Our Last Night in Grenada

We hear spring has arrived in Madison: 82 degrees, greening grass, and budding bushes. Here, we are melting. It is greater than 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade below decks. The humidity exceeds 70%. We live in our swim trunks/bikinis. (Poor kitten Dinghy in her fur coat). She moves very slowly in the heat of the day. I sometimes check her pulse. But, she specializes in sleeping in the smallest, coolest places aboard WILD HAIR--like on top of the freezer lid or in the shady spot beneath the forward breezy hatch. When the sun retreats in the evenings, the night turns delicious. The cool air settles upon us. It is heavenly.

It is the end of the sailing season for us. I am exhausted by the last four days spent decommissioning the boat. I used a tank of oxygen to scrape barnacles from the hull.
The boat looks disturbingly naked as Dave and I removed the sails from the mast and forward stay. We polished every inch of the vessel—inside and out. Memories of a bag of onions forgotten at the end of one season haunted me as I scoured the boat removing perishables. Anticipating hurricane force winds, we removed from the deck every line, fender, and cushion that could conceivably take flight. Stowing these items below erased the livable space available to us.

Now, the boat sits on a frame ashore; heavy-duty straps attached to screws nestled deeply into the soil, pull the hull down onto the frame. In this configuration, we live on land 15 feet in the air. The boat feels oddly like a tree house. At one point, a Brit borrows our latter for his own use and we are stranded. A damsel in distress, I “you-hoo” a Grenadian boatyard worker for assistance.

It’s time to go home to Madison, Wisconsin.