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Sally’s SCUBA experience…

Hi everyone!

So earlier, Mom mentioned about taking scuba. Now, after four days of training, I can proudly say “I am a PADI certified diver”! The first time I breathed underwater was so neat. The thrill of being under the water is cooler than you can imagine! Our training spot wasn’t so great but a way better dive than snorkeling!  We all got used to breathing, equalizing, and all that jazz in the shallows.  Then we moved out further to about 4 meter or 10ish feet and tried everything in deeper water.  Once we knew the basics, we were ready for an open water dive.

SCUBA Sally

We were all excited for our 1st open water dive on Flamingo Reef. We found some awesome fish, eels, crabs, and lots and lots of coral! After about 45 minutes Lucy’s and Fenton’s air was around 70 bars so we headed back up to the surface. We got back into the boat and took all of our gear off, we relaxed at the surface for a little and had juice and popcorn! Then, the engines turned on and we headed over to the underwater sculpture park. Unfortunately, a hurricane had broken some of the statues. Previously, we had checked out the sculpture park with our snorkeling gear—after a big rain which caused murky, bad visibility.  But on this dive, we could see everything! It was really cool! My favorite statue was of a mermaid holding a conch shell up to the surface. Once we saw all the sculptures, we headed back up to the surface.

The next day, we woke up bright and early only to find rain. We still got in our dinghy and headed to ScubaTech. When we got there, the rain calmed down. We loaded up the dive boat with our gear and Joshua joined us a few minutes later. We started heading to a wreck, named the Veronica! We went down to the wreck by pulling ourselves down a line attached to dive boat and the wreck.  From the top, it just looked like a sunken boat and not very interesting.  However, once we got all the way down, it was beautiful and so cool. There were lots of different colored fish. We dove into the wreck and swam through a few doors which was really cool. The one bad thing was fire coral that I accidentally touched. It hurt a lot but it’s better now. The coolest part of the wreck was seeing the old anchor and windlass (a boat part to help pull up the anchor) and all of the fish swimming in and out of the anchor.  Once we surfaced, we stayed on the dive boat for about an hour. We ate buttery popcorn and juice— yum the juice was cold!  After we spent enough time at sea level (so any extra nitrogen got out of our bodies), we headed over to a very pretty reef named Purple Rain! It was gorgeous— the coral was millions of colors and there were lots and lots of fish. I did flips in the water and it was so fun! Unfortunately, my air went down to about 40 bars so we had to go back up. Our last dive was so fun!!  We went back to the dive shop and got PADI certified—woo-hoo!! I can’t wait for our next dive!

Hope you enjoyed my blog,

Sally

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Grenada is starting to feel like home – August 19, 2018

We have been in Grenada for almost 2 months. It is the longest time we have stayed anywhere on our trip since we left Chicago last October. It is beginning to feel like home. We visit the GSPCA every Wednesday to bathe and play with puppies. We have been here long enough to see many new puppies and dogs come in as well as many find new homes and happily leave the shelter. We bump into our new friends on the streets, at the beach, and at the grocery store. We know our way around the island by bus, we’ve experienced Carnival, we know where to find the best food and local juice, we have “our” guy at the fish market, and we love turning on the radio stations to hear the lively Soca music. We are so lucky to get to know Grenada so well and are glad we’ve picked this beautiful, friendly country to spend this hurricane season.

Throughout our journey down through the Caribbean to Grenada, we’ve constantly seen dive boats and divers exploring the ocean floor. Saba, a Dutch island we visited, had scuba divers everywhere. It is a really hard place to visit and you have to put a lot of effort into getting there, whether by sea or by plane…and everyone there was diving (except us). We felt like we were missing out as the dive boats headed out into the lumpy sea. So, this last week, the whole crew of Love & Luck has taken the plunge and we are learning SCUBA. The kids take lessons in the morning and Mark and I take lessons in the afternoon. We have finished our confined water portion—which was actually done at the beach near our boat. On Monday, we make our first open water dive all together. We are all looking forward to a new experience! I expect we will all feel a bit like the new swimmers we taught earlier in July that put on goggles and got to see the pretty fish underwater for the first time…

I’m sure someone will be posting a blog to tell you all about it soon!

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J’Ouvert!

Hi! I haven’t formally introduced myself yet, but my name is Fenton. I’m 17, and I’ve joined the crew of SV Love & Luck for about 9 months, in between my high school graduation and start of college. So far, living on a boat has forced me to make some adjustments, but seeing the world from a whole new perspective has made it well worth it. I can’t wait to keep meeting new people, seeing new places, and spending time with some of the coolest people in the world.

