Unwanted Guests

It feels so flippin good to be home. Unpacking…..is sooo good. We’ve been living out of a backpack for 4 months!! We are reveling in the nesting process. Also wonderful to be floating again. Every once in a while I think to myself “Are we moving?” And yes we are.

So far everything seems to be going to plan….except for one tiny problem….our new houseguests!! When we store the boat for the season we always leave a few bug traps out preventively. In all our years of sailing we’ve only ever had an ant problem but this time when I checked the sticky traps I found 3 dead German cockroaches! Give me big seas and bad weather any day over a cockroach. It became my mission prior to moving back onboard to exterminate these unwanted guests. First step was a deep clean. Opening all the bilges and moping everything out and looking for traces. I found nothing. I was beginning to wonder if maybe these 3 dead roaches were from early in the summer and there were no others. Unfortunately this was not the case as Graham sent me a video of a live cockroach caught on a sticky trap the next morning.

I went deep in my internet research and spent so much time at the hardware store that morning reading all the product. The stock boys must of thought I had an army of cockroaches at home. I came back to the boat armed with 4 different products!

1. Foggers: you basically close all the window, set them off and leave your boat, not to
   return for at least 4 hours.
2. Boric acid: it’s a powder that you sprinkle along the base of all walls, cracks and crevices
3. Baited Roach Traps: the cockroaches are attracted to the poisoned bait and take it back to the others
4. Sticky Roach Traps: these give us a visual queue if we still have cockroaches

Well Graham was the lucky winner of setting off the foggers. We did this on two different nights in different areas of the boat. We opened all our cupboards and floorboards so the fumes would go everywhere. Set them off and got the hell out.

I dusted everywhere with boric acid and laid out all the traps. We felt very pleased with ourselves. I spent a bunch of time the next day wiping down the boat and cleaning after the foggers. We kept checking traps and no roaches. We did it!….or did we??

We moved back on board and began the nesting process and periodically I’d check the traps happy to see no new guests…..until yesterday afternoon. Arrrrggg. Another live one caught on a trap. Now granted it had only been a day since the last treatment and the products say it may take a few days for them to be totally eradicated so I haven’t gone into full freak mode but I am obsessively checking the traps constantly.

Fingers crossed we have given these guests the boot! I'll keep ya updated :-).

Aisle Seats

I’ve been missing writing. It has been in the past a form of therapy for me. I think I might try it again

for a bit. Graham and I arrived back in Grenada on Thursday morning after a red eye flight from Toronto. It has been one hell of a summer, couch surfing with friends and family. Talk about a great form of therapy…so many deep talks and connections, so much laughter as well. I mused with my friend Amanda this summer about how to purposefully be more joyful and silly. I know it sounds too deliberate but man it feels good to laugh. I need more of it and somehow you become an adult and this silly part of you shrinks a bit. I’m gonna work this year on building it back up. All the laughter these past few months has really been the best form of therapy. Anyway it felt really good to be so loved and welcomed this summer. 

And now here we are back in Grenada and in typical “Perry Style” we arrived on the red eye cheap flight at 8am. For anyone who doesn’t know us really well “Perry Style” is basically “on the cheap”. Nothing makes Graham (and myself to some degree) happier than saving money and frugality. Graham also decided to surprise me by booking us seats not beside each other but rather across the aisle??? On a Red eye?? He kept saying, “we are next to each other…just across an aisle”. Needless to say his logic was lost on me and he will be asking me where I want to sit in the future ;-). 

During our last few days in Toronto we packed a Pallet full of groceries to ship down to Grenada. It is shocking how much groceries cost on the island. Most items are at a minimum double but it's normal to pay 3 to 6 times as much for items as well. When we were previously in quarantine in Grenada we bought our groceries online through the IGA website, so now in Canada as we shop we open the Grenada IGA store app and rationalize all our purchases by comparing the prices. The pallet pays for itself! It is also so nice to have some familiar items on board as we set off to cross oceans and we both love the process :-). Purchasing, inventorying, organizing, packing, arranging the boxes on the pallet like a game of tetris, labeling….love the labeling, wrapping the pallet in shrink wrap…so satisfying seeing it all packaged up as one whole, sooo good…..and then when it arrives…..well let me tell you ;-)! 

It’s interesting returning to Grenada as we have been here many times. The newness and wide eyed wonder is gone but it's replaced with a nostalgia and home-like feel. As our taxi (with the slowest oldest taxi driver known to Grenada) weaves through the streets I am smiling.  I have been missing this, missing my boat, my bed, my routine, my time….and mother ocean. Unfortunately, Salty Ginger is parked on land and dismantled for summer storage, so not yet an ideal place to lay our heads. Past Julie and Graham would have moved on board in the blazing heat after a night flight and probably begun work right away….but current us has learned a few things ;-). We rented a small apartment walking distance to the yard and had a couple hours sleep before heading to the boat for ½ a days work. 

