Living "on the hard"...

Hello everyone. Happy Mothers Day to all you hot mamas that read this. Sorry I've been off the grid for a couple of weeks. Been a little busy. Time has been flying by at break neck speed. A few weeks ago I sailed up to the Southern Grenadines to hang out and check out the Tobago Cays. It was fantastic. The pics that I posted recently have several photos from the Cays and some of the smaller islands, you can see how incredibly beautiful that area is. The diving in there was unreal. The water throughout the Cays varies in depth from around 30 feet to less than a foot and the snorkeling is first rate. It's basically like swimming around in a huge aquarium. During various dives I saw everything from reef fish to eels to shrimp and of course the best was the turtles. They are everywhere in that area. The anchorage is surrounded by a huge horseshoe shaped reef that provides a wall of shelter from the barrage of the Atlantic swells but also has created a home for these big turtles. During the day they just cruise around in shallow water with grassy spots and they just munch away. Everyday off the back of the boat there were 3 hawksbill turtles that had a particular patch of grass right near where I was anchored that they fed at. I would watch their heads pop out of the water to get another breath before heading back down to feed. I snorkeled out and basically just hung out with them for quite a while. They were unimpressed with me to say the least. I swam down and would lie on the bottom less than 3 feet away from the big one and just stare at him as he chowed down on the grass. I would go up for air, come back down and it never fazed him. Very cool stuff. I managed to get several photos with an underwater throw away camera I have so someday I should be able to post those pics. One night I ventured out to the reef to look for lobsters. I should note here that I dive fairly regularly back in California for lobster and have gotten pretty good at spotting them, even during the day when they are hiding in holes and usually all that is visible is a tiny bit of their antennaes. I have dove several reefs and rocky areas from the Bahamas all the way to here and still had not seen a freaking lobster so I was starting to doubt my skills. Well now I have my good dive light strapped on my mask and I thought it was time for a little night recon to find some bugs. I'm happy to report that I finally found some. Unfortunately lobster season ended on May 1st and to be honest, I'm not quite sure that it's even legal for visitors to take lobster so in the interest of not incriminating myself, I'll tell you that all I did was "look". I mean, it's not my fault if half a dozen of them ended up on the boat somehow. I wouldn't want to get in trouble, you know how I like to follow the rules. While I was out that night, I saw a huge turtle just floating along in about 4 feet of water. I swam next to him for twenty minutes just watching him glide. Then somewhere in there I saw a baby turtle maybe a foot long sleeping under a huge coral fan, I swear to you it was laying on the bottom with it's head on a rock, like a pillow. It was awesome. I narrowly avoided crashing into a rock covered with sea urchins at one point. The current was pretty strong and after I swam down to grab, I mean look, at a lobster, when I was coming back up the flow of the water was taking me directly at the rock. I was probably a foot away from landing like a pincushion on all those spines. All in all, it was bad ass and dinner was good. Just pasta you know, wink wink...

There are also some pics of a deserted island. That is the island they filmed in the first Pirates movie where they left Johnny Depp for dead and the chick burned the rum. I walked all over that damn island but those pricks from Hollywood didn't leave any rum behind. It was a neat little island with a nice long sandy beach on the northwest and a long beach made of dead coral on the southeast. One of the guides I read said that all of that area was hit hard by the hurricane in the 2004 so a lot of the coral reefs were broken up and washed ashore. I also visited several of the islands surrounding the Cays. I just took the dinghy and cruised around to the various ports. It was all great and I was bummed the day I had to weigh anchor and start heading south again.

I've been back in Grenada for the last week and I spent most of last week anchored up in Prickly Bay preparing the boat to get hauled out for the work with my favorite task being when I finished scrubbing barnacles off the bottom which was a 6 hour job, hooray, that was a fun day. It was a good productive week and Friday morning at 8 AM I pulled the anchor and motored up to the dock. Of course, about 100 yards from the slip the starboard engine shut down so I got to put this 24 foot wide boat into a parking space that is 25 feet wide with only one engine. Oh and did I mention the wind was blowing well over 20 knots that morning? Murphy's law I suppose but I managed. She was up and out in no time, pressure washed and put up on the chocks. The work commenced immediately. Sails were pulled off, they started prepping the bottom for paint, I yanked everything out of every locker to start working on my two page project list. I spent 14 hours on Friday and 13 yesterday doing various tasks and jobs on the boat and I don't even feel like I have made a dent yet. And Brian, you will be happy to know that I haven't spent any money yet. I am scheduled to splash down on the 23rd so I'm hoping to be out of here by the end of the month to start my trek towards Panama. Barring any unforseen problem I think I should make it.

