Current Location – 9°22’N, 79°57’W – Panama
Well it’s been a hot minute since we’ve done a ship log. Having too much fun I guess.
Last season we left Grenada in November and slowly worked our way up the Windward island chain hitting favorite islands like Bequia and Martinique as well as exploring new islands like Statia, Saba, Antiqua and others.
Only two sailors, in my experience, never ran aground. One never left port, and the other was an atrocious liar. –Don Bamford
One of our first stops north of Grenada was Carriaccou. We missed it on the way down because we had to scoot due to Hurricane Beryl last summer, so we were excited to go there as it is one of our favorite islands. I don’t think we were quite prepared for the devastation even five months after the hurricane. This was ground zero for Beryl making landfall as a category five storm. Most of the buildings were destroyed. Unfortunately it is going to take years for Carriaccou to recover. It is painfully slow to recover due to the lack of even a basic hardware store. Everything has to be shipped in from Grenada. The locals are resiliant and eventually they will recover, but I’m guessing it will take a decade.
The new islands we hit last season were Saba, Statia, St. Kitts & Nevis, and Antigua. All of them were lovely in their own right and I wouldn’t hesitate to visit any of them again.
Saba is the most remote and least visited. There are no beaches to speak of, and only one small harbor. It is by far the cleanest island we’ve ever been to, I don’t recall seeing a speck of trash on the whole island. We hitchhiked a couple of times and rode in the back of a pick up truck for the first time in probably 20 years. We also hiked to the highest point in the Netherlands because it’s a Dutch island. The hike was fantastic, but the view was just clouds. It’s pretty tough to get to if you’re not a sailor, but if you ever go to St. Maarten you can take a day trip or over-night to Saba. I highly recommend it.
Another Island we hit was St. Eustatius (Statia). An interesting fact about Statia (also a Dutch island) is that our Starlink doesn’t work there. When we pulled in we thought something was wrong so I spent a half hour trying to diagnose the problem before I figured out that Starlink doesn’t have an agreement with Statia, so they shut down that area geographically. As soon as you pull a couple of miles away from the island it started working again. Statia has some excellent hiking, one of the hikes is to the extinct volcanic crater. It looks like something out of Jurassic Park. The hike is steep and challenging but absolutely fantastic. Statia was formerly known as the Golden Rock, apparently it was the center of trade for the entire Caribbean a couple hundred years ago.
We made it as far north as St. Martin, which is an old favorite as we’ve spent a bunch of time there in the past. It was nice to see old friends and meet new ones. St. Martin is the yachting capital of the Caribbean for good reason. It has no taxes and you can get just about anything you want there. It is super easy and cheap to ship boat parts from the United States. We got lucky and hit the French Side of SXM during Carnival. Although not as crazy as carnival on some islands we really had a nice time with friends.
The winds were really horrendous most of the season in the Caribbean. We tried our hardest to make to to Barbuda a couple of times during the season, but we were never able to get a weather window there. I guess we’ll have to try another time. Living at the whims of mother nature is different than living on land, but one lesson we learned early is to not test the ocean, she will win every time and is a harsh teacher.
We left Wild Rose in Grenada for hurricane season again and headed back to the US in early August. We hit California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. September and October truly are some of the nicest months in the Midwest and Rocky Mountains.
We hit the Pictured Rocks area of the Upper Peninsula to finish 13 miles of the Pictured Rocks Trail that we had missed a few years ago. It was just as spectacular as the other 30 miles. We stayed for nearly a week visiting the little towns and hiking around the Picured Rocks area. Pictured Rocks is really an amazing place.
Another side adventure was camping above 10,000 feet near Leadville, CO. For two people who live at sea level, the first couple of days at elevation are quite interesting. We’re definitely not used to the thin air.
The best part of being back in the US is seeing family. We feel like we thoroughly visited with family, probably to the point where they were ready to kick us out. With two months of living out of a duffel bag behind us we’re ready to head home.
We did a lot of work to do on the boat fixing all of the stuff we broke last season. It’s funny living on a boat, we went from everything working one day and two weeks later our air conditioner, watermaker and salt water pump were on the fritz.
New adventures await this season. Our plan is to head in a new direction, but you’ll have to wait to see what we have planned.
Ship Log
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