The full boat project list – summer 2023

November 11, 2023November 11, 2023 / FloatsOurBoat / 11 Comments

I haven’t been posting many “Keeping it real – life in the boat yard” blog posts recently. Let’s face it, they are kind of a downer. Plus, you don’t really want to see my sweaty, shiny face beaming at you, covered in yard dirt and anti-foul paint, do you? 🥵 But that doesn’t mean we haven’t been hard at work getting SV Happy ready to hit the high seas this winter! Her previous owners took excellent care of her, but she wasn’t outfitted for life on the hook so we had lots to do there, and just to turn her into a comfortable floating home 🏡

Capt. Mike kicked butt in the spring and got a ton of projects finished between when we moved aboard Happy in late March to when we left Stuart, FL in late April:

Installed 600 watts of solar panels
New 85 pound Mantus anchor
New dinghy davits
Antifoul paint on the hull and prop, with new zincs
Rebuilt the propane system: lines, regulator, solenoid
Applied mast boot tape to address a water leak
Fixed water leak in propane locker
Waterproofed the Bimini and dodger
New led light in the galley
New filters for the drinking water filtration system
Troubleshooting the wind instruments
Fixed drawer latches
New shower head
Started fixing the portlight leaks… More to follow!

We were feeling pretty good about our progress when we left Happy at Brunswick Landing Marina for a couple months this summer. But after our mountain and cycling summer vacation, we had to go back to work – and in crazy Georgia heat and humidity 🔥 We definitely didn’t feel like we were having as much fun as other residents of the marina.

One of our biggest projects was removing all of the portlights (aka boat windows), scraping and cleaning them, and rebedding. In Florida spring thunderstorms, we had water running down the inside of the salon “walls” and collecting inches of water in our drip cups. We decided to repair all the portlights, even the ones without visible leaks, after Capt. Mike installed a light in the galley and water streamed out of the screw holes, implying that some of the leaks were occurring between the hull and the lining. Each portlight took about 8 hours to address – removing with razor blades and pry bars, scraping old caulk and silicon off the stainless, cleaning, rebedding with new caulk, and cleaning the excess that squirted out during the process.

Then the biggest boat project we’ve ever taken on ourselves – installing a high volume water maker / desalinator. A bigger boat means more room for systems and having a virtually unlimited supply of fresh water will be a game changer for our cruising life. But first – we’ve got to get the thing to work! We ordered a Seawater Pro 40 gallons-per-hour system, and it was delivered as a big heavy box of parts and a link to a bunch of You Tube videos. Gulp.

Capt Mike had to figure out where to locate the components of the system (long membranes, water filters, high pressure pump, boost pump, and control panel), and how to connect to the plumbing and electrical systems. At one point, he got frustrated and told me to watch the videos and help him figure out the electrical. I watched each video three times, took pages of notes, and finally announced my findings “They don’t tell you how to connect to the generator and to the boost pump!” Capt. Mike confirmed “That’s exactly my point” 🤦‍♀️ Luckily, they have excellent customer service and tech support and a couple of phone calls gave us enough info to move forward. It took about a month in total to complete this install, with Capt. Mike contorting his body into every tight hold on the boat. We think he’s got it done! Now to anchor in a place with clean ocean water to test it all out!

Here’s the rest of the project list completed between August and November 2023:

Rebed 14 portlights
Install watermaker
New batteries (house battery bank, starter battery, and bow thruster battery)
Rebuilt aft head (toilet) pump, replace aft head sink hose
Added a macerator pump to the aft holding tank
New running rigging, with new eye splices
New dock lines, anchor snubber, anchor bridle, and splices
Install Victron Bluetooth battery monitor
Brought all three sails to a sail loft for inspection and repairs
Recaulked both heads and the galley
Caulked a leak in the forward head fan
Installed lights in the anchor locker, main cabin closet, and fixed existing light switches

We’re exhausted and our bank accounts are a bit lighter, but we’re ready to get out there and start cruising!

I’m just going to run out for a loaf of bread

December 4, 2021December 4, 2021 / FloatsOurBoat / Leave a comment

I keep telling people that sailing life is NOT glamorous, but nobody believes me. Possibly because I keep posting pictures like this….

