The storm is going over us today. We had about 2 hours of winds above 22 Its and on/off rain. Tonight, lines of thunderstorms with lightning. No boater likes lightning as it can fry all electronics by hitting your neighbor's boat.

It is still heading just north of us but now as a Wave and not a depression/ts/hurricane… That is good.
I'm cleaning and washing laundry today. Celebrating only finding 3 ticks this morning! I'm using a real washing machine at Whisper Cove Marina. So while I'm here I'll have their Lunch Special too :)

I am now an authority on ticks! Below you will see a picture of all the pesticides I have used to stop tick in the past year.
My dogs have been on Advantix Revolution until we sailed down here. Now we are on Advantix Plus and Heart Guard. If Advantix Plus worked on ticks I would not have had 7 months of tick hell. Advantix works for fleas, but is useless against ticks.
Now on the photo from left to right. When we got back to Grenada I went to the Vet and got additional doses of Advantix as well as "Seresto" flea and tick collars.
Seresto collars are absolutely useless against ticks! Most of the ticks I find on my dogs each day are within 3 inches of their Seresto collars (8 months of protection my ass). It might work for fleas, but has no impact on ticks! Don't buy this product for ticks!!!
Next was Hartz UltraGuard… Useless on ticks.
Next was Sergeant's Silver with Permithrin - useless for ticks
Next was Sergeant's shampoo - useless for ticks.
Next was Sven powder - kills on contact but does not have a long term impact.
Next was Enforcer - kills but makes the dog sick but has proven great on bedding.

I then ran a test. Given that I can get 20 to 60 ticks off of each dog each morning, I prepare some 1 pint mason jars with pesticide in each.
The results were shocking as that most of these pesticides didn't kill the ticks in the mason jars.
Each Mason jar was treated with one spray of pesticide (for Seresto I used a 3 inch clip of the collar and for the shampoo I diluted it 50% and coated the jar and let it dry).
Each Jar received 10 ticks of different sizes and then was closed to see how long it would take to kill the ticks.
Results:
Seresto - all ticks alive after 1 week. And most of my dogs ticks that I remove are within 3 inches of their collars - this product is useless for ticks
Hartz UltraGuard - only one tick dead after one week - another useless product.
Sergeant's Silver - eight ticks dead after one week, two still alive and healthy - not very good.
Sergeant's Shampoo - all ticks alive one week later.
Sven powder spray - all ticks dead in 3 days.
Enforcer - all ticks dead on the first day.

So, Advantix Plus (not shown in the above picture) is useless against ticks! And most of the pesticides sold have little or no impact on ticks.
The only product that work so far (after 7 months of ticks) are Sven powder and Enforcer.
Next week we are going to the SGU Vet to see if there is an oral medication that they can take that will sterilize the ticks - clearly none of the pesticides work without killing the dogs as well… I don't use Enforcer on the dogs cause is cause them to go crazy and sick afterwards. I need to find something else to kill ticks or stop them from developing and laying eggs.

It is at 14.5 N Lat so we should be safe, there are 4 storm in the Tropical Atlantic zone today. For some reason it posted another picture for this.

Yes we are still fighting ticks. I just sprayed the bedding with some Permetherin. Hopefully this will help reduce the number of ticks each day. We have Vet appointments in a few weeks so we may be able to switch to an oral medication to stop the ticks. UGH. Otherwise we are having fun at Camp Grenada. So much to do and so much to eat. Lobster season just started…. Yum Yum….

Last week I purchased a most excellent loaf of french bread baked by a Separatist from Canada. The loaf was in a thin paper bag and set in the basket to dry up and go stale. This morning I have everything I need for bread pudding so I dig out my two big bowls to decide which one I'm going to use. Bowl selected, Liter of Milk and eggs ready. I grabbed the paper bag out of the basket, reached in an pulled out what looked like a fully decorated King Cake! Every color you can imagine was on the top and bottom sides of this loaf. So ended the plans to make bread pudding and hard sauce. I'll have to do better next week.
Oh it is the rainy season here and it has rained a lot… that might help explain what the bread molded instead of drying out like it usually does. (Hum. but, maybe it is something else… they have bread on Saturday now…. that was a no-no just last month cause the baker was a Seventh Day Adventist…) Maybe someone else is baking the bread! Oh, your in the "Twilight Zone."