Sailing the Grenadines - How this Sailing Stuff Got Started

Somehow, this doesn't look - or feel - like France. 

It's not.

But this is kind of where it all started.

We're sailing in the Tobago Cays. 

The Grenadines. Again.

Tiny islands. Amazing colors. 

Sea turtles. Eagle rays. Dolphins. 

A trail of starfish leads us back to the boat underwater after a snorkeling expedition. 

 We find a sailboat, a 57' catamaran, that needs another couple on it. 

We volunteer. 

With Isabelle, the French chef, and Frédéric, the captain. 

We don't even have to do the sailing - or the cooking - ourselves. 

Three others, a couple from England and one Swiss fellow, complete our crew.

It's very windy - 25 knots - but oh, the colors of the water!

We visit Carriacou. Saltwhistle Bay, Mayreau. Mopion. Union Island. Eat lobster on Petit Bateau. 

Petit Tabac. Petit St. Vincent. Everything very "petit". 

Between my feet and that white beach are sea turtles. And fat starfish.

 After a sandy salty week, we return to our rented house in Grenada.

We've been here over a month.

Feels almost like home by now. 

Grenada. 

We'd been here before. 

Spice Islands.
Near the end of the chain of Caribbean islands. 

Closer to Venezuela than to Miami.  

Originally, a few years back, we thought we'd wind up buying and living on a sailboat. 

Two years ago, here in the Caribbean, we began seriously learning about boats. 

We read. Practiced knots. Took training courses.

We passed numerous exams, and got our licenses for bareboat chartering and coastal cruising, inland waterways, monohull, catamarans, navigation, and probably a couple of others. 

We hold licenses from the UK, the US, from Ireland, France, and from the EU. 

Countless books and hours of work. 

-Not that it really meant we knew what we were doing - by any means. 

We spent time on boats in Thailand, in Greece, in France, in Myanmar, in Laos, Indonesia, and all over the Caribbean.  I counted 50 islands we'd visited in the Caribbean alone! 

(See where Grenada is on my map? WAY south.)

But: At one point, we realized that - living on a sailboat, even a catamaran, isn't for us. 

Plus,  the idea of dealing with hurricane season - that just made the decision easier. 

So we began to look at canal boats in Europe. 

We considered over 500 boats (!), mostly online. 

Once in France, we inspected 30 boats from the inside, (here's THAT story) and eliminated another 30 from the outside. 

I made spreadsheets.
And lists.

And - you know the rest of the story.

When I was a kid, we lived in the Virgin Islands. 

Once, I was invited to a friend's birthday party on her parents' boat. 

I was probably in first grade. 

I remember being SO impressed! 

That memory has stuck with me over the years. 

I don't think I could swim yet, but man, I wanted to jump off that boat with the other kids. 

So I did. Jumped off the boat (still a favorite thing to do-) and started swimming. 

Yep. That's when it all started.

Brittany - The Wild Western Coastline

Heading south from Ireland.
By train and ferry.

To the furthermost corner of Brittany.

Finistère.
Land's End.

Celebrating my 65th birthday - in Brittany.

Like Ireland - a beautiful western coast.

And - there's an EXCELLENT walking trail around the coastline.
Maybe one of the all-time best anywhere.




It's rocky. Dramatic.

400 km long. The GR 34.

And as usual in France, there are good restaurants everywhere.

Signposts are in French and Breton. 

Dolmens. Rock circles. There's a Celtic - air - about the place.

Asterix and Obelix country.

Dolmens - are all over.
Dolmens!

Just - standing out in corn fields.
Among the cows. Or behind someone's house.

How wild is that? 

A prehistoric stone structure - towering over your clothesline.

Brittany has miles of beautiful sandy white beaches.
But - no crowds.
Why?

It IS August, after all.




It has almost 3000 km of coastline.
That's twice as much as California.

-Guess that means there's plenty of beach for everyone.

Natural harbors. Tidy sailboats. Crashing waves.

And - the tide goes WAY out.
So it looks different every day.

You KNOW - it's got to be fierce here in the winter.
Raging winds and storms. Howling.

Like most Atlantic coasts in Europe.
Cornwall. Connemara. Canaries.

The wind has time to gather speed across the entire Atlantic Ocean.

As they used to say in Ireland, the next parish west - is Boston.

But in summer, it's pretty wonderful.

View from our bed in the cool tiny house we rented.

The seafood is - of course - excellent. 

First stop as usual: Moules frites and a pitcher of rosé.

Steamed mussels and French fries. 

Mussels. Scallops. Oysters. Fresh fish.

The place is FILLED with flowers. 

Particularly hydrangeas.
In almost ridiculous profusion.

There are also canals.
Rivers.

With barges and locks and flower-filled stone cottages.

Occasionally we venture into the towns.

Brittany is actually pretty busy in summer.
It's "the season".

