Take a Winter Vacation for Free. Go to the Dentist.

We're starting to think about heading north for the winter.  How's that sound to you folks who don't live in the tropics?  Hurricane season is almost behind us.  If it will just stop raining long enough, we'll stock the larder, fill up with diesel, shake out the sails, and head north, up to where it's cooler, like St. Martin, maybe?  That's far enough.  We don't want to find cold weather.

Part of our pre-departure routine is a visit to the dentist, which we did yesterday, in the pouring rain.  We've found dental care to be a real bargain down here.  After trying it out in several places, we've found a lady we like, here in Grenada.  She studied in England, and her partner in the practice studied in the U. S.  They both grew up in Grenada, and when they finished school, they decided to come back and open a practice with all of the latest equipment.  They've been at it for a couple of years, now, and they're thriving.

Yesterday, we both had a check-up and cleaning, with x-rays.  Bud had a minor filling done, as well.  The total charge, for both of us combined?  About $90, U. S.  Who needs dental insurance?  Back when we had it, our share of the cost for similar services was more than that, and that was over 10 years ago.

We've had similar experiences with medical care.   Want a vacation in a tropical paradise this winter?  Come down for your dental work.  You'll save enough over what it costs in the States to pay for the trip.

iPhones, iPods, and Yacht Provisioning

Grocery shopping takes a lot more time in this cruising life than it did when we lived ashore.  When non-cruisers ask us what we do all day to stay busy, provisioning is high on the list, and only partly for the reasons mentioned in our last post.  It is harder for us to get to the grocery store than it was when we lived on dirt, but there are other differences.

Dungda de Islan', where we live, we usually have to visit several stores, and perhaps an open air market or two, to find what we need for the week (or month, depending on our plans.)  Store stocks aren't replenished as often, and what's available is largely dependent on what was on the last ship.  It's quite different from getting in the car, going to the nearest supermarket, and buying everything on your list.  Oh, sure, you might want to shop price, but that's an option, not a necessity.  Here, one grocery store may have cornered the market on peanut butter.  Invariably, a competitor has all of the jelly in town.  Or maybe this week, everybody has peanut butter, but all of the jelly went to the next island to the north.  We've developed a maxim that we call "the rule of the islands."  It's simple:  If you see it and you think you might want it, buy it, right now.  If you go back later, it will be "finished," as they say down here, or sold out as we used to say.  And there may well never be a next shipment.
Besides availability, there's the problem of where to put everything when we get home to the boat. We have a lot of storage space, but it's spread over the entire vessel; a little locker here, space under the floorboards there, the cabinet concealed behind the settee cushions. You get the idea. When we were cruising out of the way places, we stored several months worth of food aboard. The last time we did that was several years ago, and we still find some of that stuff, every so often, in a forgotten corner. To avoid turning our provisions into science experiments, we've tried using lists, card files, spread sheets, you name it. We couldn't find a workable solution until recently.

We're now using a database management app on our iPod Touches.It’s called HanDBase, and it costs just a few dollars.It runs on all the magic iOS devices.It's straight forward to use, and we've developed databases for groceries, other consumables, and spare parts, all of which present the same acquisition and storage problems.

The screen shots are mostly self explanatory. The first one is the "default view," which is just a list of the items in our grocery database, with quantities on hand, quantity in each of several storage locations, target stock level, and a "Buy" quantity. The next screen is the "Need to Buy" view, which lists the only the items with a buy quantity of 1 or greater. That is the essence of our shopping list. We have 279 items in our grocery database, and 111 discrete storage locations; hence the need for an organized approach.

The last two shots show the details for an item record. This one happens to be coffee.

Because our iPod Touches go everywhere with us, the database is easily kept up to date. In fact, we keep recipes in another app called GoodReader, so when we're cooking, it's a matter of seconds to update the database as we use things. We always have the database available when we are shopping, so we know exactly what we need. There's space in each record for notes and favored brands, as well as typical prices, so if we find something that we aren't expecting, we can make an on the spot decision to buy or wait, knowing whether it would likely be cheaper in a different country. And, now that we've looked in all of those 111 storage locations, we aren't finding moldy surprises.

