Up on the Hard, Grenada Marine, St Davids Grenada
Three words, hot, humid and bugs. Has my ability to bear the discomforts of boat-life waned during my summer stay in plush accomadations? Maybe, not really sure, but anyone who endures a boatyard, in a jungle while tropical waves pass without complaint, is someone who I have not met yet. It's brutal, trying to get work done. But that is the deal!
I rolled out of bed at 3am Monday morning and my Dad had me to Tampa airport with plenty O time to spare, which is how I like to roll. Onward to San Juan, where I had a very long, 8 hour layover, but boarded my flight to Grenada with out incident and landed in Grenada tired, but unscathed. I got all jacked up at Customs as I had boat parts and who knows what else, that the folks wanted an import tax on. Not stoked about taxes. I turned up the charm to warp speed, difficult given my sleep deprivation and revulsion for taxes, but received my stamps after some friendly bartering. Cuthbert my Grenadian taxi driver was waiting, a real relief when landing in a 3rd world country at night. I arrived back aboard Christa at about 10 pm.
A mixed sense of relief to see Christa is fine, but terribly dirty and dread as it's dark and steamy hot. You see, where Christa is there is no lights at all. To get aboard you need a ladder, so I had to forage around the yard in the pitch black to swipe a ladder from another boat, and hope no one is aboard. An unsuspecting person could wake up in the night and need to use the bathroom, with no way to get off the boat. But I had no choice. Once aboard, I was surprised to see the batteries totally dead. I thought they would hold some charge and maybe there is some current draw I'm not aware of. So now I had to string power to the boat which was another Special Forces operation to get that taken care of. So I finally got things situated. It was a long day.
I'm cranking away at the worklist. Not on the agenda is the chainplate replacement project. My man Devon works in the yard and has been a great help. I don't understand much that he says, but his speech is peppered with alot of "yeah Mon" and "we cool like dat mon" He is always looking for extra work and is really mellow.
So today, within less than five minutes, my galley whale-gusher broke, the lawn mower type pull chord for the Honda Generator snapped (completly hosing things up), the power to the boat tripped, it down poured on my new paint job and the ladder fell over. I thought, what have I done to anger Neptune and then remembered this is a bit extreme, but really this is what boat life is like. The highs are very high and lows can can scrape Satins underbelly.
All in all everything is fine. The varnish is failing in all spots, but this is what happens in the tropical sun, so the boat looks like hell. But that is the way it goes. I'll work on it!
The above picture is for all the ladies. The kid cica 1969
Capt Chris
