Better Living through Spreadsheets

Better Living through Spreadsheets

Monday 27th - Tuesday 28th May, 2024

As we enter the final week of our journey south, we have tried to get a handle on the jobs we need to complete before we haul out, and the two days we have on “the hard” before flying home. Being nerds by nature (and proud of it) we have naturally turned to a spreadsheet to help our planning. I’d like to say it was an Excel spreadsheet, which is the best, but sadly we are making do with the lame “numbers” spreadsheet that my Mac provides. The jobs that we have to do are many and varied, and range from routine engine maintenance, to laundry, to hurricane preparation. Having visited Clark’s Court in our hire car we know there is a laundry there, so we intend to wash not only our dirty clothes and bedding, but also the fleeces we use to cover our cabin cushions, and the quilted floor mats. Despite our best efforts everything is now salty. However, we couldn’t wait until next week for clean clothes so early on Monday morning we dropped a load of laundry off at the Port Louis Marina laundry, which like most laundries in the Caribbean is full-service facility. You get your clothes back washed, dried and folded neatly in your bag, and pay based on weight. Eureka: I never understood why anyone would wear thong underwear, but now I see the advantage … so much lighter and cheaper to wash! But I digress.

We are working our way through a lot of boat polishing and cleaning, but we did take time out on Monday evening to meet up with a couple of friends, Paul and Tracey on Magic Pelagic, for drinks and dinner at Sails restaurant. Paul and Tracey come from Merseyside (the area I grew up in) and are a lot of fun.

This morning we dropped the mooring in St George’s Bay and motored around the south west tip of Grenada and onto the south coast. This area has several inlets that are a popular destination for cruisers, particularly those hanging out through hurricane season. However, these bays are subject to swells that wrap around from the east / south-east and the anchorages are notorious for swell induced rolliing. We pulled into True Blue Bay with some trepidation and anchored in the south east corner, somewhat protected by a rocky outcrop. It’s a little bouncy but not too terrible so far. Once we arrived here our first job was to decommission the water maker. Our water tanks are full (120 gallons) and we have a couple of extra jerry cans as well. This would normally last us three weeks or so, but with all the cleaning we have to do we expect to increase our usage, but we figure we now have enough. The “pickling” process for the water maker involved replacing the salt water filter (so it’s fresh and ready to go in November), then pumping through about 5 gallons of fresh water and then circulating 1 gallon of storage solution (primarily sodium metabisulfite). It felt good to tick that off the list (actually now highlighted in blue on the spreadsheet … color coding is important!). In the meantime, Gloria has been cleaning out lockers and storage areas … a huge job. We also topped up our diesel tanks and added some extra stabilizer. Better to leave them full rather than empty. 

We managed to take a brief trip to shore and wandered around a little. It was nice to stretch our legs and see something of the local area. We were excited to find a store selling home-made ice cream, but honestly it was so sweet it was almost inedible. 

Over the next few days we plan to check out a number of the bays and anchorages as we make our way over to Clark’s Court Boatyard.

Mike

11 59.736 N; 61 46.107 W

I haven't taken any photos the last two days, but this is an image that I generated using three shots of a girl jumping into Annandale pool (taken in rapid succession), amalgamated in Photoshop