Just one more thing that we didn't think about when we were dirt dwellers

Grocery Shopping in Paradise

We've been trapped on our boat in a secluded anchorage for the last couple of weeks.  We've had tropical downpours virtually everyday, so going to town for groceries wasn't appealing.  We like the anchorage, because most of the time, there aren't any other boats around -- a rare thing in Grenada during hurricane season.  The downside is that shore access is limited.  There are a few private docks, but we think that being a good neighbor to the land-based folks means not intruding on their privacy, so we don't ask to use their docks.  We use our rowing dinghy to go ashore, instead of our rigid inflatable, because the rowing dinghy is more rugged, and we tie it off to the mangroves on a bit of bridge right of way.  Then we take off our shoes and wade ashore through the swamp, climbing up the bridge abutment to the road.  Once there, we have a short hike to a bus stop, where we can catch a bus into St. Georges, the capital city of Grenada.

The buses are actually small passenger vans, not as big as the SUV's that people in the States drive solo, and they are configured to seat 12 to 15 people.  When the bus stops, the conductor (Yes, there's a conductor on the bus!) slides the side door open and hops out to help you clamber aboard and find a seat.  Everyone scrunches up to make room, after exchanging polite, "Good mornings," or "Good afternoons," and you wedge yourself into any available space.  It's a chance to make personal contact, literally, with local inhabitants.  Personal space is an unknown concept -- everybody shares happily.  It's actually a pleasant experience that will restore your faith in your fellow man.  Once everybody is greeted and seated, the conductor climbs back aboard and the bus departs for the next stop -- often a few hundred yards away.  When the bus approaches your stop, you either call out, "Next stop, please," or, if the din of the radio is too loud, you rap on the ceiling.  The bus stops, the conductor hops out, and everybody willingly makes whatever accommodation in required to allow egress for the departing passengers.  When you get off, you pay the conductor, typically about the equivalent of a dollar.  It may not sound like it, but it's a surprisingly efficient way to get around.

Once we find what we need in the way of groceries at the various local markets in town, we head for the main bus terminal where we repeat the process.  Once back aboard Play Actor, we strip the packaging -- who wants to store all that cardboard -- and Leslie puts things away while I update our grocery database.  The database is important, given how involved shopping can be.  We have a lot of storage space aboard, but not all of it is readily visible, so it's important to know where the extra peanut butter was stashed.  It's equally important to know what we have and what we need, every time we go shopping.  More on the database next time…

Tuna Trouble: The Smallest One We Ever Caught

Rainy days are hard on our energy conservation program, especially the kind of windless, rainy days we've had lately.  The solar panels and the wind generator can't keep up with our electrical consumption in this kind of weather, so yesterday, we had to run the diesel to charge our house battery bank.  What does that have to do with catching fish?  Well, read on. 

The last few times we've run the engine, we noticed the exhaust sounded a little throatier than usual.  For any non-boaters, the exhaust on most sailboats is cooled by injecting the seawater, which has already passed through the engine cooling system into the exhaust hose before it reaches the muffler.  Normal exhaust noise is a soft spluttering, splashing sound, as opposed to the throaty rumble we were hearing.  Our thoughts were that the cooling water flow was restricted, somehow, but we had cleaned the intake filter and checked for obvious obstructions.  Everything was as it should be.  Maybe the engine's voice is changing, now that it's broken in? 

At the end of the charging cycle yesterday, the exhaust discharge was clearly much drier than it had been at the start.  Something had changed, and the problem was getting progressively more serious.  I cleaned the filter again, washing the strainer basket in the galley sink.  It had a little crud in it, but wasn't dirty enough, to my thinking, to have caused our problem.  I replaced it in the strainer, and as I was about to start the engine to test everything, Leslie exclaimed, "There's a fish eye in the sink!" 

"What?  Are you sure?"  I asked. 

"You know how I like fish eyes.  I know a fish eye when I see one!"  She quipped, referring to all of the times she had been a guest at one of my business dinners in the days when I traveled in Asia.  She was often the only woman around, and so was treated as the guest of honor, which meant she was served with the choicest morsels.  She did acquire some odd tastes, and she does know her fish eyes better than most. 