But today was grocery day, and as I sweated my way through the day, I kept thinking “none of my American friends would believe how much effort goes into shopping in the islands” So if you’re curious, here’s a shopping-day-in the-life of SV Sanitas.

Capt. Mike and I decided to divide and conquer on errands today. But, we only have one dinghy, so the day starts with a “dinghy-pool.” We left the boat at 8:30 all packed, sun-screened, and watered up for a day ashore. After bailing out the couple inches of rain that fell overnight, it was only a ten minutes ride in little Bug to the Le Phare Bleu marina where Capt. Mike caught a ride to downtown St George’s with a friend to pick up our new watermaker (hooray!) Then I piloted the dinghy 15 minutes in the opposite direction to Clark’s Court Marina on the far side of Woburn Bay. I’m not a very experienced dinghy driver, so I don’t go at full speed, and I have to admit I overcompensate a bit on steering, so I tend to zig zag, and by now my butt is completely wet from salt water splashes. But I arrive with about 30 minutes to spare before the shopping bus is scheduled to arrive, so I order a coffee and a ham and cheese stuffed arepa from the Cruiser’s Galley restaurant for 15ec ($5.50) while I wait.

The shopping bus costs another 15ec. Patrick (aka Shademan) makes the rounds of all the marinas on Tuesdays and Fridays, picking up cruisers who don’t have land transportation and makes a loop of the most popular businesses: the bank, Ace hardware, Budget marine chandlery, IGA grocery store, and CK’s Warehouse store. I didn’t need anything other than groceries this time, but the stores are air-conditioned and the bus isn’t, so of course I stopped at each place for a few moments of cool. Grenada takes its COVID protocols seriously. Masks are required indoors, and each time I enter a shop I must take my temperature, use hand sanitizer, and sign into a log book for contact tracing. Now that I think about it, maybe it’s easier to wait in the bus. I know I said I didn’t need anything at the other stores but – peer pressure! A fellow bus rider recommended a 16ec bottle of sparkling wine at the hardware store (don’t you always buy your sparkling wine for $6.00 from a hardware store?) and I couldn’t resist.

A particularly fancy island bus (photo credit: Christopher Bancroft)

Finally, about an hour after we left the marina, we arrive at the Spiceland Mall which has a small food court, some souvenir shops, an optician, and the only big American style grocery store on the island. I make a quick stop at the pharmacy and the pharmacist is very helpful in finding me treatments for a recent burn on my arm. She doesn’t even ask for a prescription for the silver sulfide cream, and she walks me around the small shop, gathering up natural cocoa butter and vitamin E to prevent scarring. 48ec ($17) later, and I’m good to go on burn treatments.

Finally, around 11:00, I make it to IGA grocery store which is the whole reason I left the boat today. In the States, I think of IGA as a small local grocery store, but here, it’s da bomb! It’s where the tourists and medical school students and expats and wealthy Grenadians shop for imported foods in air-conditioned comfort, and the only place on island where I can find gluten-free bread. The funny thing is, IGA sells their own store brand foods, and also sells the store brands from British grocery store chains. So I buy liquid hand soap from Tesco and gluten-free pasta from Waitrose, and spices from the Trinidadian brand, Baron. Luckily, it’s a good day for produce, but a bad day for eggs (completely empty shelf) and my heart gives an anxious little flutter, ‘cause we’re down to only three eggs back on the boat.

Surprise! I run into Capt. Mike here at the grocery store. Karen, on SV Soulshine who gave Mike a ride to town, also needed groceries, and IGA is the place to be! So I tell Shademan I no longer need a ride home (he doesn’t offer me any money back) and I load my three heavy bags into the back of Karen’s rental car. Where, we find that a previously bald tire is now also completely flat. Maybe I should have stuck with the bus? Capt. Mike is our hero, and he replaces the flat tire with an even balder spare, and off we go. Karen gives a turkey sandwich that she bought at IGA to the homeless man who always begs at the parking lot exit. I donate to the Salvation Army bell ringer.

