THANKS!

Thanks so much to all the commenters! I knew you were out there and it was so fun for us to hear from you. Also nice to hear that many have bought and read my book. My publisher thanks you too!

I feel a little bad in that many people are reading each day to get a taste of the sailing adventure. Now we are in place for awhile and, gulp, working! Well, when we left we knew this was going to be some kind of an adventure. We knew that it would be totally different from our life ashore whatever that lead to. With the stockmarket in the dumpster and Enee Marie wanting a new windlass, autohelm and jib, employment seemed to be the right move at this time. We too look forward to getting back on the cruise in the near future. As you have all figured out reading this blog there is way more to the cruising life than simply sailing your boat. That IS the best part though!

Thinking ahead a little, Grenada is one of those 'Lands End' places. Key West is like that too. You make it all the way south from NYC and really do come to the end of the land in Key West and wonder, Now what? Same here. The chain of Caribbean islands ends here in Grenada. Now what? One choice is to do what many of our friends are doing and head back north through the islands. You never see everything in one pass or even two so you can go back to favorite spots and pick up some that you missed. Part of the draw here is how hard we worked to get so far east. Now we get to make nice long reaches up and down the chain. It's hard to give that up. Another common choice is to continue south to Trinidad and/or Venezuela. Many of our friends kept their boats in Trinidad for hurricane season with mixed reviews. One boat yard worker said to a cruiser, "We wish we could figure out how to get your money without actually having you here". I guess a lot of cruisers are not exactly feeling the love in Trinidad. Venezuela is run by a complete idiot which always makes you think twice before going. Pirating is common off the north-east coast of Venezuela and cruisers have to stick together and know where and where not to go. To me, the world is a big place and I would like to think I could find places to go where I was a little more welcome. You can stay pretty far north of the coast of Venezuela and hit the little islands of LosTostigos, Blanquilla, Ochita and some others and make your way to the bigger islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao. This could be nice as it is all downwind sailing! Hundreds of miles , plenty of islands and no beating to weather. Of course now you've given up all your easting and you either continue west to Columbia, Panama, etc or you can make a long reach north back to Puerto Rico and start over!

So, one thing a long stop like our Grenada stop can do for us is to give us the time to plan, read and talk with other cruisers. Planning and dreaming is half the fun!

Thanks again for reading.