"Wonder how that got there?"  I muttered, as I started the engine.  There was no change in the exhaust discharge, so I shut it down.  I took the top off the strainer and opened the inlet valve, cautiously, expecting a flood of seawater, as this is below the waterline.  Nothing happened, indicating an obstruction between the intake and the strainer.  I began methodically removing the hose connections between the seawater intake and the strainer, finding no obstructions until I reached the inlet valve at the sea strainer.  When I took the hose off the valve, I found about four inches of the back end of a little yellow fin tuna, hanging down out of the valve body.  Should have made a picture, but I was in too big a hurry.  I grasped the tail and gently tugged the fish out.  It was about six inches long, and the head would not quite fit into the valve, which is slightly narrower than the hose.  The suction had mangled the head end of the fish where it stuck in the valve entrance, and, yes, Leslie, it was missing an eye, but was otherwise in good shape.  Given that we weren't hungry, we tossed the fish over the side and put everything back together. 

The engine sounds normal, but we do wonder how long the little rascal was in there.  There is a good-sized chamber just where the hose attaches to the through-hull intake seacock.  The fish could have been living there for a while, and only occasionally causing an intermittent problem in our cooling water flow, until it finally got sucked into a narrower part of the system,  Hope it wasn't a claustrophobic tuna.

EBooks and Life Aboard a Sailboat, or Sail Faster, Read eBooks

We got interested in eBooks early on, because they take up no space and they are available anywhere there is internet service.  Both of those features are important to us.  Leslie was the early adopter; she started reading eBooks on a Windows CE handheld computer using Microsoft Reader, years ago.  Her choices were somewhat limited in the early days.  Most of the books available were out-of-copyright classics, which had some appeal.  She also found a few reference books, such as the Encyclopedia Britannica for the pocket PC.  Her breakthrough occurred about three years ago, when she discovered that she could find a recently published novel that she wanted in eBook format for immediate download.  It required downloading different reader software, but that was a trivial problem.  Given that we were down in the southeastern Caribbean, where bookstores are scarce, she was pretty excited.  It was possible to order a paper copy of the book in question from any of a number of online retailers, but shipping would have been expensive, plus there would have been the aggravation of clearing the package through customs and paying duty, as well.  The eBook price was slightly less expensive than a paper copy, but the total cost was a fraction of what the paper book would have cost us, and she had the book and was reading it within a few minutes. 

We now have a library of around a thousand eBooks, growing daily, stored on a notebook computer and managed with a great program called Calibre.  These days, we read eBooks on our iPod Touches.  Leslie was the pioneer again.  Her handheld PC died two years ago, and we replaced it with an iPod Touch.  It's an amazing device.  Although reading eBooks on the older device was convenient, switching to reading on an iPod Touch meant that she could read a book using one hand.  Once she got the iPod, she quit reading paper books.  I couldn’t understand it. 

When I got involved in planning to replace Play Actor's engine, I borrowed the iPod and downloaded a project-planning application, which really opened my eyes.  At the first chance, I got my own iPod Touch, and I’ve never looked back.  I have an entire reference library on it.  It now holds everything from novels to dictionaries of several languages to the entire Wikipedia database, offline, plus the workshop and parts manuals for everything on the boat, including our new diesel engine.  It also handles spreadsheet files for our budget, and stores all of our recipes and shopping information, as well as serving such mundane functions as a clock and calendar.  But, I digress.  I was writing about eBooks and their impact on our life under sail.  Perhaps I'll do another post about how computers and related technology have affected us in recent years. 

Reading eBooks on such a versatile platform has changed the way we read.  If we happen upon an unfamiliar reference, it's become intuitive to shift from the book in question to one of the many reference works that reside on the iPod, satisfy our curiosity, and go back to the book, all seamlessly.  While it is possible to do that with paper books, it is enough more cumbersome, especially on the boat, where books must be stored in every available cranny, that we didn't often do it.  Thoughts and ideas that are stimulated by whatever we are reading are easily captured in a similar manner.  We can copy from the text and paste to a notepad or to-do list, or make a note in our handwriting on the screen.  Annotation of what we're reading, and the sharing of the annotations, is equally easy.  That significantly increases our reading pleasure, as we interrupt one another much less often to share our observations.  In a paper book world, contemporaneous observations were usually not recorded, and so were often forgotten before they were discussed. 