Ice cream stands. Tourists.
The popular Breton crêpes everywhere.

But - the coast is what it's all about.
That's where the magic is.

After about 3 weeks wandering Brittany, it's time to get back onto the trains for us.
Heading back down to Maggie May.

Thru Paris.
Crowded in August with all the foreign visitors.

The Parisians themselves?

They're all on vacation.

Probably - in Brittany.

Why travel? HERE is a good reason.  Want more trains? Try HERE.  Swiss Glacier Express HERE. 

Boats, ships - they're great. But - if you have to take a plane, the best is flying your own. Like THIS. 

"OUR Castle" - in Ireland

An old Irish castle.
With a ghost and a dungeon and a place for the portcullis to fall.

Even a hole for pouring boiling oil on unwanted visitors.

5 bedrooms. Not counting the dungeon.

That was our home for a while this summer.
The ghost we brought ourselves. In a story.

Erik, Kilian, Stan, Trish Ray, Mikey, Noah and Iris. Aidan's taking the picture. Rick, Jenny and Tati haven't arrived yet.

There was Guinness and smoked salmon and mussels and pubs.

But also pig racing and bog jumping.

Each pig has a number. And a stuffed cotton jockey. 

And the retelling of the "Ghost of Castle Kilkarney", the book my mother wrote 50 years ago.
About us. And a castle. In Ireland.

Aidan, Kilian, Iris, Mikey, Stan, Ray, Erik, baby Noah and Trish

In 1969, my parents moved from the Chicago area to Ireland.
We 5 kids - I was the oldest - went to Irish schools.

We got uniforms.
Counted money in pounds, shillings and pence.
Learned the differences between roods, perches and furlongs.

Learned what a chancer was.
Messages. A press. A quid.
That "the jacks" and "banjaxed" were not necessarily related.

We lived in an Old Rectory, built in 1725.
Complete with a ghost and an underground tunnel to the graveyard.

The adjustment from the US wasn't always easy, but it changed our lives.
It also gave us incredible freedom.




The bus left outside our gate.

From there, we could go on our own into Dublin.
Take a ferry to Wales.
A train to anywhere in Europe.
And beyond. 

I wound up going to school in England.
Germany. France. Switzerland. Italy. Ireland.
Working in a dozen or more countries.

We got the gift of thinking internationally. 

In 1969, my mother also wrote a book in Ireland, starring the 5 kids.
"The Ghost of Castle Kilkarney".

Steve, Trish, Rick and Pete in 1969.

Every day after dinner, she'd read to us what she'd written that day. 

When my kids were small, I read the book to them, too.

Erik, Mikey and Kilian. Okay, they're really reading Tintin, but - still.

This year was the 50th anniversary of that book.
We put together a new version, digitized it, included a few pictures.

And - rented a castle in Ireland for a family reunion.
One that was as close to the fictional "Castle Kilkarney" as possible. 

With a suit of armor.
A stone staircase.

Even a dungeon.

Noah and Kilian. Involved in castle activities.

We had the place to ourselves.

Cooking, shopping - and driving - was a combined effort. 

The windows were small and narrow. 

The stairway was steep, and wound to the right. 

They usually do, so that the defenders could use their right arms for weapons. 

Someone saw a poster for "pig racing". 
Off we went - to an excellent local county fair. 

Kilian and Aidan check out the potential new wheels. Not for NM, with the driver on the right-hand side.

Tractors, tools. And - yes, pig racing.

(It was very popular. You could bet on the pigs!)

Ireland today is a long way from what it was like in the 70's.

Central heating was a rarity.
Some of my friends' homes had no refrigerators or washers.
Milk was delivered daily, and kept outside on a windowsill.

None of my friends had a car.

The stone house I rented in Connemara had no electricity.

There was a pump in the field for water.
I used turf - that we dug and dried from the bog - for heat.

The "ould" days: Temple Bar in Dublin. My hearth in Leitrim, with the "crook and crane". Trish at 20 years old.

It's changed drastically.

Something lost, something gained. 




This trip - this family reunion - was a chance to share a bit of Ireland with my kids.
Ireland played such a large part in my life.

My brother Rick also wanted to show his daughter, Tati, where he grew up.

We even went back to our home in Co. Wicklow, The Old Rectory.
The current owners are my parents' friends, Jimmy and Miriam Carroll.

They kindly gave us tea and let us wander through our old rooms.

At the Cliffs of Moher. We used to go there before they built the walls. Watch the ocean from the edge. Sometimes at night.

What an adventure - both then - and now.
A trip with stories of the past.

And now - we're creating new stories of our own.
For our kids - and grandkid.
How cool.

Noah says,"That's OUR castle!"
And - he's right. -At least for a while.

"Remember the time we went to Ireland? And stayed in a real castle?"

Yep.