Back at he marina, it takes us two trips to get all of our bags and our new watermaker from the car to the dinghy, and it’s a very tight fit for the Captain and I to squeeze in as well. Bug is moving a lot slower with this load. We make a pit stop at the concrete fishermen’s dock in lower Woburn bay, where I duck into a local restaurant / convenience store and buy a tray of thirty non-refrigerated eggs for 30ec ($11) The owner admonishes me for not bringing my own egg cartons, and makes me promise to bring the tray back to her tomorrow. I balance the tray of brown eggs on top of the watermaker box, and Capt. Mike and I carefully maneuver around our pile of stuff and stand up in the dinghy all the way back to Sanitas to avoid getting totally soaked as we motor upwind.

Finally back to the boat around 1:00, we hoist everything into the cockpit, then down the companionway stairs into the galley. Then the real fun begins – figuring out where to put everything we bought! I wrestle with my top-loading fridge, trying to keep the meat and dairy in the coldest part, and the bread and condiments in what our thermometer calls “the danger zone.” Too bad the warmer danger zone is the only part of the fridge that’s easy to reach. I spread out the fruit and veg that will be stored unrefrigerated to let it dry – air conditioning in the supermarket makes for a lot of condensation, and storing away wet onions or apples will cause them to go bad more quickly.

Phew! By about 2:00, I’ve put everything away, drank a huge glass of water, and I’m beat. I feel a sense of accomplishment for the day, like I’ve done something momentous, although looking back on it, I’ve done nothing but buy a week’s worth of groceries. Good thing we’ve learned to slow way down in this nomad life!

It’s Shopping Day Again

February 16, 2021 / FloatsOurBoat / 4 Comments

I love island shopping day! It’s always hot and sweaty, but also, always an adventure – you can’t say the same about a trip to Safeway 😉

It starts with a wet dinghy ride to the tiny town of Ashton. Before jumping into the dinghy, don’t forget to grab a small bag of trash to throw out at the dock, and don’t forget shoes (been there, done that). We usually stand up in the dinghy to attempt to get soaked with salt water only from the knees down. Then a two mile walk to the slightly larger town of Clifton – luckily there’s only one big hill to conquer on the way. I keep a running contest going to find the cutest baby goat family on our “urban hikes”. Extra points for little black sheep. Clifton is bustling with many small grocery stores, veggie stalls, and even a few clothing shops. Streets are busy right before lunch time – I guess you could call it Union Island rush hour.

I wouldn’t call it one stop shopping… We stop at the cheapest, most rustic veggie stand next to Determination Bar first, where the super nice ladies help me pick out the best grapefruit and the local spring onions. But no chance of finding imported delicacies such as green peppers, green beans, or the kind of big ripe bananas us Americans are used to. So I finish my fruit and veggie shopping at Jenny’s brightly painted veg stand down by the town dock. She has chopped callalou and much nicer tomatoes, but I still have to keep searching for green peppers. About 130ec later ($48) our backpacks are full of about 10 days worth of fresh fruit and veg. Just one more stop at the grocery store for cheese, butter, and eggs and we’re good to go. No, scratch that. It’ll be better to return to the market for unrefrigerated eggs – they’ll last longer.

Now this is not at all the way the islanders shop. They seem to buy a day or two of food at a time and shop more often. Island friends say it’s because they rarely have enough cash to buy much at one time. Grocery stores usually have staples such as rice, flour, and sugar repacked into small plastic bags of a pound or 2 cups in addition to the 5- and 10-pound bags I’m used to finding. I really appreciate how lucky I am to be able to afford fresh, healthy food – we can stretch our cruising budget by cooking fresh food on the boat instead of eating in pricy tourist restaurants regularly. And when I stock up like this, we can take Sanitas off grid and get away from civilization for a week or more at a time. I know that the islanders are really suffering due to the lack of tourist income in Covid times, so I don’t negotiate on the price of produce. Sometimes I’ll exclaim, “Really?!? That much?” and the shop keeper will throw in a piece of citrus or a few extra bananas 🍌🥭🍈🍋

Another 2-mile walk back to the dock (we never seem to time the mini buses right here in Union Island), another dinghy ride (it’s not quite as wet in this direction) and then I have to clean and repackage all the veg. Take everything out of the plastic bags, check for bugs, pack in green produce bags to make things last longer, rotate the contents of my top-loading fridge to store the newest and most durable items on the bottom and the fragile things I need to eat first on top. While I’m at it, check the contents of the fruit hammock – make sure nothing’s going bad. And… Since I’m really on a roll…I found tiny bugs in the cornmeal last night. Good thing I package all my dry goods in sealed containers! But just in case, let’s take everything out of the galley cupboard, wipe everything down, and make sure the bugs didn’t escape their plastic prison. Phew!

