Daily Archives: June 9, 2013

We dropped anchor about two o’clock in the afternoon Friday, well before the predicted bad weather. Just as we finished anchoring we got a serious rain shower and managed to quickly deploy our temporary side rain catchers and between them and the permanent rear gutter we captured fifteen gallons, enough, I always think, for a load of wash.

We really should have dinghied in to shore and cleared in to Guadeloupe, but instead we decided to replace our temporary fix to the camber spar. You’ll remember that when we changed out the jib while on passage to St. Thomas I dropped the critical piece of kit into the ocean. We ordered a new one and finally got it just before leaving Charlotte Amalie but true to Schulz form we hadn’t got around to installing it. So out came the tools, off came the shackle we used in the meantime, and on went the new bit. We were particularly pleased that the new one was pre-drilled so we could attach a safely line to it and not send this one to the deep, where we are convinced that watery denizens are constructing new boats out of all the parts lost overboard from other boats.

Let me tell you, crossing a chore off the never-ending list is pretty exciting. But the excitement this weekend didn’t stop there. We are serious sports fans and this was a great weekend for our favorite sports. This morning at 9 AM was the men’s French Open tennis final, which we managed to listen to on the Roland Garros iPhone app. The radio commentators do terrific play-by-play and while it’s not as good as watching live, we still felt the excitement of the moment and enjoyed the match. Vamos Rafa!

During the match I did three loads of wash and made enough water to top off the water tank. These two things may not seem exciting to you, but when you’ve been at anchor in a place where you can’t make water, and consequently can’t do laundry, getting caught up and cleaned up is pretty exciting.

After the tennis we moved on to the Canadian Grand Prix. Unfortunately there’s no live radio broadcast of the race so we had to content ourselves with live lap-by-lap blogging for that. We’re hoping we can watch the race on demand when the various broadcasters stop bickering and let the fans watch online. Still, it was an exciting race even if Jack’s a little sour that my guy finished ahead of his guy.

Just after the race was over the predicted winds moved in. We hadn’t really taken the weather warnings too seriously but we’re so glad that Macushla emphasized the need to be tucked in by now. Holy cow! We haven’t seen sustained winds like this since our time in Nyack up the Hudson River. I’ve seen the anemometer hit 41 so far and it hasn’t dropped back into the 20s for hours. It’s starting to get dark and Jack’s taking new bearings so he can make sure we’re not dragging.

Maybe this is too much excitement for one weekend. Tomorrow, weather permitting, we’ll go ashore and do a little exploring. But tonight it’ll be watch and watch until the wind dies down.