Yesterday morning, Heidi, Boat Dad, and I woke up at 4-something AM to go to J’Ouvert. J’Ouvert is an annual celebration held in the streets of Grenada. It involves music you can feel, dancing with all of your passion, and getting covered with oil and paint by locals. All in good fun, of course.

After getting up, everyone changed into old clothes and shoes. Even if you aren’t trying to get paint on you, it usually ends up on you from the jumble of people everywhere. So, we wore clothes that we were willing to throw away if necessary. We also put on dish soap as a preventive measure, which ended up making the paint and oil very easy to get off. The three of us hopped in the dinghy, and then we went to go pick up some other cruiser friends who were also going. We also caught a needlefish! It’s important to note that I use caught loosely. While on our way, a needlefish jumped into our dinghy. It was raining a bit and dark, but the fish jumping around at my feet certainly woke me up quickly.

Once we got there, it was loud. We could hear the music from our boat in the anchorage, but when we locked up the dinghy, it was hard to hear anything but the music. We watched for a bit, and then were encouraged to walk around a bit and see some more. Most people with paint wouldn’t cover you if you didn’t want to – generally you get a look, which you nod yes or no to – but there’s no way you can go to J’Ouvert without getting at least some paint on you. After paint was applied to us with brushes, a leaf, and some finger-painting (in actuality, it was more like hand-painting), we listened to some of our favorite Soca music. Most of the trucks blaring music had more speakers than tires, so it was never hard to hear.

The dancing of Grenada is not something that is half-done. We’ve experienced it at several events that involved music, but it’s clear every time – people love to dance. I’ve never been much of a dancer (that’s Heidi), but I still find myself moving when Soca comes on. It’s hard not to.

After about an hour and a half, we had seen a fair bit of J’Ouvert. We were all covered in paint, and the sun was just starting to be high enough that I should be concerned about not wearing enough sunscreen. So we headed back to the dinghy, at one point going through a pile of mud in which BOTH of my flip flops decided was too much, resulting in me being very temporarily shoeless. After that mishap, we all ended back at the dinghy, we took our friends home, and washed off in the ocean. All and all, we were home by 7 AM. A quick dip in the ocean, a bit more dish soap, and we were all clean and ready to start the day. It was definitely an experience I’ll never forget, but I might sleep in next year.

 

Until next time!

-Fenton

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Visiting the puppies by Sally

Hi everyone

This blogpost is about volunteering at the local pet shelter in Grenada, the GSPCA.  We woke up to a gloomy rainy Wednesday and got ready to go to the shelter.  We were supposed to go from 8:30am to 12:00 noon.  Soon, the rain turned into a downpour (if you went outside you would be soaked in seconds). But the puppies were waiting, so we got on our rain jackets and climbed into our dinghy. We arrived at the dock in a couple of minutes and walked up a short hill to get to the shelter. We walked in and the office manager brought us to a back room. Since it was down pouring we couldn’t walk dogs.  Instead, a volunteer named Allie, asked if we wanted to bathe puppies. Of course we did! We were all super excited to bathe and cuddle these cute 5 week old puppies! So, Lucy and I went back with Allie to get some puppies—they were so adorable! Mom bathed them and we started to cuddle them in blankets to warm them up.  There were 5 litters of puppies that we took care of.  There was the Winnie the Pooh litter, the Rock litter, the Toy Story litter, among others!

Outside, the rain was still pouring down. Allie told us that there was a leaky roof over some puppies, so Fenton and I then went and started cuddling and playing with those pups.  Once they were all sleeping, we rejoined the rest of the family in the bathing room.

Allie brought in some older puppies (about 12 weeks and much bigger than the new babies). They were muddy dirty from playing outside.  We gave them all baths and mom started playing with them in their exercise pen. Heidi and Fenton went to play with the bigger dogs in the outdoor pen. Lucy and I went back to the leaky roof pen to dry off some more pups. About 20 minutes later, all the work was done and we felt that we were getting in the way, so it was time to go.  We started walking back to our dinghy but the rain had not calmed down at all! Our dinghy was so low in the water since it was full of rain .  Dad got the water out, picked us up and we headed back to our boat.  Once we got back to our boat, we took off our raincoats (that didn’t do much good), dried off and put on clean clothes, and made soup and tea! So excited to go back next Wednesday!  Hopefully in better weather.

💕Sally💕