Thank you, Chantal, for Cleaning our Boat

Thankfully, Tropical Storm Chantal brought us nothing more than torrential rain, some thunder and a couple gnarly bolts of lightning.  Barely a whisper of wind - not even the 25 knot gusts they forecasted - but rain of biblical proportions.  Wonder what that looks like?  Check out the video above.  It was impressive.  Typically, we'd be able to see land from that vantage point, it was by no means far away, and it's amazing how quick visibility went to nil once the sky opened up.  Happy to say that the boat remained more or less dry inside, minus a few leaking portholes.  Reminder:  lots of opening portholes might be good for air circulation, but they are also really good for leaks.  In case you are curious, we have seventeen opening ports (twenty-two if you count hatches).  It's a bit...excessive.  But despite the fact that we need to re-bed a zillion portholes when we get to Grenada, we are super grateful that we were spared Chantal's wrath and so happy that all our friends were safe and came out (more or less) unscathed as well.  That's the important stuff right there.

Today we're going to be sailing south.  Conditions are ripe for more storms and, even though Chantal was so kind to us (I mean, she did clean our boat...) we would not like to meet any more.  We'll be in Grenada in the next five days or so - looking forward to being back.