by Kathy
It is hard to believe that our first season cruising is
already done. So what marks the end of the cruising season for us?? Well, our schedule
use to revolve around the public school calendar. Now it revolves around the hurricane
calendar. The kids have been doing school all summer and they are excited that
their break is finally here. We had our ups and downs (mostly ups!) and our portfolios have been submitted and we are officially done for the year!!
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| Very excited kiddos!! They are ready for a break! Anybody think Sam is really excited??? |
Hurricane season officially starts in June but the
prime season when we get the most storms is September and October. Take a look
at the NOAA map right now….it is like playing a game of connect the dots with
the storms. After watching what happened with Irma last year, we went through
many cycles to figure out what to do this year. We decided to go to Grenada which
is officially outside of the box but for the prime time of September and October
we wanted SandStar to be out of the water and strapped down to land. We made
plans in April for a haul out at Grenada Marine. After the hit that Puerto Rico
and the BVIs took last year the spots were filling up fast in Grenada. The next
thing we knew it was August and we were prepping for the haul out. The haulout itself was a stressful 60 minutes. SandStar is a pretty wide girl - 28ft beam so when we do find a place that can haul her it is usually a tight fit on the lift. Here are some pictures to show you what it looked like:
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| Captain Dan backing her into the lift area |
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| It took about six guys helping us get her into the travel lift. |
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| You can see the fit was pretty tight. We also held our breath when they lifted her to make sure the straps were in the right place. |
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| Whooohooo! She is out of the water! |
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| The moment you realize how hard it is to get on and off your boat now...... |
There was A LOT of preparations before and after the haul out.
We gave ourselves a week and used every minute of it. It felt like days and days and days of laundry. You want everything clean before you leave so nothing grows. Yuck!! Dan had a list a mile long of systems to shut down and fridges and freezers to defrost and clean out. Everyone had a list of
things to do and the kids were able to earn some spending $$ for our hurricane
break. The kids also met a few of the marina dogs and there was a daily bread truck that came by everyday that had the best rolls.
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| Oh....the list was very long. This was only one page. |
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| Jack working hard on our fenders that got a little dirty when we were in the marina. |
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| The boys scrubbing our dinghy. |
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| Then Emma polished the dinghy. |
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| Oh....the laundry that never ended. |
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| Everything had to be washed!! Even these guys! |
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| The kids playing with Perry in the boatyard. |
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| Jack's Favorite Vehicle - the bread truck |
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| Jack coming back from visiting the bread truck on another day. |
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| All my favorites! |
So now where do we go????? Our water home is on land and our
land home is being rented. We know we may never get this time with the kiddos
again when we move back on land, so we are planning to check off some items
from our bucket list. South Africa was on the top of the list and was our plan
for this year. After doing some research and after Dan found a great search
site for flights we were able to book flights to Scotland, Ireland, South
Africa and Greece for the same price as a flight just to South Africa!!! Score!!
Now comes the hard part….keeping the trip in budget. Usually when we travel it
is for a much shorter period of time and it is a vacation that we splurge a little
on activities, rental cars and lodging. But this is a different trip in length –
8 weeks! Our first stop would prove to be one of our hardest to keep in check
on budget – NYC!!! I have a whole post coming on our time in NYC!!
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| Good-Bye SandStar....See you later! |
