There are also some very good dentists to be found, with more qualifications than you can shake a drill at. There is a dentist in St. Lucia with a more modern practice than our dentist back in Toronto, for about a third of the price. Don't be afraid of getting it done while down here. I had a root canal and crown done for about $1,000 USD, much more affordable than if it had been done in Canada. Ken got excellent quality eyeglasses for a very good price here in Grenada. However, when you need that major help, an inexpensive insurance plan is through DAN for your transport to better care. Divers Alert Network offers insurance for about $75 USD a year that will pay for air transport to a place that can take care of you; you don't have to be a diver to get it, and it doesn't have to be a diving accident. Read the fine print for yourself. Some medications are quite reasonably priced, too, and anything from a French manufacturer tends to be better priced in the French islands.

Don't get caught in the "cruiser ghetto", get out and about. Many cruisers stick with the cruiser hangouts, and will only occasionally take public transport or do things that aren't cruiser-centric. That's great if you want to pay a premium for everything, and if you want to do the same old, same old. However, you will find the special places without a crowd.

Eggs will be broken when we want them to be! We have plastic egg containers from Canadian Tire, and they are great! Just make sure you get them for the largest egg size you can find, as the grading system in the islands is pretty much non-existent. These containers will save the day when buying eggs at market, where they sell them to you in a plastic bag, or big shopping trips when the sheer weight of the other groceries may inadvertently pre-scramble the eggs for you. A caveat when buying eggs; yes, unrefrigerated eggs can last fairly long without refrigeration if they are turned every one to two days - don't assume the eggs you are buying have been turned. We have had some pretty disgusting eggs that way.

Bring on the man-made fabrics! Forget the "Women glow, men perspire, and horses sweat" malarkey, I sweat profusely, and Ken does a pretty good job of soaking his shirts, too. We have pretty much written off cotton, and are big fans of the sports fabrics that wick the sweat away, especially the ones that feel like cotton. They also dry quickly after we get caught in a tropical downpour, or the dinghy ride was a wet one. This goes for our towels, too. We have microfiber towels for ourselves, and are glad to have them. They dry quickly, are absorbent even when damp, and don't tend to stink. Come to think of it, even the bed sheets are a microfiber...

It's bad enough that we sweat in the heat, we don't want our drinks to perspire as well. For a couple of years now, Ken and I have used insulated aluminum travel mugs for our cold drinks. This not only maintains a nicer drinking temperature, but it eliminates the condensation on the side of the glass, thus eliminating a big puddle of water under the drink. We also have insulated "coozies" for cans and bottles when whatever we are drinking doesn't need decanting.

We like cans for the storage, but the plastic bottles are more economical; no glass please! We prefer to purchase our soft drinks and beer in cans, as they are much more space efficient, but the plastic pop bottles tend to be more economical down here (and we reuse them for water bottles when hiking or walking). As much as beer tends to taste better from bottles, and costs less, we still seek out the cans as really prefer to not store the glass bottles on board - they take up too much space.

Forget tying a string on your finger, use Post-it notes! Post-it notes are a handy way to make, and keep, notes on board, especially for engine and boat work. Sometimes there isn't a way to remember a number or two, such as for the dimensions of something, and this will save you the aggravation of forgetting, with the bonus that it won't get blown away in the breeze from one of the nine fans. The only caveat is that sometimes they stay around a little longer than you planned on.

Sometimes sun protection can be dangerous! Hats on a boat can create added bumps and scrapes, as the brims limit the ability to see what is just above your head, and the little button on a baseball cap seems to be the part that hits when the head does. We don't wear hats a lot while actually on the our boat, but the newest Tilley hat that has lots of mesh isn't too bad to keep the UV rays off the old melon. Having a hat lanyard attached will also curtail the sudden loss and emergency retrieval of a "Hat Overboard" situation, especially in the dinghy. For that matter, lanyards for sunglasses/glasses are a must, too.

We'll keep the electronic readers, thank you! Ken and I both have Kindles, and have grown to love them. It means far fewer books (less to store) and the convenience of the built-in dictionaries. And to be honest, just like cruisers swap movies around on hard drives, there are a number of "cracked" e-books making their rounds of the cruising community. While some would say that we are pirating, and they would be correct, we have actually purchased more books since we got the Kindles and the cracked collection than we had in the previous 5 years; just like regular book swaps, we have been exposed to authors we never knew about before, and love, and sometimes you have to buy the latest book from them to keep up with the series. Too bad reference books don't translate into e-books well, or we would be even lighter! As far as DVD's go, good luck finding legitimate copies down here. We do draw the line of having pirated copies of media that we know the creators of - we prefer the idea of supporting their cruising lives.

Where are we going and how are we getting there? Friends of ours are going to take their boat to Australia and need charts. We came upon the idea of asking friends that have done it to loan charts. Another option, if you don't mind copyright infringement, is to copy charts. Somebody may be willing to lend you their charts to get them copied. We have found that cruising guides really don't change much from edition to edition. If you want up-to-date stuff, check the Facebook groups, or check the local cruisers' radio net, if there is one.

Of course, there are the things that we have mentioned the last 4 anniversaries of cruising, and the bits and pieces in between. This is just what came to mind this time around. 10 years of living on a boat, with 5 years of those cruising... and we aren't done yet!