Our New Home

4th August 2025

Having shifted round to the marina which will be our home base for the next few months. We could finally slow down (just a bit) and spend a bit more time getting to know the boat.

We couldn’t move onboard straight away as the boat was really dirty and lacking some fairly fundamental items. A fairly typical exchange with friends and family went something like this:

Friend: So how are the cocktails? What country are you in? Are you partying?
Us: We have no fridge, no water, no sink, no bow thruster, no windlass, no navigation system, no bilge pump and we are unsure why the toilet doesn’t flush.
Friend: But… cocktails?

Hahaha sorry to disappoint y’all! But to be honest we kinda knew we were in for quite a while of getting everything up and running.

What we DO have is an amazing street BBQ chicken place on the walk back from the marina to our AirBnb -this was my face the first time we saw it:

Street Meat!

And it is SO tasty – think char grill chicken with a piece of foccacia garlic bread grilled on an open flame barbecue (aka grill in American). The grill is an old gas-tank which has been cut in half. I guess that adds to the flavour!

We take it back to the AirBnb, throw in a microwave rice pack and boom – a delicious meal. Usually a generous helping of chimichurri or green sauce wrapped inside the alfoil with the chicken too. I’m drooling just writing this.

Losing Our Wheels

We had our final day with our rental car coming up. So I decided to spend the day shopping as Ryan was down and out with a stomach bug – we are blaming the water at the yard which we had been drinking from the tap.

First Stop – Coffee – Side note: I think every dog in Grenada comes from one gene pool they are all wayyy too similar.

I scooted around to homewares, hardware stores, a pharmacy, groceries, and general “stocking up” for moving in.

The grocery store was a bit of an experience today – I walked in to blasting music and a DJ and two steps later was offered a shot of rum. I was so unprepared and flustered that I just kind of confusedly stumbled past and declined (I now think the rum would have made groceries more entertaining).

DJ Loud!

Ryan picked up after a few drugs from the pharmacy – enough to get keen to grease the grease nipple on the stern gland. (Blame the mechanical engineers for THAT part name!) This thing was fully blocked up – who knows when that was last done :/

It’s questionable whether Ryan put more grease on himself or the engine; but I think he has it figured out now. 😂

Getting Ready to Move In

The next few days were all just busy-busy preparing to get onboard. We wanted to take advantage of having a washing machine at the AirBnb and get as ready as possible to move in. Here is a quick little summary of all the various things we have been doing:

Upgrade all the bulbs on the boat to LEDs (way cooler)
Washed every cushion and cushion cover
Aired all the foam and cleaned the last pieces
Moved all our clothes onboard and packed into the V-Berth
Why is all the water coming out brown?
Why won’t the fridge compressor stop running? and yet it’s not cold… hmm.
The lights stay on even when we turn off the circuit breaker (errrrk)
And why does this light turn on with the fan switch

Hmm I presume we sleep in here somewhere…

The other never-ending task is scrubbing! Scrubbing, scrubbing, and scrubbing. The entire boat is covered in patches of light surface mould, plus years and years of not being cleaned.

It can be very satisfying to clean though as it comes up so nicely with a bit of TLC.

So much nicer after cleaning! Credit to Steve Dahl for making the beautiful anchor wooden artwork for us.

Moving In

It finally got to Monday, although the fridge doesn’t work, and the water is so dirty we can’t use it to clean or shower in… but we are moving onboard. The first part of this is getting from our AirBNB to the boat with our final bags and pillows. We may have drawn a few odd looks on our morning walk.

The height of fashion.

One of my favourite things to do in a different country is look at the houses on a random street in suburbia. I love how bright and colourful the houses are here; with big and small houses perched up the hillsides sometimes very close together! These are some of my favourites along the walk to the boat.