When people ask, “What do you actually DO all day when you live in a sailboat?” I answer, “all the things you do – everything just takes a heck of a lot longer”. I hope you’ve enjoyed this glimpse into island shopping… I’m going to get started making falafel, a tomato cucumber salad, and maybe some butternut squash for dinner. What are you having?

Everybody’s favorite topic – medical care for nomads!

December 10, 2020December 10, 2020 / FloatsOurBoat / 4 Comments

It’s been two years since Capt. Mike and I have had medical insurance in the USA. Part of our travel plan for 2020 was to fit in a little medical tourism trip to Cancun to get dental work, blood work, and recommended cancer screenings done. But…. it’s 2020….all plans are off! Instead, we spent 6 months in Grenada so we tried our best to find healthcare providers to take care of our needs here.

Although there’s a massive medical school on the island, training America’s future doctors, there’s not really a robust healthcare system or a modern public hospital. There is a small private clinic, St Augustine’s Medical Center, or SAMS, that’s a good option for emergencies. Our friend Cheryl on SV LeefNu had a good experience there treating broken ribs. But I don’t think I’d want to undergo a major surgery here if I had the option to go elsewhere. Many residents, who can afford it, also travel off island for significant medical care.

We started out with the easy stuff – a dental cleaning. Well, I THOUGHT it would be easy! Of the 5 or 6 dentists recommended in my local cruisers FaceBook group, most were taking appointments 4 months out! So I went with the only one I could see within two weeks. I found that the quality of the dental care was….ok. COVID precautions were in place (masks, hand sanitizer, chairs blocked off in the waiting room). A very pleasant young woman dentist, working out of a faded old fashioned office, gave us a thorough exam and a good cleaning. However, no X-rays, and no measurements for gum disease. She pretty much just poked at our typical American teeth and said “everything looks good.” There’s no lab to fabricate crowns on the island, so dentists must order such devices from the US and that takes another three months turnaround. I guess “Replace slowly failing crown” will stay on my to-do list for another year.

Cost for routine dental exam and cleaning = 165 ecd or $61US

Up next, annual skin cancer screening. We are two very pale people, living outdoors in the Caribbean, so we make it a priority to get every spot checked out every year. There’s exactly one dermatologist in Grenada, Dr Jenny Issacs. The directions to find her office are “go to the downtown vegetable market, walk up the hill, look for the hand-written sign on the wall next to the used book store.” Again, covid precautions made us feel safe. We even had to bring our certificate from the health ministry stating that we’d passed a covid test and completed quarantine. Dr Issacs has been practicing in Grenada for over 30 years, and she’s licensed as a GP as well as a dermatologist. She’s very kind and thorough, and she listened to all of our concerns and requests for prescriptions to top up the boat first aid kit, writing us prescriptions for antibiotics and my thyroid pills. She examined Mike’s bald head and told him “you have so little melanin in your skin, you should be cruising in Scandinavia”, lol. She wrote him a prescription for Efudix, a cream used to treat pre-cancerous spots. We carefully followed the directions for a two-week treatment, and it seemed to work great! No more rough, red spots! She found one tiny irregular dark spot on my cheek and recommended a biopsy “Out of an abundance of caution”

Cost per person for dermatologist appointment = 150ecd or $55US
Cost for large tube of Efudix = 460ecd or $170US

Prescriptions are kind of expensive here… But so is everything imported, I suppose! It seems strange to me that prescription meds are priced by the pill, rather than by the month or by the dose. I take a very common generic thyroid medicine, but in the entire time I’ve been in Grenada, I could not find the dose I need in a single pill. Is there a conspiracy in all of Grenada’s pharmacies to make twice the money by selling twice the pills?