Oh my god the HEAT…..I always try to mentally prepare myself but omg….I can literally feel my hair
instantly frizz….sweat seems to come from everywhere….my glasses keep sliding down my nose. I quickly remember how every job on a boat is a series of MANY jobs. First thing we need to do is locate a ladder to be able to climb on board. There never seems to be enough ladders. Once on board we get to work on hooking up electricity so we can turn on our stand up AC unit. Thank god for this small unit.  We need to find our extension cords….we need a few to connect the boat to the plug-in which is a
crazy long distance away. This involves climbing up and down the ladder.  Then we need to remember how to turn on the shore power on board….we should really write this stuff down ;-). This takes a bit of trial and error. Then we set up the AC with the hose out a window and the pillow stuffed in the window around it…then we press the power button and you can imagine we are now in a full blown sweat….I’m in my underwear with hair on head….and the AC doesn’t start. Hot, tired, frustrated….we pull out the filters to see if they need cleaning, we drag the AC over to the bilge to see if maybe it’s full of water….it isn’t. We figure what might be wrong and prior to pulling it all apart we try just one more time to plug in and……AIR beautiful AIR Conditioned AIR blows out…..sweet Jesus I love this machine. 

Now the fun begins. We have one week to do all the jobs that need to be done before we launch Salty Ginger on October 13th. In one afternoon we……ok Graham…checked a bunch off the list…I did a bunch as well but also had to have my first nap on board…glorious! Before we left for the apartment we put up our big sun shade and readied ourselves for a productive week. 

I’m so happy to be home. Even with the heat and the work and the frustrations….it feels so good. I am so excited about what's to come. I feel like our journey has just begun. We plan on beginning our circumnavigation in early November!! Pacific Ocean here we come….. YAHOOO

#pacificcrossing2023

My life is a Sprint

Recently I had an ah-ha moment. You are going to laugh when you hear what it was because I imagine most of our friends already knew this but it took me this long to realize it. I think "Sprint-Mode" is our happy place. Ground breaking news right! It isn't that we need to go have some fun because I think in our warped way we are, it's that we need to figure out balance in our lives. No matter what we do we tend to go full in. I've been fighting sprint mode my whole adult life. When I was younger I thought that if I took breaks from work I could combat this syndrome but I didn't realize I would just go full throttle into whatever was in my orbit. Sprint mode has allowed us to do some pretty awesome things in our lives and turning this 2008 Island Packet into our new floating home is one of them. 

Our first sail was a perfect re-introduction to moving our house. It was nice to have Millie and Elliott (**new couple name "Millett" 😂) on board for this. The wind was only 8-15 knots and no squalls 😃. We had almost every wind angle as we made our way up and around the bottom of Grenada and then back up the other side and off to the next Grenadian island called Carriacou. We got to have the full main and jib out and even got a bit of lean on at close hauled. We were able to see how she handles and how things shifted down below or stayed in place. Our first anchor went great, albeit we chose the least risky spot at the very back of the fleet and just like that we were "on the hook" and our new normal was underway. Mother nature applauded our accomplishment with an epic sunset. (see pics here)

Life has been feeling really good, like we are right where we are suppose to be. It feels so cozy and familiar as we settle into our new life. I am very grateful to have all these "Ailsa Firsts" with my water baby on board and her lovely partner Elliott. Amelia has grown into a strong, loving, interesting, funny and confident women. There are days I miss lil'Millie but this chapter is pretty darn awesome. 

"Millett" have been the cure for "Sprint-Mode". They have been our "Joy Enforcers" on board and have been putting some serious balance into our lives. Activities include snorkeling, swimming, dancing, beach time, reading, happy hours, cooking, late breakfasts, and a heck of a lot of laughing, ahhh the life. Love these two.

Perhaps guests in general will be the cure for sprint mode. A bunch of mini vaca's in our otherwise busy lives ;-). Hope to see you soon!

Aren’t you scared?

Aren’t you scared? I seem to get this question a lot when people hear our story. I think my natural state might be scared. It’s definitely an emotion I am very familiar with. Given this question comes up so often I think maybe that when others anticipate fear, worry or being scared this may be a natural inhibitor from continuing. Often for me it does distill the extent of my activity, for example I snorkel rather than dive, I ski but only the green runs, I sail but I don’t race ;-). You get the gist. I tend not to go full throttle on things but still get to dip my toe in. Sometimes with this lifestyle though it’s difficult to be this cautious. Sometimes it feels as if I have my mischievous brother Rob behind me as I try to dip just my toe in and he pushed me in. It is exhilarating to do something I thought I couldn’t but yes it is also “scary”!

This past week has been full of firsts with Alisa and with firsts comes fear. I try to combat the fear with preparation and planning but this never completely rids the feeling.  Launching Alisa and bringing her to the dock was our first challenge. The

spot they had for us meant we had to parallel park between a 60 foot monohull and a huge catamaran. The wind was also slightly forward of our nose pushing us away from the dock so we would need momentum to get up to it but also not too much momentum as not to hit the boat in front. And just to make the whole experience more fun for us a Caribbean squall was bearing down on us. If you haven’t seen a squall before on the water its basically a literal line of weather moving fast towards you. You see the rain wall and wind line on the water coming at you from light to grey. 

Docking for the first time means not only boat handling but also placing all your bumpers (fenders) at the right height for the dock and having all your dock lines attached and ready to throw to the dockhand. We had our friend John with us on board to help out with lines. He had the stern line and I had the bow line. We also both had a fender not tied on just in case we needed to fend off another boat or the dock. As Graham got closer to the spot, slowly, cautiously trying things out, John says “You have 5 minutes to get onto the dock before that squall hits”. My stomach lurches and I looked up to see the Caribbean squall line coming at us. Oh lord, here we go again. The wind was pushing us off the dock, so Graham was trying to figure out the bow thruster so that he wouldn’t need to drive forward but rather just push us to the right to the dock. The learning curve with our big heavy boat was steep though as she doesn’t respond as quickly as our previous light Jeanneau. As Graham ease us slowly closer, I had the long dock line all coiled up and was preparing to throw it but knowing there was no way in hell I could make the 10 feet distance to the dock at this point. Luckily John came up and grabbed the line from me and threw it like nobodies business. I literally clapped my hands as Jose caught it! Jose began to pull us in and John threw the stern line and just like that we were on the dock with only a moment to spare before full torrential rain!

Our new home was now our new floating home. Man does she look pretty on the water. After a few days at the dock, checking systems, getting comfortable and having Amelia and her partner Elliott join us on board it was time to move to the mooring field. Unfortunately we had been backed up on the dock as the catamaran behind us had left and we were now boxed in a bit. Another challenge.

We had everyone with a fender in hand and we managed to eek our way out and just like that we were off and motoring through the fleet to our mooring ball off a little island not to far away. Getting on the ball was fairly easy with the help of our friend in a dinghy and now for the past few days we have been getting use to being self sufficient…Making power with our solar farm and making water with this power! We have been checking jobs off our list and preparing for our first sail!! Tomorrow we head off to Carriacou. It’s about a 6 hour journey. We are pretty excited and of course I am a little bit scared but this hasn’t stopped me yet. 

-Check out pictures and short videos here of our past couple weeks

Comic Books

 Coming back to Grenada has surfaced a bit of PTSD for us. Not sure if folks remember that this was where we came with Artemo (our first boat) and did a major overhaul to her. We moved into a fourplex in what felt to us like the middle of the jungle, way out in the middle of nowhere. We had no car, no AC, no fan (we did end up borrowing one). The trek to the boat yard was a challenge. It involved a

walk to the main road and if it had rained there was often a river flowing over this road to our home. It then involved hailing a bus to the top of the marina road and then hiking 1.5kms to the yard. Getting to town to grocery shop was even worse. Graham and I reflect often on these 5 months of our life, and we ask ourselves “What the heck were we thinking?”. I think this was when we coined the phrase “Perry Style”. Basically, on the cheap 😉 and the hard way.  A boat reno is stressful enough and we had totally removed our coach roof but then to couple this with no comfy retreat to relax at after a long hot day was totally crazy. Also, isolating us in the middle of nowhere homeschooling was a recipe for mental breakdown. Don’t get me wrong, we have lots of good memories from this time and overcoming all these hardships definitely brought us very close together but if I could go back and talk to Past Julie….I’d have a lot to say!

Given this learning, we may have now swung to far to the other side of the pendulum. When we arrived in Grenada this time, we had booked into a resort to spend our week of quarantine and it was glorious. So glorious in fact that we ended up moving in and spending our first two months in Grenada as we worked through the purchase of Ailsa, living at the RESORT! I felt like Richie Rich – remember that
comic?  Once we were the official owners of Ailsa and had made our project’s list and I retired from work (gulp), we moved into a more modest apartment, but it had AC! We also rented a car and being able to go where we wanted, when we wanted allowed us to explore this (what we now realize) beautiful island.

We balanced our days with boat work, exploring and time with new friends. Over the course of three months, we completely gutted our anchor locker removed any traces of rotted wood and refilled with coosaboard which is a heavy duty fiberglass composite and replaced our corroded windlass. This project slowly grew in size and complexity but luckily our expectations were set with past experiences, and we rolled with the punches and were prepared for the flow of money from our wallet. We also decided that now was the time to replace the tiny solar arch on the back deck with a new one that spans the entire width and allows

for more solar panels across it. In amongst these two big projects, we did a lot of smaller items as well, getting to know Ailsa and making her feel like ours in the process.  (see before and after pics here)

It wasn’t to long before we realized the work would take us until the beginning of hurricane season, so it was best not to launch Ailsa until the fall and use the summer to fly home and spend time with family and pack up our belongings that we want to ship to the boat. It is a bit disheartening, but it is going to be oh so sweet in November when we returned to our newly reno’d boat and sail away.