We woke up in Petite St. Vincent which is a good thing since that’s where we anchored last night.
The Xingu, our boat for the week, lies head to wind at anchor. The Xingu is also a 1,000 mi. river that feeds into the Amazon. Who knew? We didn’t have as much shelter from the wind last night, caused by the open ocean lying pretty much up wind from the gap you can see behind our boat. Some of the guys were bounced around too much. Tonight we’ll seek a little more shelter.
We spent the morning going over the boats mechanical and electrical systems. You realize, especially when you’re studying what to do as a captain when the systems fail, just how important they are and in turn, your knowledge in what and how they work.
The sail for today was up to us to plan today, including the charting. Generally we need to sail west and south towards Hillsboro by the afternoon to practice Man Ovwr Board (MOB) training. Bill, Dave and I divided the 6 mile route and we had to plot our sail plan and report it to Jenni and then sail it. Bill has point A to B on the chart and is working through the the heading calculation.
“ We’ll go from my thumb to my finger. Done!”
I’m sailing my course, A to B. As soon as I get us off of anchor my plan to sail 270 degrees went to hell because it was too close to the downwind direction and a possible accidental jibe which is to be avoided at all costs. We adapted our plan but we all learned a lot about the planning and execution process of sailing. 
Dave does some mainsail grinding for a close reach starboard tack where you want the sails trimmed in quite a bit.
Man Over Board (MOB) training is very important, requires great sailing and captain skills, and can be a matter of life and death. It begins with throwing a simulated person comprised of a life jacket tied to a boat fender over board. Each of us took turns as the captain at the helm while Jenni randomly threw Wilson overboard. Wilson was the name we gave to our object, and thus began the race with time to circle back under sail and attempt to rescue Wilson without putting ourselves or the boat in danger. It sounds scary but was actually fun and a great test of skill, leadership and teamwork.
The captain assigns responsibilities as soon as someone shouts “man overboard!!” Steve is the spotter in this picture and the first to be assigned a responsibility to keep eyes on Wilson and to hook him as we sail past him on our port.
In this case it was a swing and a miss by Steve as Wilson floats by unhooked and we have to make another pass.
Dave’s having his turn as captain now. We all had about 3 passes at Wilson averaging about a 333 batting average. In a few cases we accidentally ran over Wilson! We got better each pass, both as the captain and working the crew tasks; spotting and guiding the direction towards Wilson and hooking him with our boat hook, and trimming and easing the mainsail as we quickly went to a beam reach then to a “heave to” from our original course.
Steve shows off his backside yet again. This time he’s snubbing our anchor chain to take the strain off of the windlass by tying a line to the chain and the two bow cleats as we anchor for the night in Hillsboro, Grenada.
After anchor, we relax with our hydration of choice in the cockpit, with Dave and Jenni on the port and......
....Bill and Steve on the starboard. It was a good day as I realize even more how important and challenging being a good captain can be. So much fun, so much to know, and so much at stake.
We piled into a dockside taxi van with Grace’s crew, Gui and Fabi from Sao Paulo, for a beach BBQ a few miles down the coast.
Fabiana and Gui in front followed by Grace behind Fabi and the rest of us Pirates behind them at dinner.
Bill’s two grandkids love the Baby Shark song so we all decided to make a video that all our grandkids or significant others might enjoy.
After a great dinner of lobster, ribs, sides, and dancing to Baby Shark we returned to our boat to find a flying fish on our transom. Hopefully another good omen? Certainly not for the fish!!!
It’s late and I’m tired. I’m off to my birth. I have my last test tomorrow!!
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