And no Update would be complete without a section for The Bride to include a variety of shots of the local flora and fauna…

  The Boatyard Blues                                                         May 22, 2015

To a majestic 3-masted barquentine proudly prowling the Caribbean, driven by the trades…

He and his volunteers rescue injured turtles as well as hatchlings which he cares for in a variety of salt water ponds until they are well or large enough to fend for themselves.  His turtle wonderland exists solely on the donations of visitors and others who may have heard about him on the Discovery Channel or some other nature oriented venue.  Check out his website and send him a few bucks if the spirit moves you.

We even managed to spot one of these critters in the wild while snorkeling at the Devil’s Table underwater park… (sorry about the picture quality but these things move a lot faster than a fat olde guy underwater)

Although our stay on St Vincent consisted mostly of this…

In writing these Updates, in my humble opinion, I have never been able to smoothly insert pictures of the various passengers without including some little story about who they are.  It has come to my attention that most of you who read these things really don’t give a damn who any of us are and really just want to see pictures of your next potential vacation retreat.  Keeping that in mind I am including this collage of those passengers I have decent pictures of so that they may see themselves adorning the pages of this future Pulitzer Prize contender.  Enjoy!...

The rate for this little slice of heaven was a meager $50 (US dollars) per night and our stay here was necessitated by a cricket tournament which brought cricketers and their fans from all 4 corners of the globe…primarily the British Isles.  I never have found the allure of swinging a flattened bat at a bouncing ball but I may have been in the minority at this particular time on Grenada judging by the accommodations for which we settled.

During our runup to the boatyard, we did manage to visit a few islands including St Lucia, Canouan and Bequia.  Bequia has always been a favorite for us because it is home to the Old Hegg Hawksbill Turtle Sanctuary which is owned and operated by Orton “Brother” King…

There is definitely an advantage to having a second floor room when the balcony is missing half its railing…

Although the rear yard resembled something you may have found in Iraq after “Shock and Awe,” the view beyond was quite impressive…

The Sail Windjammer folks tried their best to entertain us and shipped us off on a couple of different tours as well as a couple of days at the all-inclusive (think FREE RUM!) Buccament Bay Resort which was more like this…

(Gilligan’s Island tune)

Sit right down and I’ll tell you a tale
A tale of a fateful trip
That happened not so long ago
Aboard a sailing ship
The Mandalay departed port
On a warm Caribbean day
To explore West Indian islands
And the occasional smaller cay
Several short days later
We found ourselves marooned
In a Caribbean boat yard
Installing mast and boom
The passengers turned rowdy
And “Story Time” got loud
The captain did the best he could
To calm this raucous crowd
Six long days we waited
For the ship to put to sea
The time spent in the boatyard
Was an eternity
At last we left our mooring
And continued on the cruise
With two days left for sailing
We had no time to lose
We managed 4 more islands
In that sunny ocean clime
Then tied up at Grenada
Arriving right on time

And that, in a nutshell, so to speak, was the essence of our 2 week sail through the Grenadines.

And now, as Paul Harvey would say, for the rest of the story . . .


We arrived in Grenada late Friday and were whisked away by Mandoo and delivered to our home for the next 2 nights at the Captain Harris Suites…

In addition to an open bar for a night, the company is also providing each of us with a voucher for a free 1 week cruise in the future.

And when the repairs were complete we were magically transformed from a wounded duck floating around the Caribbean with a stub for a foremast…

Hugs ‘til we meet again!  CC & me

And with that we will sail off into the Caribbean sunset until we may once more play at being pirates…

You just didn’t want to go out here at night after a few libations containing the locally made rum!  Although a bit rustic and incomplete, we nevertheless felt secure…