March 13, 2023

Cheers to 9 years! We celebrated by doing a sailing excursion. It wasn’t just a casual sailing day trip – this was different! This was the America’s Cup Sailing Regatta. We actually had to work during this excursion, which we were pretty excited about. While we were waiting for our water taxi to take us over to our sailboats, the man taking our tickets also assigned us our positions for the day.

Andy and I were both primary grinders – which they kept making the joke that we wouldn’t need to go to the gym that day. Two captains were selected to lead the different teams – and we were broken into the different teams. One team would get the Stars and Stripes (a race winning boat) and the other team would get True North.

The crew was fantastic – not us – the captain, first mate, etc. They made sure that we all understood our positions and if we felt uncomfortable we could switch. Some of the other positions were main grinders, winch whench, bartender, etc.

Ultimately, there were six of us that were primary grinders – and there were only four cranks. We got to enjoy the first leg of the trip and watch our new friends crank like there was no tomorrow. We were in a little pit – while we weren’t grinding. It was a lot of fun! And it was something we haven’t done before. We’ve sailed, but never were a part of the crew.

It truly was a race. There were a few times that I thought the boats were going to hit – which was pretty terrifying and cool at the same time. I didn’t see this, but Andy had overhead the captain actually yelling at the other boat. Apparently they almost actually hit us – so I guess we weren’t too far off base thinking we were going to die at one point. 😂

We lost the race. But we’re all winners here. It was a blast. After the race they brought us back to their “museum” basically just a gift shop. We decided it might be fun to walk around a bit before heading back to the ship. We stopped and had lunch. One of the restaurants that we walked past had taken drift wood after both Hurricane Irma/Maria to reconstruct. It’s a good reminder that no matter how beautiful these places are – they can also have extreme weather. Those hurricanes hit in 2017 – I wasn’t blogging then, but we were in Cancun and there were three hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico that September. It was a really rough year for the Caribbean.

After lunch we got back on the ship and got cleaned up. We hung out with Jill and Mario that evening. There was a magic show – and we Mario had some business to wrap up in the casino.

It was a great anniversary!

Up Next:

• Roseau, Dominica
• Titou Gorge and hot springs