Typical, and Not-So-Typical Cruiser Activities
If it wasn’t for a Facebook notice, I never would have remembered the fact that yesterday was the 6th anniversary of the day that Rebecca and I, once and for all, cast off our lines in Canada, and set sail for the US. How did we spend our “anniversary?” Appropriately, by participating in a number of typical Grenadian cruiser activities.
We started off the day by lugging a number of items that we were hoping to sell to shore to display them at a boat jumble, a buy-and-sell event that takes place monthly at Secret Harbor Marina. It was a bit of work transporting the items to the sale, and we were lucky to have our friends Carrie and Carl give us a hand. Of course, in typical yard sale fashion, at the end of the morning, we needed to transport everything that we didn’t sell back to the boat. Was the entire process worth it? I’d say so. It’s rewarding on several levels to trade unused treasures for cash.
Casting off the lines in Kingston, Ontario. July 31, 2010
We followed our morning work session by liming with a few friends, first at the newly-renovated Secret Harbor Marina pool area, and then later in the day, at Roger’s Beach Bar on Hog Island. Both of those spots are quite busy on Sunday afternoons, and are fun places to catch up with friends, share stories, and enjoy a cold beverage with some barbecued food.
Hard Aground!
On the way home from Roger’s we got to participate in an activity that, fortunately, does not happen every week. We, along with a dozen or so other cruisers, worked to re-float a recently grounded sailboat. We didn’t see exactly what happened to the boat as it was already aground when we arrived. It appeared though as if the captain was attempting to take a shortcut by bringing the boat through a super-shallow dinghy channel. If so, that was never wasn’t going to happen!
With one large dinghy on a halyard to heel the boat over, and a number of others hip tied to the sides of the grounded boat, after an hour or so, we were ultimately able to get the vessel free. If there is one lesson that I will takeaway from that experience, it is that someone definitely needs to be in charge and take control, communicating to the other people on scene to help. That could, of course, be the captain of the grounded vessel, or if he chooses to delegate the procedure to someone else, then that person. Either way, someone needs to take control. In this case, there was little communication occurring, at least not initially, and that frustrated our early efforts. All’s well that ends well though. 🙂