Dive in

Its been a while! My comms weren’t helped by sending my phone on a mission to the ocean floor and quite frankly I’ve been all out of chat for a while. Changing situations at home and within our cruising community here in Grenada have rocked us a little. Having your plans/goals or even life cut short by things out of your control seems so unfair. All the goings on have made us realise that truly the time is now and that tomorrow isn’t promised. Its time to bounce back from this survivors guilt and blog on….

Unlike in any other kind of sailing rainy days have curbed play here in Grenada! We’re anchored in Prickly Bay with wave access when the surf is on.  The good news is that the water monitor (Lily) is pretty pleased with how much rainwater she has got in the tank. Our plans to trickle back up to Carriacou, and the Grenadines for the rest of the hurricane season have been slightly delayed by crappy weather. Now we’re tinkering around and upping out battery bank in this down time.

Chris was recently away in Europe again and my Mum made a last minute decision to come and join the kids and I for a week! It flew by and we were all delighted to see her and show her our new home. As usual she came armed with plenty for the kids to do. Despite over 30 years experience as a science teacher, she admitted she’d rather teach a class of 32 kids over our 2 any day…. Nevertheless the kids loved the experiments, bread-making and art. Hopefully next time my Dad will join us too.

Definitely its time for some half-term fun next week and a week away from the dry books that Harry is working through. I was thinking about our previous life and thinking how bazaar that the time the kids spend on “school”  is about equal to how much time they used to spend in the car each day. Without the car journeys there is a whole lot of time for reading, lego, playing, fishing, surfing, skirfing and generally being kids without so much structure. It’s also so nice to have time to say yes a whole lot more. Yes we can play dominoes/cards/chess/life or whatever, yes we can paint at some ridiculous hour of the morning, yes we can get up at 2AM to watch the meteor shower. Yes you can actually have some attention! Don’t worry we haven’t suddenly become the Brady bunch!! I am beginning to worry a little less over the “normal life” things they are missing out on though.

Harry has been delighted that some “bigger” kids have been “knocking” for him and taking him for adventures in the bay in their sailing dinghy. Lily has been beside herself that she can’t go and to add insult to injury the surf has been too big for her too…oh the injustice of being 4! We did let her do some kitesurfing with Daddy and throw herself off at the Annandale waterfalls though.

Other news of the last few weeks is that I fell off the boat at night whilst Chris was away! I don’t suppose the glass of vino or 2 helped my cat like reflexes whilst trying to sort the tender out but everyone survived to tell the tale and Harry is now up-skilled in mayday etiquette and location recording. Feeling left out a few days later, Harry lunged off the dinghy and not quite onto the boat in decent sized swell. Obviously this was entirely my fault and I have not forgotten it, a scare that did everyone good I think!! In general both the kids are doing incredibly well at managing themselves around the tender and boat but its never a bad thing to be reminded of the need to respect our surroundings.

Roll on getting cruising again and back to the Grenadines!!