Up the mast, a family of squid, and the small daily adventures

Paul and I are happily settling in to life on the Tintas in Grenada. Since we’ve returned from SoCal (for our 2nd of 3 destination weddings this year), we’ve restocked the galley, changed the sheets, cleaned all the laundry, scrubbed the outside of the boat including both heads, installed a paper towel roll holder, removed the ceiling panels and repaired our gib traveler, returned the ceiling panels, lost our signal halyard to a cheap flag, made a homemade harness and ascended the mast to retrieve the signal halyard, and removed some rusted grommets from a solar panel. We’ve made plans for work travel and pleasure travel in the next 3 months. Trips to Florida, SoCal, NYC, and Spain loom on the horizon, so we are enjoying every hour we get here on our new home.

In our free time, we’ve been reading, cooking every day, and swimming our backyard every morning after coffee. Our swims bring us serotonin but also special guest visitors that we relish meeting, including a family of small squid who were living on the mooring line. Some days there were 7 and some days there were 10, but they are masters at blending into the growth on the line, and putting up defensive tentacles when we got too close.

Writing this post has been stalled, not because of any hardships but the opposite. I’ve found it more difficult to write about the pleasant days we’ve been adding up. Waking and getting the coffee going. Quiet moments while we take turns filling in the crossword (15 minutes for a Monday, 2 hours for a Sunday). Startling a sea turtle who is coming up for breath with a spoken word. Hanging the laundry to dry, and taking turns cooking. A patch of what I could swear was sea grass morphing into a school of small, almost translucent yellow fish. There is less to remark on, but every day still feels remarkable to us.

We are finishing our fifth month on the Tintas. The paperwork is not complete. We have a list a mile long of things we’d like to fix or improve. But now we can see how our days will shape up, and how to make this life a happy one.