Our biggest news here is that we finally got one of our masts out and laying down on the shore where we can chase out some rot and refinish them. This was a long time coming and the masts are quite crusty and will love to be cared for and refinished and brought back to their original beauty.
Our friend Joe, who has a big operation shipping raw molasses out of Guyana invited us over pull out the masts with his big hydraulic excavator. The arm on the excavator was just long enough to lift the foremast out and because it couldn’t take hold of the mast high enough, when the mast came out of it’s hole it swung sideways. That was a little disconcerting, but we had the mast lashed twice to the bucket of the excavator. We got her laid down comfortably and have already stripped her and made our first splice.
Rocky and Jessica are our only helpers now and it is a big job for us. I have been asking around for more workers, but they say it is rice harvest season now and everybody is occupied. All the landings have piles of rice sacs full of rice in the shell they call “paddy.”
We have been really busy trying to keep up with our schedule of departing here the first week in November, so we can set off from St Thomas for Wilmington NC and arrive the beginning of December before the winter storms begin. We have a few people sailing out of here with us and a few more meeting us in St. Thomas for the ocean voyage back. We are still considering a few more adventurous souls who want to experience the ocean on the mighty, mythic, but flawed Schooner Anne.
It will be quite a change for us after almost a year isolated beyond other foreign boats and travelers.
Please go see my websites:
