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Welcome back to part two of the story of the 1983 invasion of Grenada. To refresh my memory (and yours), let’s start with a quick overview of what we covered in part one. (If you missed reading part one the first time around I recommend you start there.)

In the previous post, I posited the “double onion” thesis to understand the events leading to the invasion. (Think of it as a lacrimonious version of the more famous double helix.) There’s a Grenadian side of the story (one half of the double onion), and a US side (the other half).

As if the odd shape of the double onion’s exterior weren’t enough, each half has its own set of layers. In part one, we peeled the Grenadian side; in this post we’ll dissect the US side, and draw lessons and conclusions.

The salient Grenadian layers covered in part one are:

1. The seed of a family vendetta was planted in 1974 when the paramilitary enforcers of the first Prime Minister Eric Gairy shot the father of the to-be second Prime Minister Maurice Bishop.
2. In 1979 Maurice Bishop and supporters stage a nearly bloodless coup when Eric Gairy is out of the country.
3. The new Prime Minister (Bishop) looks to Cuba for assistance—and, by association, the Soviet Union.
4. In September and October 1983 a coup within a coup erupts and the Deputy Prime Minister places Prime Minister Bisop under house arrest.
5. On October 19, 1983 Bishop is initially freed by the people but then recaptured by the Deputy Prime Minister’s faction and executed.

Ironically, although Fort George had been built in the early-1700s, a shot had never been fired there…until Maurice Bishop’s 1983 execution.

A couple side notes of interest: The fort was originally built by the French and named Fort Royal, the British captured the fort in 1762. The surrounding town of St. George’s is named for both St. George (the patron saint of England) King George III.

Now let’s shift to the other side of the story and peel the other half of the onion. Let’s first begin with the end in mind and consider that the US invasion of Grenada was initiated on October 25, 1983—just six days after the execution of Maurice Bishop. Although Grenada is not halfway around the world like the Middle East or East Asia, it is 500 miles from the closest US territory (Puerto Rico) and 1,500 miles from the US mainland. Although world-class, the US can’t deploy a force of 7,600 troops from the Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard in less than a week—the invasion was clearly anticipated. In fact, starting in 1981 the US military had been conducting mock invasions (codenamed Operation Amber) on an outlying Puerto Rican island. “Amber” was considered to be an Eastern Caribbean island engaged in anti-democratic and revolutionary activities.

While the stated rationale and tactics of the US invasion are interesting, I think more interesting is the global situation in 1983 which elicited such a rapid and heavy-handed US response:

1) Although it had been simmering for 36 years (and would continue for antother eight), in the early-80s the Cold War was very real. As evidence, just one month prior to the US invasion of Grenada, the Soviet nuclear false alarm incident occurred. In a nutshell, the USSR’s early warning system reported the launch of multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles from the US. Stanislav Petrov, an engineer of the Soviet Air Defense Forces, sensed that something was “off” in the reports and decided to wait for additional evidence, prior to notifying his superiors. The corroboration never came and his decision likely prevented a Soviet preemptive retaliatory attack which would have quickly escalated to global thermo nuclear war and hundreds of millions of deaths. (I nominate Petrov as one of the greatest unsung heroes of the modern era.)

2) In 1979 (the same year that Maurice Bishop’s NJM party had overthrown Sir Eric Gairy’s government), construction of the new Grenadian airport began with Cuban assistance (both technical and financial). To dig a little on the “Cuban assistance” comment: At the time, that phrase was synonymous with “Soviet/Cuban assistance.” Also to be fair, Maurice Bishop first had travelled to the US and asked for help and was given a paltry $50,000 (a diplomatic slap in the face).

In early-1983, Republican US President Ronald Regan (first elected in 1980 and inaugurated in 1981) began warning that the Grenadian airstrip, when completed, could be used as a base for long-range Soviet bombers. Regan’s view was not universally accepted in Washington DC, with many arguing that the airstrip was intended solely for economic development on the island.

An interesting note here on sources: My $50,000-slap-in-the-face comment is based on discussions with Grenadian history buffs and not on anything that I’ve found on my online research. Perhaps that’s a “detail” that the US establishment would rather gloss over.

3) Another recent event in the US conciseness was the Iran hostage crisis. It had dogged Regan’s predecessor Jimmy Carter, and ended less than three years previous. The nerves of the US administration and population at-large were attuned to any similar risk on the horizon.

If you recall from part-one of this post, about 600 US students were studying at St. George’s University. One could look at this and say the US administration was deeply concerned about their safety during the coup-within-a-coup revolution—enough so to commit over 7,000 US troops to “rescue” 600 citizens. One could also say that the students provided a perfect air-cover and supporting rationale for the invasion.

The majority were students who weren’t accepted into US medical schools but determined to get a medical education. In my research I found it interesting that when first airlifted out, many students commented that they didn’t think they were in any danger. Days later, when promised by the US government that they could continue their studies in US medical schools, their general tune about the potential danger seems to have escalated—at least in the students’ comments to the press. To be fair though, some students did report that before the invasion they had to take shelter low in their dorm rooms, below the windows, because of stray bullets.

…layers upon layers in this onion…

4) In my time in Grenada, I’ve heard several times from Grenadian friends and tour guides that while the US CIA and administration could begrudgingly accept Spanish-speaking communist countries in the Western Hemisphere, allowing a majority-black and English-speaking Western Hemisphere country was a red-line that could not be crossed. (Regardless of how small the landmass and population of the country.)

When I first heard this, I thought it hyperbolic. However after a bit of online research, there’s an overwhelming amount of evidence to support the claim. From the (albeit left-leaning) Jacobin: “A state department report from the time summarised the Americans’ concerns. The revolution in Grenada, it said, was in some ways even worse than the Cuban Revolution that had rocked the region a quarter of a century earlier: the vast majority of Grenadians were black, and therefore their struggle could resonate with thirty million black Americans; and the Grenadian revolutionary leaders spoke English, and so could communicate their message with ease to an American audience.”

If that’s not enough, and if you tend to not believe left-leaners, try the Iron Lady on the other side. From the book Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, Volume Two by Charles Moore: “On 20 October, the [US] administration’s Crisis Preplanning Group met and discussed a rescue plan for the students, but also the possibility of overthrowing the hostile Grenadian regime. According to Lawrence Eagleburger the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs at the State Department, ‘The prime motivation was to get rid of that son of a bitch [Grenadian General Austin] before the Cubans got any further embedded … The students were the pretext … but we would not have done it simply because of the students.’”

5) The final layer of the US invasion, and zooming way out, is the Beirut barracks bombings. This tragedy occurred half a world away and, on the surface, had nothing to do with Grenada. However, politically it had everything to do with Grenada. On October 23, 1983 (just two days before the invasion of Grenada) two truck bombs were detonated in Beirut outside barracks housing US and French servicemen. 307 people were killed, including 241 US military personnel. It was the deadliest single-day for the US Marine Corps since World War II.

While an absolutely horrific event, it seems that Regan and advisors knew that if they attempted to extract immediate revenge in Lebanon, the US would be mired in a large-scale conflict for years. The revolution in Grenada presented an opportunity for an in-and-out feel-good story in the US news to cleanse the media-palates of US voters. After all, Regan’s 1984 reelection campaign was right around the corner.

To bridge the 1983 history of Regan and Grenada with the 2026 current events of Trump and Venezuela, I found this article in The Nation fascinating: Regan’s Lesson for Obama: Invade Grenada. The 2011 article contends that Obama’s best way out of the seemingly endless Afghan war, is to do something creative and seemingly unrelated to change the headlines. The author (Jon Wiener) expounds, “Reagan could have sent 130,000 US troops to invade Lebanon. But he didn’t. Instead, he did something completely different: two days after the Beirut barracks bombing, Reagan sent 7,000 troops to invade Grenada, the smallest independent country in the Western Hemisphere. He claimed to be fighting communism there, and to be ‘rescuing’ 800 American medical students studying there (because they couldn’t get into American medical schools). The Americans killed fifty-nine Cubans and forty-five Grenadans, suffered nineteen casualties and declared victory after two days.”

If you happen to be a military buff you can read about the details of each day of the invasion and the order of battle here. To me however, it’s the events leading up to, and the aftermath that are much more interesting. If you pit the strongest military in the world at the time against the military of an island nation with a population of slightly north of 100,000 (the capacity of a large US college football stadium), it’s a fait accompli.

A driver that Rhett, Sunny, and I have been using on the island has become a good friend of ours. In our discussions while bumping along narrow dusty drive-on-the-left roads, he shared that he served in the Grenadian military when the invasion happened. We asked him what he did when he heard the news that the “Americans” were invading. With a distant look in his eye and a chuckle, he replied, “I hid.” Now that’s a smart man.

The couple things about the invasion itself that stand out to me are: First, the initial plan of assault was to land C-130 aircraft at the nearly completed airstrip (ironic, since the US had been squawking about how the airstrip could be used for Soviet/Cuban military purposes). Second, prior to the invasion, US reconnaissance and coordination between military branches was either weak or botched. For instance, the aforementioned C-130s took off from Hunter Army Airfield near Savanah, Georgia with the intention of landing at the new airstrip. However, in-flight the Army Rangers aboard had to switch abruptly to an air assault (parachute landing) when they discovered that the runway was obstructed. This despite US Special Operations Forces attempted reconnaissance.

Like the story itself, the aftermath of the story is complex and multi-faceted.

Politically in the US, it was a rousing success. A year after the invasion Reagan was reelected in a landslide. He won 49 out of 50 states giving him 525 electoral votes and almost 60% of the popular vote. (One of the largest margins in US history.)

From the international stage, the UN Security Council drafted a resolution “deeply deploring” the invasion. The vote on passing the resolution was 11 to one. The “one” being the United States’ veto. Nonetheless, by a vote of 108 to 9, the broader UN General Assembly condemned the invasion as a, “…flagrant violation of international law.”

I’ve asked a lot of Grenadians about their perspectives on the invasion. The best that I can say is that it’s nuanced and—like their general outlook on life—they look at both sides of the equation. On one hand, they’re glad that they’re not living under an overtly oppressive regime (which the leaders of the coup-within-a-coup seemed to have been headed for). On the other, they still deeply resent being invaded by fellow American nation that they consider a friend.

I was thinking of the symbolism of it all, and birds, and hawks-and-doves came to mind. While, the US has the fierce and scowling bald eagle (although Benjamin Franklin described it as a, “…bird of bad moral character….”), Grenadians have their Grenada dove as their national bird.

Still, October 25th (the day of the US invasion) is celebrated as Grenadian Thanksgiving Day (a national holiday). Funny, it echoes my feelings about US Thanksgiving Day: A wonderful holiday and we have so much to be grateful to our ancestors for. However, it’s also recognizes a past (and a present) of indigenous subjugation and imported enslavement.

From our sailing perspective, it’s fascinating for me to compare and contrast Grenadian, Caribbean, and American history with the history of the Mediterranean. In the Med the ancient history has calcified and is literally set in stone. Here in the “New World” so much is being created as we speak. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that history is where you look for it.

Fast-forwarding to current events I’ll add that, by sheer luck, my timing on arriving to Grenada was impeccable. I landed in Grenada on Tuesday, January 6th. The US invasion of Venezuela happened on the previous weekend. If I’d have booked my tickets for just a couple days earlier, I would have gotten to the Miami airport only to find that all civilian flights were cancelled. I later talked to our yacht agent Rennie about it and he said that when the news broke (which was at the beginning of their high sailing and tourist season) he wasn’t sure if the season was effectively over because people from away wouldn’t come. Fortunately, for his business and the island-nation, the events in Venezuela don’t seem to have materially affected the season.

Finally, when it comes to Grenada and Venezuela and the history of invasions, it’s important to remember that it’s not all parallels. There are also stark differences. Grenada’s landmass is one-eighth that of the US’s smallest state of Rhode Island, whereas Venezuela’s is one-third larger than Texas (and 2.3 times larger than California). Venezuela’s population of 28 million people is also similar to Texas’ population (and 280 times larger than Grenada’s population of 100,000). Boiling it down to the numbers, Regan and Trump picked entirely different targets.

From a cruising perspective, all’s well but we’ve had some twists and turns. After looking at all angles, we’ve concluded that it’s too difficult to get Sunny into some of the other Caribbean island-nations that we want to visit. Therefore, Rhett and Sunny flew home a couple days ago. Rhett is taking the opportunity to visit family and friends at home and will return in a couple weeks. Sunny will be staying with our adopted Greek family who coincidentally are staying at our house in Florida for a time. Dan will soon be working his way north in Grenadian islands and to the independent country of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (where Rhett will fly into when she returns).

As a capstone to this post, last Sunday we were at Le Phare Bleu Marina and the three of us enjoyed a Super Bowl watch party at the Island Fever Tropical Tavern. “The three of us” being Rhett, Sunny, and me—although the tavern was dog friendly, Hazel had to wait on the dock.

While a good football game, the most exciting part of the night was at the end of the halftime show when Bad Bunny’s performance featured flags from the Americas. If you were watching closely, the Grenadian flag (along with its nutmeg emblem) made a showing. When it did, “the crowd went wild.”

His closing message: “Together, We Are America.”

Fair winds and following seas!

“He who hesitates is sometimes saved.”

— James Thurber, 1894-1961, US cartoonist, writer, journalist, and playwright

“History doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme.”

— Unclear (often mis-attributed to Mark Twain)

Imagine if you will: The President of the United States decides it’s a good idea to take military action against another American nation. Maybe there are some valid reasons for doing so; maybe he simply needs a diversion to take the focus off other headlines dogging his administration (especially given an upcoming election cycle)—maybe it’s a little of column A and a little of column B.

Despite the US War Powers Resolution of 1973, Congress is not consulted and the Commander in Chief sends 7,000 troops into a sovereign Caribbean nation.

The news of early-January, 2026, right?

Think again: It was a mere 43 years ago, the president was Regan, and the nation was Grenada. Closer to home (“home” being Hazel James), the Maurice Bishop International Airport that Rhett and I recently flew into to rejoin Hazel was a focal point of Regan’s stated rationale for the invasion. Also closer to home, Sunny will soon be visiting the veterinary clinic at St. George’s University for a rabies titer test required for entry into other Windward Islands nations. St. George’s is an international university was founded in 1976 and offers programs in medicine and veterinary medicine. It is very close to the airport, and many students are from the United States.

The reason I started this post with the Thurber quote is that last January when I made landfall in Grenada, I learned of the 1983 US invasion and was immediately inspired to write a post about it. However, I hesitated…for 12 months…and luckily was saved. Now, with the recent US invasion of Venezuela, the rhyme of the poem of history reveals itself.

When I was at home in Florida last summer the two sailing questions I’d get most frequently were, “What are you looking forward to the most about sailing in the Caribbean?” and, “What will you miss most about sailing in the Mediterranean?”

My stock answers were, “I’m looking forward to sailing the consistent trade winds of the Caribbean.” (as compared to the fickle Mediterranean) and, “I’ll miss the history.” (referring to the millennia of Greek, Roman, Ottoman, and European history in the Old World). After a couple of weeks in Grenada, it seems like my first answer was accurate but my second was way off. There’s history here in the New World, and it’s still being made.

There are loads of online sources about the invasion, chock full of details and neither will I repeat them verbatim nor have some AI write me a summary that I claim as my own. Instead, I’ll offer my thoughts on the invasion, informed some by online research, but mostly by talking to Grenadians to understand their perspectives. After reading this post if you’re interested in more detail, or (God forbid) want to fact-check me, start with this Wikipedia link—it’s very good.

Saying that, “The US invaded Grenada in 1983,” is kind of like summarizing the movie Titanic by saying, “The ship sank.” While the summary isn’t wrong, it isn’t right either

The best analogy I can come up with for the 1983 invasion is this: You’re in the produce section of the grocery store buying several onions. As you inspect each, you notice one is a bit irregularly shaped. No matter…no soft spots, smells fine. It’s in your sack and you move on with the grocery run. Days later when slicing onions, you find it’s actually a double onion.

A common business phrase to describe getting to the bottom of a multi-layered problems iss, “Peeling the onion.” However, understanding the 1983 US invasion of Grenada is not just a process of peeling the onion, it’s peeling the double onion. While both the US and Grenadian halves of the are inexorably linked, they each have their own distinct layers.

In this part-one blog post I’ll describe the layers the Grenadian half of the onion from inside-out:

1) The seed of a family vendetta is planted. Grenada gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1974. Sir Eric Gairy served as Grenada’s last Premier (under British rule) and its first Prime Minister post-independence. His term as Premier was 1967 to 1974, and as Prime Minister from 1974-1979. Although known as the country’s father of independence, he and his GULP party (Grenada United Labor Party) maintained power by threat, intimidation, and fraudulent elections. His private army enforcers, were dubbed the Mongoose Gang. On Grenada’s January 1974 “Bloody Monday” Gairy’s Mongoose Gang shot and killed prominent businessman Rupert Bishop in the back. At the time of Rupert’s shooting, his 30 year-old son Maurice was a rising activist on the island—and the seed of a family vendetta was planted.

2) A bloodless coup begins. In 1979 Maurice Bishop and his Marxist-Leninist vanguard NJM (New JEWEL Movement) Party staged a nearly bloodless coup and deposed Eric Gairy while Gairy was out of the country. Maurice Bishop installed himself as Prime Minister becoming the second Prime Minister of Grenada. (Interestingly, the reason Gairy was out of the country was to address the UN—makes sense on the surface. Until you find out that the subject of his address was—wait for it—UFOs.) In Gairy’s words, “I have myself seen an unidentified flying object, and I have been overwhelmed by what I have seen.” I can only guess what the highly intelligent aliens in the UFO thought of Gairy’s Mongoose Gang.

The “JEWEL” in Maurice Bishop’s party name stands for Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education, and Liberation. Times Caribbean Online characterized the younger Bishop’s views as follows: “His vision for Grenada was bold: to make education free, health care accessible, and the island a beacon of black pride and economic self-reliance in the postcolonial Caribbean.” The younger Bishop was a powerful speaker and also appealed to black US citizens during the 1970s heyday of the Black Panther movement.

3) Bishop and Grenada look to Cuba for assistance. After taking power Bishop established a partnership with Cuba, which obviously caught the attention of the US in the late-Cold War world of the 1970s and 80s. He made good on many of his promises to the people and in his short tenure, free public healthcare was established, sex discrimination was made illegal, and illiteracy dropped from 35% to 5% and unemployment from 50% to 14%. However, a political Achilles’ heel was that many islanders thought he had not sufficiently promoted tourism on the island. (My personal opinion here is that the always-meddling US was probably doing everything it covertly could to stifle Grenada’s tourism and gently force a regime change.)

Bishop’s response to tourism criticism was to revive plans to build a proper international airport on the south of the island, and he asked his friend Fidel Castro for help. (At the time the only Grenadian airport was on the north of the island. It was too small to land large planes and constrained by mountains and the sea so could not be extended.) In addition to helping finance the project, Castro sent 600 Cubans to help with the construction. In early 1983 Ronald Regan (first elected in 1981) began to warn that the airport’s tourism rationale was facade was for a future Soviet airbase.

A quick flash to today, the airport (which eventually started commercial operations in 1984) is now named the Maurice Bishop International airport.

4) A coup within a coup. While the US was increasingly concerned with the potential military uses of the new airport in Grenada, a schism was forming within Maurice Bishop’s PRG (People’s Revolutionary Government). What I’ve heard from locals is that while Maurice Bishop was committed to a socialist agenda for the islands he was also in favor of rapprochement with the US (establishing friendlier relations). Meanwhile a faction of the PRG lead by Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard favored closer alignment with Cuba and the Soviet Union. In September 1983, Coard tried to make Bishop either step down or agree to power-sharing. After a fortnight of deliberation, Bishop refused and, with the military’s help, Coard placed Bishop under house arrest on October 13, 1983. Bishop confided to a journalist, “I am a dead man.”

5) Bishop is freed by the people…for a short time. Although Coard’s faction tried to keep Bishop’s house arrest on the down-low, news leaked and soon a public demonstration of 15,000-30,000 people demanded Bishop’s release and return to power. To put 15,000-30,000 in context, with the island’s population of 100,000, that’s 15-30% of the population protesting. For comparison, the October 18, 2025 No Kings protests in the US had 5-7 million attendees across the US—that’s about 2% of the US population of 340 million.

On October 19th (1983) the protesters freed Bishop and escorted him to army headquarters to regain power. While initially successful in seizing Ft. Rupert (named for Maurice Bishop’s father). Bernard Coard dispatched a military force from another fort. Bishop and members of his cabinet were captured in the coup-within-a-coup melee, and later executed via firing squad. After Bishop was dead, one of the execution squat slit his throat and cut off his finger to steal a ring. His body was burned (probably so that the crowd wouldn’t have relics to venerate the popular leader). His remains have never been found.

And that is my perspective of the salient layers of the Grenadian story. In addition, I believe the history portion of this blog has reached its Plimsoll line so I’ll wrap here and pick-up this “Thanksgiving Day” story in a soon-to-follow part two.

In part two we’ll focus on the US side of our double onion.

From a sailing and cruising perspective it’s almost comical how little ground we’ve covered despite me being in-country three and a half weeks and Rhett and Sunny two and a half. No matter, in 2024 and January 2025 we sailed 6,600 nautical miles so we’ve got nothing to prove to anybody. This season we’ve decided to measure out progress in smiles and not miles.

After a busy week getting Hazel prepped to launch, Rhett, Sunny, and Rhett’s bestie Maria flew down together and the four of us enjoyed a daysail/shakedown sail on HJ and several nights of resort pampering.

After Maria’s departure from Grenada, Rhett, Sunny, and I moved onto Hazel and, in order to see our “progress,” you have to zoom way way in on our homepage tracker. Again smiles not miles and we’re going deep on the people, the food, the music, and yes—the history—of this beautiful island nation.

One fly in the ointment (and as hinted above regarding Sunny and the St. George’s University Veterinary Clinic) is that we’re now discovering that other Windward islands to the north are not nearly as welcoming to pets as Grenada is. We’re trying to work out what that means to our cruising season, more to follow there.

Fair winds and following seas!

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Prima Facie [Latin] : prī-mə- fā-shə

Literally: Prima meaning “First” and Facie meaning “Face”

Figuratively: At first glance.

In the weeks leading up to my January 6th flight from Miami to Grenada I was a bit apprehensive of what I’d find when Hazel and I were reunited. Sure, I was paying Clarke’s Court Boatyard good money to store HJ on the hard and keep an eye on her. But “keeping an eye” on something or someone, is very different than—quite literally—being in their skin 24×7. Within the skin means all five senses are immersed in the experience, which is how I like to cruise and sail: Hmmm, our fresh water tastes a little “off,” I’ll have to hit the tanks with bleach at the next port; Hmmm, I’m smelling mildew in the forward starboard berth, it could be seawater leaking in from the anchor-chain hawse pipe yet again; On an inky midnight foredeck sail change I feel my bowline-knot to make sure it’s tied correctly before trusting my life to it.

Between July 2024, when Rhett and Sunny disembarked in the Eastern Aegean Sea (the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Turkey), and I arrived in Grenada in January 2025, the only nights I had slept off Hazel where when Rhett visited us in the Canary Islands—I was in her skin, she and I were one.

As we accelerated down the runway I felt the mass of the plane supported more by its wings than its wheels. That got me thinking about where I was going, what I was doing, and transitions, change and impermanence. And—as so many things do—that lead me to thinking about Colleen and the last several years of her life. Maybe I had just been “keeping an eye” on her? If I had injected myself into every part of her life—even against her will—would things have been different? Where does responsibility begin and end? Where does chance and bad luck begin and end? Where does love begin and end? Maybe the singer/songwriter Iris DeMent was right and I should just let the mystery be.

As the mainland slipped under the plane’s wings, A shot of hope and joy was added to my poignant cocktail. I realized that it wasn’t just any place in Florida that would be my last look, but the coordinates of Rhett’s and my…and Hazel’s…first date. It was Memorial Day 2020 and we were deep in pandemic. I had just arrived home after sailing 1,000 miles or so nonstop from the Virgin Islands. This was after a months-long lockdown in the BVI (…I know, I know cue the violins here for Dan’s pity party). If you haven’t read about that epoch and are curious, go to our home page and click on Voyaging Blog then scroll down to 2020 Winter/Spring Voyage. Start at the bottom and as the posts are in reverse chronological order.)

On that sail home I had hatched a plan to take advantage of the upcoming pandemic-summer solitude by refitting Hazel and preparing her for more adventurous and comfortable cruising. However, this would involve decommissioning HJ for several months (she’d be un-sailable, like a car in the shop). The rub was that while I had been communicating with Rhett, we’d never even been on a terra firma date before. With a thousand miles of separation, our writings and discussions were intriguing and our intentions were increasingly serious. However, while it’s one thing to be in love and it’s another thing to love the sea, being in love on the sea is an entirely different kettle of fish. For better or worse, the two of you are trapped on a tiny island with constant reminders of the impermanence of this world.

As a prudent sailor who has a tendency to obsess on the logic of love, I decided that a shakedown sail, sometimes called a sea trial, was in order to get a sense of how Rhett and Hazel might get along. It wouldn’t be everything but it would be a prima facie of Rhett’s and my compatibility at sea. So, over Memorial Day 2020, I invited Rhett for a long-weekend sail from Pompano Beach to Biscayne Bay and—if the ship didn’t sink—back. HJ was still commissioned and ready to go and the plan was a 30 mile day sail down to our destination, anchor up for a couple nights with the glow of downtown Miami to the north and the beginnings of the Florida Keys to the south, then sail back home. Easy-peasy: no night sailing, never out of sight of land, etc.

However, I had planned and the Gods had laughed. Perhaps Poseidon knew that Rhett and I had real potential and therefore a bit more of a test was in order. I’ve since learned that Poseidon is a trickster which is probably why and he lured us in by giving us a perfect daysail southward: morning departure, clear skies and 12-15 knots on the port beam, and midafternoon we were dropping the hook in the shelter of Key Biscayne (the exact location that I was now flying over). Once anchored, I checked the weather and felt the butterflies in my stomach—the outlook dramatically degraded. For the entire rest of the weekend the winds howled amidst sheets of rain. While had I thought it was good practice to leave the VHF radio on during the most intense parts of the storm, I noticed that my crew’s eyes got bigger and bigger every time some other boater hailed the US Coast Guard that they were dragging anchor and needed assistance. At that point, I turned the VHF off, we had to focus on ourselves and our self-reliance. Besides, if my crew’s eyes had gotten any bigger they would have popped out of her head…and then I’d have a medical situation to deal with.

The day after Memorial Day dawned clear (we ended up staying an extra night waiting for the weather to calm down). All indications were that Poseidon had indeed tested us, deemed us worthy, and was going to grant us another idyllic sail home.

He trickster did…for 25 of the 30 miles. Then just outside Hillsboro Inlet, he called in his brother Zeus to throw a quiver full of lightning bolts at us in what was one of the most intense electrical storms I’ve ever been in. Rhett (again, wide-eyed) asked, “Isn’t lightning attracted to high metallic objects?” As captain, I had to admit that my crew had a good point.

As the 3 1/2 hour flight droned on, my mind turned from the past to the future, the near future. I hadn’t seen Hazel for a full year, by far the longest we’ve been separated since we joined forces in 2017. While the good people at the yard would have let me know about any obvious problems they noticed as they walked by her, for me it would be the prima facie of the first couple days—clambering onboard and really poking around—that was going to tell the tale.

A complicating factor was that she’d sat through the sultry Caribbean summer. Her last couple off-seasons had been Mediterranean winters with cold (but not freezing) temperatures. Liquids, polymers, and fabrics age a lot faster in heat and summer’s high sun. Of course she’s not air conditioned…how would all our clothes, bedding, and other fabrics do sealed in the oven of her saloon? In addition, I had nightmarish visions of water- and critter-intrusion.

After landing and clearing immigration and customs, I met my driver Terry holding a sign that said…

Daniel Coate
Hazel James

When I greeted him (he had driven me to the airport last January), and said, “Let’s go!” He replied quizzically, “Aren’t we waiting for another person? You’re with someone named Hazel?” I told him she was already on-island.

It was surprisingly hard to find Hazel in the yard. When we questioned a boatyard staff as to her location, he’d think, scratch his rasta hat, and then with a look of realization say, “Ahhhh, yah! Green bō-t (with a long ‘o’).” and point to the next row of yachts. As Terry crept along in the tiny right-hand drive mini-van up I searched for her distinctive turquoise hull. After driving past her twice, we found her tucked in behind neighbors.

After finding a ladder and climbing up and aboard, I surveyed the deck and was happy with what I saw. Yes, some of the plastic tarp that I had wrapped components in had been shredded in the wind and UV radiation of the tropical summer, and she was dusty and dirty, but nothing seemed amiss.

The next step was to open the companionway hatch and inspect the saloon. Although there was chaos below deck, it was the chaos I had left and was expecting. Before leaving her, I had stowed everything I could below decks and out of the sun and weather. After my first glance, I listened intently for for the scurrying of rodent feet or the scuttling of cockroach legs—nothing but the whistling of a benign wind in the rigging above. I took a deep breath through my nose…not bad. Sure, a bit musty—like the childhood memory of my great-aunt’s house we’d visit at Christmas and Easter—but not bad. I didn’t sense appreciable mold or mildew, or some food I forgot to get off-board before closing her up.

I felt the apprehension I had carried with me the last several weeks ease.

The challenge now was to get her ready to launch. I had boarded her late-day Tuesday and I had a launch time for her to be “splashed” at 10:00 on Friday. That gave me two days to do three main things: 1) recommission her diesel engine “Ox,” 2) take care of below-the-waterline maintenance like re-packing her feathering propeller with grease and lubricating seacocks, and 3) teak sealing and other inspections that are done a lot easier out of the water. She didn’t need to be ready to sail by Friday, just taken care of below the waterline and able to motor a couple hundred yards from launch point to the marina’s dock.

In addition to allowing cruisers to live aboard their boats while on the hard, Clarke’s Court Bay Boatyard and Marina offers some modest and reasonably priced short-term apartments. I could have afforded to stay in an apartment those first several nights, and I would have done so if Rhett were with us, but it was just Hazel and me and I missed her and didn’t want to be apart. So the evening of my first night was spent cleaning off the port settee (couch) so I could sleep on it. Besides, it would remind me of autumn 2024 in Almerimar, Spain where HJ and I were on the hard for nearly a month prepping for the east-to-west transatlantic sail.

Sleeping on a narrow settee on the hard was a funny juxtaposition as the only time I normally sleep on a settee is when we are at sea and Hazel is rocking and pitching…sometimes violently. Also, at sea I always sleep on the leeward (downwind and “downhill”) settee so that gravity pins me in between the settee’s bottom and back cushions.

As I fell asleep on Hazel on my first night aboard in nearly a year, it was unsettling as there was absolutely no movement of her hull but I was sleeping in my offshore berth. As I drifted off, I wondered why we say, “Dead in the water.” Navigating my way into dream sleep, it seemed that we should instead say, “Dead on the hard.”

After a couple days of dirty work, launch day arrived. Sweaty and grimy at the end of each day I enjoyed the hot showers of the marina’s facilities and its restaurant—aptly named The Cruiser’s Galley.

The launch was scheduled for 10:00 a.m. and promptly at 9:30 a gang of 5 or 6 friendly yard staff rolled up and went to work…

Once the staff got her to the launch point, they transferred her to a “travel lift” crane (click if you want to learn more) for the final splash.

And that’s my perspective of Hazel’s and my reunification. I wonder about her prima facie of the whole affair?

Today, Rhett, Sunny, and Rhett’s best friend Maria are on the same flight from Miami that I was on 10 days ago. We hope to get out for a daysail, and will also enjoy several days of resort-style pampering. After Maria returns home to Florida, Rhett, Sunny, Hazel, and I will continue the voyage of life by setting forth on our season’s voyage.

Fair winds and following seas. Hazel James out.

You’d think after 20,000+ nautical miles of ocean sailing I’d be beyond the point of feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing out on the water. However—as a halcyon-days-of-yore friend of mine was fond of saying—“You’re only young once, but immaturity can last a lifetime.” (Jimmy, if you’re reading this, I hope you’re as immature as the day we first got into trouble together.)

Although I always have some jitters going into a cruising season, this time it’s different (I swear). The last several years we’ve been operating on roughly six-month cycles: a half year on the boat and sailing, and a half year off. However, with all of our north-south sailing last year we gained (or, depending on your perspective, lost) a sailing season. I suppose it’s the nautical equivalent to gaining or losing time on a long east-west flight. At 500 miles per hour, jet travel puts-and-takes are measured in hours; sailing at 5 miles per hour, it’s measured in seasons. I essentially closed out the Mediterranean, Northern Hemisphere summer cruising season and sailed into the Caribbean winter cruising season.

All of that meant that when I and my neph-crew Max arrived in Grenada January 2025, Rhett and I had a decision to make. We could have immediately continued our voyaging and enjoyed the 2025 Caribbean sailing season (and stopped our sailing around the June 1, 2025, the start of the North Atlantic hurricane season). Or, we could have laid Hazel up on the hard for the remainder of the Caribbean winter and through the summer. We chose the latter and I’m happy we did as our first grandchild was expected in late-February 2025.

February came and went with no grandchild and Rhett and I waited anxiously. Perhaps having a baby is something like sailing—they’re both long lessons in patience. On the evening of March 3rd, we were summoned to the hospital to see our healthy grandson for the first time. As I held little Cameron Coate and admired his unfathomably smooth skin, the first random sailing thought was, How do baby dolphins do it?

To understand my question, first consider a newborn fawn and compare it to a human infant: The former are born in a field and have to be able to walk in minutes or hours (before the next coyote comes along). On the other end of the spectrum, humans have far more intelligence to develop but take a dozen years to be anywhere close to self-sufficient. OK, those are both miracles in their own right—but, then turn to the marine mammals that ride Hazel’s bow wake on magical days of sailing. Somehow these porpoise-ey progeny manage to do both. Their intelligence rivals ours but they also need to swim immediately after birth…as it’s a big and dangerous ocean in which they swim. And—oh, by the way—to-boot, they are air-breathing and they’re born underwater. That first breath must be a doozy.