Cost of generic thyroid meds = about 55ecd or $20US per month

So that dermatologist appointment led to a biopsy appointment. Sheesh. The spot was so small, I had to point it out to the nurse. The surgeon was very nice – also a sailor who plans to retire and move into a boat in a few years (although he said his wife wouldn’t want to live in one as small as ours). I was nervous about the procedure (after all, it was on my face) but Capt. Mike was there to take care of me, and it really wasn’t bad at all. Three days later and I had the stitches out. Two weeks later, I got the biopsy results – negative – and I could pretend the whole thing never happened. Don’t forget your hat and sunscreen!

Cost for biopsy: including surgeon fees, lab fees, facility fees, initial consultation, and suture removal = 780ecd or $289US.

In addition to these doctors appointments in Grenada, I saw a doctor in Antigua to follow up on my shingles case, and to get routine bloodwork and a cervical cancer screening. So all in all, I got quite a bit of medical care outside the USA this year! If you are used to $20 co-pays and $10 generic prescriptions, these out-of-pocket expenses might sound like a lot. But, when you consider that the premiums alone on my high-deductable ACA plan were over $900 per month, and compare that to the emergency-only international plan that we currently have for about $2600 per year, we can pay for a lot of doctor’s appointments and prescriptions and still come out ahead! Maybe I’ll finally get around to that crown in 2021?

Nomad Life in the Time of Corinavirus

March 16, 2020March 16, 2020 / FloatsOurBoat / 6 Comments

Several folks have reached out and asked if Capt. Mike and I are ok with all the Covid-19 stuff going on. Well… So far, so good. Sanitas is currently in the French overseas territory of Guadeloupe which at the time of writing had one confirmed case of the Corona virus. So, more than West Virginia, but less than most other regions. 😉

Last night at midnight, France directed that all bars, restaurants, and non-essential businesses must close in order to stop the spread of the virus, so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I dingied ashore to the small town of Terre de Haut this morning. But, surreal as it seemed, things were pretty much the same as usual. Restaurants were open, ferries were running, the sun was shining. The small grocery store (about the size of a 7-11) was quite busy. But they always are on Sunday mornings when most shops close at noon. There was plenty of toilet paper on the shelves, and I found everything on my list – even fresh veggies and eggs. I did see two women great each other with the usual French kiss on both cheeks. And then they threw up their hands and looked a bit sheepish and tapped the toes of their right feet together instead. People aren’t freaking out here like they are in the States. Or… Maybe they are but because I don’t speak French, I’m missing it all.

Mike and are feel like we’re in pretty good shape on little old Sanitas. We went grocery shopping in the big supermarket in Point-a-Pitre a few days ago, so we have lots of French cheese and fresh veggies. And when that runs out, the bilge is full of canned goods, nuts, gluten free noodles, and energy bars. We have full water tanks and diesel, and our solar panels are working great.

That’s not so say we aren’t watching what’s happening and taking precautions though. We wash our hands a lot – and certainly every time we return to the boat. I belong to several sailing and cruising Facebook groups that share information on each island’s travel restrictions and entry procedures. I guess that’s our biggest concern right now – what if every island closes its borders to everyone except residents? Where will we go then? What if cargo ships stop sailing and the grocery stores DO get empty? What if we run out of propane for our cook stove? I checked today, and we can stay in Guadeloupe for 90 days without a visa, so I think we’ll sit tight and wait to see what happens. Our hurricane season plans call for us to haul out in Grenada for the summer on 1 July. Hopefully things improve by then, and if we really have to, we could sail straight to Grenada without stopping in less than 48 hours. We could also self-quarantine at anchor for 14 days if Grenada requires it. Although Mike and I would REALLY get on each other’s nerves by that time! 🤪 Imagine being stuck with your spouse for 14 days in a space the size of your master bathroom!

For now, we’re in a small, quiet place, with relatively few people. The weather is good. We’ve got plenty of food, water, and medicine. If everything shuts down, we can still swim and go for walks. It only costs 11€ per day to stay on a mooring ball. The main island of Guadeloupe is only a 4-hour sail away if we need more provisions or medical care. Right now, it feels like the right decision to stay put and see what happens. Which is pretty much all anyone can do, right? Now if only I had more books and a slightly bigger boat!