The contribution of the iPod to my efficiency as a writer is tremendous.  Some of my best ideas pop into my mind while I'm reading, often when I'm reading something unrelated to my current writing project.  It's easy to capture those thoughts on the fly, without completely losing track of what I'm reading, but that's a topic for my writer's blog. 

The other major impact of eBooks on our life afloat has been in the area of boat speed.  We've taken a few hundred pounds of reference books off the boat in the past year, not to mention drastically reducing the number of paperback novels aboard.  We've come up a bit on our waterline.  We used to plan our cruising to some extent based on stopping in places where we knew we could find good book swaps.  That's no longer an issue.  We have internet service available almost everywhere, so we can add to our library anywhere we wish, without worrying about where we'll put the books. 

There are other benefits, as well, such as the freedom to read anywhere we're comfortable, without worrying about lighting.  Reading in bed is possible without disturbing your bedmate.  Some of the benefits are specific to the platform we've chosen, but a dedicated eBook reader, such as a Kindle or a Nook, would offer the freedom from bookstores and the space savings, at a minimum.  Some of our cruising acquaintances like the screens of the dedicated readers better, too. 

What's your experience with eBooks aboard?

Waiting on a Gal Named Emily

We've been watching an area of disturbed weather out in the Atlantic to the east of us for the last few days.  The weather gurus have been predicting that it would spin up into a tropical cyclone, and if so, it would be named Emily.  We already sat through one hurricane named Emily here in Grenada several years ago.  We figure that since the last Emily rolled right over us, this one was bound to miss us, kind of like lightening not striking twice in the same place.

Emily-to-be (or maybe not to be) had a mind of her own, though.  She's not going to get in a hurry just because the forecasters say she will.  She's just dawdling along out there, and, for now, will pass well to the north of us.  She hasn't even decided if she's going to be a storm.  We're thankful that she wasn't listening to the same weather predictions that we heard.

We did actually move the boat from our normal summertime anchorage around to a spot on the south shore of Grenada, just in case the winds came out of the west with the passing of this weather system.  It was also time to run the engine to charge the batteries, since we haven't had enough solar and wind energy to keep them up for the last couple of weeks, and we noticed on our last swim that we were growing a little slime on Play Actor's underwater surfaces.  The move took care of all of those problems, and afforded a change of scenery for the crew, as well.

We're enjoying a relaxing summer, reading, swimming, and doing enough minor boat maintenance to keep occupied.  Bud just published a short story, The Lost Tourist Franchise, available in eBook format on Smashwords, The Lost Tourist Franchise on Smashwords.  It should be available on the Kindle Store on August 2. Check his writer's blog at http://www.clrdougherty.com.

We'd love to hear from you.  We hope your summer is a good one.

Home on the Boat

We flew back to Grenada on June 29th to rejoin Play Actor.  During our time in the States, we gave some serious attention to the idea that we might move ashore in the next few years.  We have always thought that we would someday move back to a shore-based life, and as we approach normal retirement age, we worry that we have no idea where we would live if we gave up the sailing life.

It has been 3 years since our last visit to the States, and, after 12 years afloat, life in a close-in suburb or an urban area seemed appealing.  We spent time in California's central valley with Leslie's folks, as well as visiting relatives in the Colorado Rockies and our children in Fort Worth and Houston.  We made a side trip to Austin, thinking that the Texas hill country might be an attractive spot to which we could  retire from retirement. 

The prospect of life ashore after 12 years of cruising is daunting.  We've been back to the States a number of times, but always with the perspective of visitors.  This time our viewpoint was different.  We were overwhelmed by all of the people, cars, and stores.  Even while driving out in the country, we saw people giving vent to frustration, blowing their horns and gesturing angrily.  We rarely encounter such behavior in the islands.  We went into a grocery store in Austin which could have housed all of the grocery stores in any of the Caribbean countries where we spend most of our time, and it was only one of many of like size. 

It was a relief to return to the small, friendly island nation of Grenada, where the immigration and customs officials know us by sight, if not by name.  As we settle back into our life afloat, we worry a bit that we may not be able to find a place in the States to call home when we're ready to give up our wandering way of life.