Much of the rest of 2025 was a balancing act of helping the new parents with child care, and with their seafaring business venture—both satisfying in their own rights. As for being a grandparent, I’m not sure which I enjoyed more: being “Papa” to Cameron or watching “Mimi” (Rhett) be a grandmother. In addition to all going on in Jackson and Jessica’s household, Jack had the opportunity to add a third boat to his commercial fishing fleet. While the design and general layout of the well-used 39-foot hull was solid—the boat was set-up for inshore snapper-grouper bottom fishing, needed a bit of work, and the previous owner was clearly a hoarder. During the inital clean-out of the cabin and sleeping quarters we could have filmed a a reality-TV pilot for a mash-up of American Pickers meets Wicked Tuna. Although I consider myself “retired,” I didn’t much feel retired this summer as all-day every weekday was spent on the new boat outfitting her for offshore swordfishing. After several months of work, Jack rechristened her Jessie Lin in honor of Jessica and the vessel has performed admirably in the Gulf Stream as swordfish begin their annual southward migration. For me, what could be better than helping my kids—either with child care or rolling-up-the-sleeves in the bilge. However, as the “dock days” of summer clicked by, my mind often wandered to Hazel’s dry summer on Grenada and to us getting wet again.

Speaking of Max, if you were a digital stowaway with us in 2024 and 2025 you’ll know that after I sailed from the Canary to the Cabo Verde Islands, my nephew Max joined Hazel and me as crew and together we sailed the 2,000+ nautical miles to Grenada. It was 16 or 18 days of nonstop sailing and quite an accomplishment for him given his (formerly) limited seagoing experience.

(If you missed any of our shenanigans in the Canaries or Cabo Verdes, or need a refresher, see these blog posts. If you missed our daily micro-posts from the middle of the Atlantic on our crossing, visit Hazel’s home page and pinch the chart to zoom out. From there you can click on any of the gray circles with the text icons to see what was rolling around in our waterlogged heads at any point in the voyage.)

Today, I’m happy to share that Max is serving as engineer’s apprentice and deckhand on a 200-foot day-cruise ship, sailing from Brunswick, Georgia (200 feet is 6 1/2 Hazel’s end to end). I like to think that what he learned crossing the Atlantic helped set him up for his current success.

How is that for a year’s worth of personal and professional growth?

As an aside (and from a small-world perspective), Max’s current hailing port of Brunswick, Georgia—just north of Jacksonville, Florida—is where I found Hazel James in 2017 when I acquired her.

In writing this post and thinking about Max and his growth, I ran into this pair of videos that I took of him on our crossing. The first is of him flying the spinnaker, the second is his dousing of the ‘chute. Hopefully the vids give non-sailors a sense of what it’s like out there and sailors can see a bit of our “big sail” technique.

Fair winds and following seas Max, I’m proud of what you are doing.

Today is Sunday, January 4th and I’m finishing this post from our home in Delray Beach, Florida. On Tuesday I’ll fly from Miami to Grenada. After giving Hazel a big keel-hug, I’ll assess how she fared over the hot Caribbean summer and start the recommissioning process. Current plans are for us to launch this coming Friday. Rhett and Sunny are planning to fly into Grenada about a week later and—fingers crossed—we’ll start our cruising season.

I started writing this post about a week ago, when I was in the trough of my self-doubt (time is not always your friend). Now that I’m just 48-hours from “wheels in the well,” it’s good to feel my imposter’s syndrome easing and excitement building. (Wheels-in-the-well being the position of an aircraft’s landing gear when it is retracted into the wheel-well after takeoff, indicating that the plane is airborne and the landing gear is safely stowed.)

Just the other day, when I was beginning to sense this inner-tectonic shift from trepidation to excitement, I also happened to listen to an interview with the author and Buddhist monk Stephen Batchelor. Coincidentally he and the interviewee wandered to the subject of mediating with a “beginner’s mind” and being able to sit with doubt. In the discussion he introduced me to the Buddhist aphorism:

Great doubt, great awakening.

Little doubt, little awakening.

No doubt, no awakening.

The adage caught my attention and I paused the interview and rewound it 30 seconds to hear it again. As the words soaked into my desiccated sailor’s spirit, I gazed out the window and smiled. 1,400 miles to the southeast, Hazel was waiting patiently for us. With her 36 years of life, I’m sure she prefers a captain with a healthy dose of doubt as opposed to the alternative.

Fair winds and following seas. Expect my next transmission to come from Grenada, WI (West Indies).

I’m awoken at 0330 local time by the call of nature on our eighth and likely penultimate night in the Marina Mindelo on Ilha São Vicente in the Cabo Verdes. In the dim light from the marina’s dock lights I see Max sleeping peacefully on the settee. Hazel is too small for any kind of private “guest room” (or let alone private master stateroom) but no matter—we will be at sea soon enough and out there, privacy and who-sleeps-where are trifles.

The marina and Mindelo Harbor are rather open to the sea and we’re in the middle of the the Atlantic Ocean in the breezy trade winds so there’s a lot of surge in the water which causes a lot of surge to the moored boats (movement forward and backwards that is limited by the hawsers or mooring lines). As I work my way aft from the forepeak to the head I have to use Hazel’s handholds to steady myself with the surge. It’s kind of like one of those funhouse rides that’s not really a “ride” because your walking through darkened passages with strobe lights, wavy mirrors, eerie sounds, artificial fog, and—at one point—a section of the floor is moving back and forth. As I walk into the head I look out the companionway at the amber streetlights of Mindelo in the haze and notice that something is off. Hazel’s angle to the town has perceptibly changed…odd.

