A Week Aboard S/V Sabado: 9/24/2023 – 10/1/2023

Good morning! We posted a new YouTube video. Have you seen it?

Last Sunday, the mooring field was calm and quiet. Ray gave himself a haircut off the stern while I marveled at the water clarity.

We hadn’t seen the water this clear in a while, so we decided to take advantage of it and go snorkeling. The Molinere Underwater Sculpture Park has been on our radar for a while now, but every time we’ve tried to go, the water has been too murky to see the sculptures 5-8m deep. So, we zipped over in the dinghy with our fingers crossed!

We could see the bottom from the dinghy, so I excitedly jumped in! The park is listed as one of National Geographic’s 25 wonders of the world and has 75 sculptures over 800 square meters, but I think I only found 20. You can hire a tour guide to take you out if you’re committed to seeing more, though!

The sculptures are made from textured cement with a neutral pH, allowing coral polyps to attach and proliferate. The sculptures have played a major role in rebuilding the marine ecosystem after Hurricane Ivan hit Grenada in 2004. Somehow, I had the entire place to myself: no tour boats, no other dinghies, just me, Ray, and the fish! It was stunning.

Once I was all snorkeled out, we dinghied home and spent the rest of the day relaxing before enjoying a home-cooked meal and watching the sunset.

Monday morning, we made our rounds to Island Water World and Budget Marine, collecting supplies for another week of projects. Last week, we noticed our mooring lines hanging on by a thread.

We were lucky to have seen it in time and were able to switch out our lines with another pair we had on board, but we went ahead and picked up some chafe guards and replaced the damaged lines to be safe. We examined the eye and didn’t notice anything sharp that would’ve caused them to shred like that, but we felt more comfortable after putting on the chafe guards and knowing we had backup lines.

We also purchased a longer fuel line and a filter for Ray’s latest dinghy improvement project. He installed a fuel filter/water separator, ran the new fuel line under the dinghy floor, and put our fuel tank in the forward compartment. This opened up lots of space for more groceries/jerry cans in the future!

We spent the rest of the week cleaning the interior of Sabado and taking care of some administrative tasks (like taxes and passport renewals). It’s been hot and sunny all weekend, so we reaped the rewards of our power system and got out our appliances. We made some ice, water, and ran our big fan for hours!

I decided to try making a loaf of sourdough in our bread machine, a far less labor-intensive process than kneading/shaping/baking one myself. I wasn’t confident it would work out, but it turned out great! It’s tough to get a brown top in the bread maker, but the loaf is still the perfect balance of crisp and chewy. I’ll put together a list of my favorite sourdough recipes soon to post here!

It’s calm this morning and a bit overcast. Hopefully, that means cooler temperatures for the day! I’m looking forward to eggs and sourdough toast for breakfast…

I hope you had a great week. ❤️