So for now the excitement of the trip is on hold as the boat sits here in it's cradle. I will be working incessantly on the boat for the next two weeks. The sailor slang for having the boat up out of the water like this is "on the hard" and so far it sucks. First off, obviously you don't hear the water lapping at the side of the boat. Friday night I was so tired I almost went to the back of the boat to jump in the water to cool off, something I do all day normally, but now I'm 15 feet off a solid ground full of gravel. I went to use the shower tonight and there is no handle for hot water, wanna know why? Yep, cause there ain't no hot water. The wind has been heavy for the past week and there is a lot of dust kicked up from a construction site nearby so everything is dirty. I actually found a bunch of red dirt all over the front of the boat this morning which I'm told is dirt that is blown all the way across the Atlantic from the deserts of Africa. I guess it's pretty common down here. Anyway, life on the hard is not ideal. The worst part is the damn mosquitoes. I want to be the first to congratulate Grenada. Their mosquitoes officially have the itchiest freaking stings in the world. I'm not kidding but not five minutes ago as I was typing this, one of them landed on my laptop screen. I smacked it and it instantly popped, leaving a small spot of fresh blood on the screen. My blood. The little bastard had apparently just bit me prior to his demise. The other sucky part is that I don't have internet here. The yard hasn't finished installing the Wifi connection and my laptop can't pick up the signal from the Bay that I was using last week. Luckily, I have a nice German couple as boat neighbors and tonight he lent me an antennae that plugs into the computer and can get wireless from something like 2 miles away so for tonight, I am connected. That about catches everything up, as per usual, there have been plenty of great and amazing things to write about but it would take forever and make these posts longer than they already are. Also, there is a bar/club right up the road that is really nice and last night was packed with medical students from the nearby university. I went in and had a few beers before coming back and crashing out. It was a cool place, good music and the food was great. I only mention this place because of the name. It's called Bananas. Isn't that just perfect?

One last thing. I get a lot of e-mails telling me that people admire what I did and how much courage it took to do it. People say that the can't believe how gutsy I am or that they wished they possessed "big enough balls" to do what I did. I am always grateful for the well wishes and compliments from people regarding this, it helps to reinforce to me that I made the right choice. I recently learned where I get a huge portion of my courage. My Dad's sister is Sandi. To me, she has always been Aunt Nani. She is a dynamite lady and I have great memories of growing up around her. She taught me how to swim (which is obviously helpful right now), we got to go on trips with her, Disneyland, Mammoth, etc, and we always looked forward to Christmas at her house. Through all the bullshit I have pulled over the years, she was always a friend to me. Instead of downplaying things, she listened and always made me feel good about things. I have always loved her a ton and have ALWAYS admired her. She won a battle with cancer a few years ago but now it's back. I wanted to fly home to see her. I called her and she told me to stay. She told me not to worry about her because she is going to beat it again. She told me that 47 people visited her in one day at the hospital (what does that tell you about what people think of this woman). She told me that she was proud of me for what I am doing. She told me that she is so happy that I am following my heart and to keep going. That's fucking guts man. That's "big balls". I have fought many fires, swam with sharks, wrecked trucks, jumped out of planes, and pushed things to the edge many times. Never have I faced a challenge as terrifying as cancer. I wonder if I could. I wonder if I would have the resolve to say to someone not to worry because I'm going to win my fight against this terrible illness. I'd like to think so but even the thought of having to face that sends a chill down my spine. Aunt Nani, you are a bad ass. I love you so much and I believe what you told me. I know you will win. Fuck cancer. You are way stronger than cancer and thank you for giving me a small measure of your immeasurable strength.