After my business, I look out the port portlights in the saloon (the windows on the left side) and that the big catamaran that’s moored next to us is also much closer. Hmmmm…odd.

Up on deck, the middle-of-the-night mystery is solved. Sometime after we turned flukes, the days of stretching and releasing from the incessant surge was too much and Hazel’s starboard bow hawser (mooring line) chafed through and ruptured. After it broke Hazel’s bow moved to port and the remaining bow line and closer to the other boat (that’s what fenders are for).

While I thought about waking Max to help me sort it out, I elected to let him sleep. While it would be good experience for him to see, he too needs his pre-passage sleep. Especially tonight as earlier in the night he’d been hanging out with another Max. This other Max is also a young man but from Germany and he and his father Jan are sailing across the Atlantic as well. To the concept of reuniting with fellow sailors and following breadcrumbs of islands from our last post, I met Max and Jan in Almerimar Spain this fall when Hazel and I were on the hard for a month. Their boat Sirenas was also in the yard, a few boats down from us. While I always liked their style and spirit—father Jan with the heel of his hand to his forehead while explaining yet another boat problem, happy-go-lucky son Max pursing his lips and audibly exhaling with a dismissive hand wave at the problems (and just wanting to get to the Caribbean as quickly as possible)—we only said hello and chatted quickly between our various boat projects. Although we were friendly neighbors for a month in the yard in Mediterranean Spain we never shared a meal as our foci was getting our respective boats back in the water. A month or so later Rhett and I ran into them briefly in the Canaries when they were anchored outside a marina and we were going into the marina but—again—we never got together. Finally, we reunite in Mindelo (totally unplanned) and a couple nights ago we shared a meal of cachupa (the emblematic Cabo Verdeian dish) and talked about our sailing plans. It’s ironic that with our various and uncoordinated routes and dates out of the Mediterranean at Gibraltar and through the other Atlantic Islands, our planned date to depart Mindelo bound for the Caribbean is the same—Saturday, December 21…the shortest day of the year. After dinner Jan and I said our gute nachts and our good nights, but Max and Max stayed back at the marina’s waterside bar to talk a bit more.

As I drifted off to sleep that night I thought about how good it was that Max and Max were hanging out. It’s so valuable to have friends from other countries, to me it reframes one’s mind from the citizen of a country to a citizen of the world. As the rising tide of sleep started to wash over me, I think about breadcrumbs, migrations, and the chance and fate that introduces me to Jan and Max first in mainland Spain, then in the Canary Islands, and finally here in the Cabo Verdes.

Back to the remains of our night and our broken hawser: half an hour later I’ve got the port hawser re-rigged and it should be fine until we depart in a few days. Once we’re sailing, I’ll cut out the chafed line and short-splice the two halves of the hawser together. It will be a good chance to introduce Max to the craft of splicing.

Regarding the title of this post, perhaps a few sticklers for language, or grads of the US Naval Academy of veterans of the Navy may nitpick with, That’s a typo Dan…the fight song is “Anchors Aweigh” not “Anchors Away.” However, in this instance I truly mean anchors away.

In nautical parlance, to “weigh” anchor is to pull the anchor up off the bottom and start sailing. Thus “Anchors Aweigh,” meaning that sailors are preparing to set forth on a voyage from an anchorage.

For Max and me one of our preparations in Marina Mindelo is to remove Hazel’s anchor off her pulpit and store it away—specifically below decks in the quarterberth (affectionately called “the garage” given all the random stuff that’s stored there).

“Why bother removing her anchor?” you say. Or better yet, “What if you want to anchor for a night on your sail?” For starters, just 10 miles west of Ilha São Vicente we’ll be in 1,000 meters of water and it only gets deeper from there. Hazel carries 50 meters of rode (anchor chain) so there is no anchoring for the next 2,000 miles or so. Secondly, while the foredeck and pulpit can be a magical place on the ocean when sailing downwind in good weather, it’s brutal and unforgiving when the weather turns and when sailing upwind. In those cases the anchor takes the brunt of the ocean’s pounding and all the securing in the world won’t stop it from starting to work loose and bang around. Going forward to secure a loose anchor in a blow is not fun. For short sails the anchor is generally OK up there. However for 15-20 days of sailing, better to have it stowed safely below. It’s kind of ironic that in the quarterberth the anchor (designed to get to the bottom of it all) is wedged in next to the life raft (designed to keep us afloat in any conditions).

As we were working on the anchor together, I got philosophical and told Max that whenever I’m doing a final-prep job like this, my mind wanders to the question, So…where and when will I un-stow the anchor and bring it back up to the bow in preparation for landfall? Although I’m planning for the Windward Caribbean Island of Grenada, I’m not 100% sure. At the end of the day, who can be honestly 100% sure of anything? Max and I muse about that thought as we go about our work and I realize how good it feels to talk to someone about something that’s not just “news, sports, and weather” rather than have that thought just rattle around in your own head.

Hazel and I arrived in Mindelo on Thursday, December 12th and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Our Welsh sailing friend Martin (also highlighted in our previous post) had advised me that when you’re in the Cabo Verdes, you know you’re not in the EU any more.

Once I’m back in Florida I’ll post more about the Cabo Verdes and Mindelo, but for now I’ve got to wrap this up and get some sleep as we are sailing tomorrow. The spoiler alert about the Cabo Verdes is that it’s been and excellent visit—just what we needed.

Please, stay tuned to our home page and, as with other passages, we’ll do our best to make daily posts as to what’s going on onboard Hazel and in the captain’s head. Who knows, maybe I’ll turn the micro-blog helm over to my “nephcrew” Max. If I do, you’ll know by the quality improvement in the posts.

Fair winds and following seas!

As a Christmas gift, we’ll leaving you with some final images of the Cabo Verdes in roughly chronological order…