F R E E B I R D S: August 2007

We promised our friends that we would write monthly. It’s September, so I guess I can’t put off the August journal any longer.

We’ve been on FreeBirds for ten days and have already been in our first hurricane, almost. We left Trinidad, where we bought our beautiful new home on the water, nine days ago. We have sold our house and all our possessions, deciding we want to be outdoors, travel and feel god’s wonderful creations all around us every day. We had planned to stay in Trinidad for fixing up our new boat, but quickly changed our minds. The paper was keeping daily track of the murder rate by showing the latest victims photo with a number underneath them, showing where the yearly total stood. Numbers 192-197 were added in the two days we were there. The marina and ocean water was so full of trash we could’ve run away on top of it. But instead, we decided to sail to Grenada.

see more pictures from Trinidad

As we know nothing about sailing, we contracted the past skipper of the boat, Jean-Yves to take it to a marina in Grenada, with us aboard. Here we are doing three months of preparations for our round the world voyage. A storm was coming up from Trinidad, (maybe following us to claim victims 198 and 199). We heard the weather reports, but it didn’t seem that bad (to us as seasoned sailors of one week). Bob, the marina manager, bartender, owner, karaoke singer and heavy equipment operator here at Clarkes Court Bay Marina (http://www.clarkescourtbaymarina.com/ ) mentioned that we might want to tighten up our dock lines. (He saved our asses, and maybe our boat, from expensive repairs.) I tightened our dock lines and went to sleep.

At 4:30 a.m. we were thrown out of bed by the waves and 60 mph winds, IN THE PROTECTED MARINA! The dock, which had been below the boat when we went to bed, was now up in the air, riding the large storm surge like a drunken surfer. It would go up, as the boat went down, and vice versa. The back port transom (the back part of the catamaran that sticks out behind the cockpit area) was banging against the dock every time they went in opposite directions. If I didn’t do something fast, the dock would smash a hole through the back of our wonderful new FreeBirds. The sound of the wind was like being inside a tornado.

I threw on some shorts and rushed out into the raging storm. The first thing I noticed was the crew of the boat in the next slip yelling and screaming, trying desperately to get the back (stern) of their 50 year old, beautiful wooden boat to stop crashing into the dock. Every time they hit, the dock was smashing their boat, Lone Fox. It was being eaten, slowly, a bite at a time by the storm.

The port transom on FreeBirds was hitting the dock also, but she is made of fiberglass, not wood, and is much stronger. But if I didn’t do something fast, she would be eaten, too. Kevin, docked about 50 feet away on Solstice, appeared from the dark throat of the storm on the bobbing dock. He was three feet away from me and had to cup his hands to his face and yell as loud as he could for me to hear him.
“I’ve got another dock line. If we can move her forward, we can tie her so she won’t hit.”
I started the engine, moved forward enough for Kevin to secure another dock line, which did the trick. Now, when the dock and Freebirds went sailing past each other in opposite directions, they didn’t hit. Lone Fox had extensive damage to the stern of his boat.

Tropical Storm, (it changed from a storm to a named Tropical Storm, meaning it was very close to becoming a hurricane with winds just under 74 mph) Felix went on to become a hurricane a few hours later heading towards the ABC Islands as I write this twenty-four hours later. At least we are going to finish our first monthly journal.

Even with natures fury flung at us, we love our new lives. Petra is truly a free spirit like me. We met while traveling separately in Costa Rica (see our wedding story). Now we are traveling together. She loves the cruising life, even getting tremendous pleasure from simple things like cleaning the boat. She didn’t even notice that she had cut her knuckles while scrubbing the boats ruff decks. Now they are infected, but she still looks so happy.

The first thing we did when getting here is throw out boxes of crap from the boat. Bob needed a tractor to remove the stuff. FreeBirds (originally Cap Vic III) was full of the past owners eight year accumulation of stuff. Then we had to unpack our five suit cases and four carry-ons. This might seem like a lot of suitcases until you consider that we condensed our combined 84 years worth of belongings into them. As my friend Joe says, “purging every now and then is good.”

We have created a list of repairs, additions and fixes for Freebirds that we are working on daily. A sampling includes; cut a bigger hole in the fiberglass cockpit roof and enclose it with a dodger (a convertible top allowing us to pilot the boat without getting wind and rain in our faces), add two built-in bench seats to the cockpit with line storage bags

underneath so the control lines are more organized and manageable, replace the missing Gennacker sail, fix small areas of dry rot in the floors, fix the rear sliding-glass door so that it really shuts and locks, install kayak storage mounts, install stainless steel barbeque, re-align all doors and hatches to fit properly, add new rubber seals to all hatches, and window sun screens to salon windows, add mosquito netting to all hatches and doors, replace worn lines and halyards, redo pulley system for dingy, redo pulley system that rotates the main mast, install shelving and cabinets through out the boat, add 2300 watt 12 volt to 110 volt convertor, purchase 300’ of new anchor rode (rope), purchase new dock lines, remove oven and replace with new microwave and cupboard space, add refrigerator element to one of our two refrigerators and fix the freezer which isn’t working, replace single CD player with MP3 player with IPOD connection, purchase two Eddyline Kayaks, purchase new dingy outfitted with wakeboard tow bar and other custom options, replace main sail cover (which ripped in Felix), cut dinner table so that it folds out of the way, add curtains to rear door, add single side-band radio for long distance communications and email, add wireless antenna so that we can receive wireless on the boat instead of having to manually connect at marinas, purchase provisions for our trip, purchase a portable air conditioner for our cabin, purchase scuba gear and electric scuba compressor, purchase pressure washer, and the list goes on.

