What's next??

I've now had several days on solid ground. These last two days really feel like the first two days of my (semi) retirement as they were the first days that I have been at home while Sallie went to work and my time wasn't over committed. It's really an odd feeling. Of course I have plenty to do between catching up on things I've neglected over the last 30 days (e.g. pool maintenance, car maintenance, raking leaves, finances, etc.) and upcoming trip planning. I recently looked at this blog and realized that there's an issue when I post text using white space as a separator, that it excludes the text after the extra carriage return. So I'm working on correcting that.

So what's next??

My plan as of a few days ago was to sail with my former crewmate Carlos northward up the remaining windward islands of the Lesser Antilles and then through the leeward islands to the Virgin Islands. Unfortunately Carlos had a serious family issue and had to rush back home to support his family. Family issues definitely put the triviality of this boondoggle into perspective. My thoughts are with you Carlos.

As we were sailing across, I frequently performed sail changes and maintenance items by myself to determine if I could handle this size boat by myself. The answer is a definite "maybe". The short sails between Caribbean islands would minimize any sleep deprivation issues and just leave two primary concerns: sudden bad weather and close-in maneuvering. Sudden bad weather, aka squalls, are a real concern as they show up with minimal warning (not shown on weather prediction software as they are too localized) so keeping a vigilant eye out is important to be sure the boat isn't caught with too much sail up. Also, reefing much sooner and taking the gennaker down at the first sign of too much wind is critical. The other concern is maneuvering in ports. That is most easily solved by finding ports where there is sufficient room to anchor. So my task now is to plan ports up the island chain that are conducive to that.

 My other concern, regardless of having crew or not, is how so many Caribbean islands are overrun by cruise ship people. Many years ago, while hiking in the BVI's, we came across a large flock of extremely white people mostly sporting Bermuda shorts, flower-print shirts and wearing white socks with their sandals. We coined the term "sheeple" for them. Yes, it's a real word but we didn't know it at the time. These masses of people overrunning these small islands in waves completely change the complexion of the town while they are there. It's quite amazing to watch. You can walk an almost-empty white crescent beach for days, then suddenly, hundreds of beach chairs and umbrellas are set side-by-side along the whole beach. Tables of jewelry and knickknacks are put on display. An hour later the beach is overtaken by throngs of tourists like a tidal wave crashing over it. A half-day later they disappear just as quickly as they arrived and the cleanup effort begins. So my goal is to stay away from the circus as much as possible. My next few days will be dedicated to researching (my apologies to Pranav) to discover places that have safe anchorages that do not have surges of sheeple but are still accepting of a single lost sheep :-)