Petra and I rented a 125cc Scooter as transportation. This is such laid back island that they didn’t even ask to see identification. $250 a month and a $200 deposit and we have wheels. We go to the Spice Island Mall Supermarket daily with Petra wearing a Mt. Everest back pack. We purchase enough to fill the pack, and hopefully not so much that Petra gets thrown off the scooter as we attempt to make it back to the marina.

We had our first visitors on Freebird five days ago. We were sitting on the trampoline under a full moon. I was enjoying my nightly Sambuca and Petra was sipping her cheap ass fruit wine. A car stopped at the end of the dock. Two dark figures emerged and stopped near our scooter. I have read about how thieves will try to steal a dingy, and it seemed these two were ready to hoist our rented transportation. But they didn’t have the skinny build of hungry thieves. After a few minutes they started walking our direction. When they got closer, the full moon showed them to be an older couple. I quietly waited where they couldn’t see me. They didn’t own one of the three boats further down the dock. My five years as an Air Force K9 police officer wasn’t going to allow these two to slip by me.
“Good evening,” I said from my hidden position.
“Oh…..hello,” the man said, slightly startled.
“What are you doing out here?” I tried to sound very official.
“It was such a lovely night, that we decided to come for a walk at the marina and enjoy the full moon,” he said in a very kindly manner.
I am currently reading Pirates Aboard, by Klaus Hympendahl and wasn’t going to let these two get the better of me.
“Do you know the owner,” I asked, intentionally not mentioning his name.
“Oh, goodness yes.” he said. “Bob is a wonderful friend?”
Okay, so maybe they weren’t pirates.
“It is a beautiful night, isn’t it,” I replied in my friendliest voice, feeling I may have over reacted a bit.

They walked up the dock, then fifteen minutes later I noticed them admiring FreeBirds from the finger of the dock next to us. I spoke with them again, and Calvin said his girlfriend knew nothing about Catamarans, or any boats for that matter. I asked if they would like to be our first guests, as we had just purchased the boat. The came aboard, got a tour, and joined us for a drink. We had a wonderful time, and then they called their friend, Bob, the Marina owner to join us. He came along with his friend Ian, who was the President of the Grenada Hotel Association. We had a wonderful time over a few drinks. It was Sunday night and after an hour Calvin and his girlfriend left together, probably for home as it was late. Bob, who works eighteen hours a day, fell asleep as Ian and I discussed tourism, growth and other philosophical issues until we noticed that it was 2 a.m.

One interesting conversation that developed, was Ian’s story about his marina walk on the night before with his wife, Hazel. (How they slipped by me I still don’t know.) They were passing in front our boat, when Hazel stopped and laid down on the dock.
“What are you doing?” Ian asked.
“I’m feeling the energy of this boat,” she said. “Can’t you feel it. I just want to lay here for a while and enjoy it.”
When we heard this story, we had to meet Hazel. She is a psycho-analytic consultant. We have invited her and Ian to join us for dinner, so read next month’s edition to find out more about her.

Last Sunday we were invited to Hog’s Island to a local barbeque that happens every week. Local people, cruisers and American college students from Grenada University all get together to eat, drink and listen to local musicians. It’s a rasta festival that is wonderful, if you ever get a chance to enjoy it.

We spend a few hours each night at the marina club house/bar. Yachties of all nationalities, colors, shapes and sizes get along and entertain themselves and each other. Saturday is potluck night and Karaoke, Wednesday is live entertainment night (as if the Karaoke wasn’t live entertainment enough). What we love is that even though everybody is different, they all get along. It’s a little like Cheers, the sitcom. There are the regular collection of oddball characters that know each other because they are here for the hurricane season (it was supposed to be safe here until Ivan, a class 5 hurricane with 160mph sustained winds tore the island apart in 2004, the only hurricane to hit the island in one hundred years. Global warming is real, and he effects are everywhere around us). Then there is a never ending changing group of odd balls that are passing through for a few days or a few weeks. (Petra and I are wondering how it can be that everybody else is odd, but we are normal.)

So, this ends the first our monthly journals. You can view more photos of Grenada by clicking here. If you would like to receive an email notification of when the next monthly issue is printed, please click here. We would appreciate your comments, words of support, or anything else you wish to communicate with us.