With Impressionist ready for sailing again, we departed the marina and had a short, but delightful, downwind sail along the south coast and anchored back in Prickly Bay. We had purchased a new, more efficient wind generator – the Air Breeze – and needed the local workshop to design and fit a stainless steel support. It's also very convenient here with easy access, either walking or on the local buses, to the chandlers, hardware stores, supermarkets and the capital St Georges, so we spent some time just doing minor jobs, especially making mosquito nets for the hatches and portlights (small opening windows) as we have been unable to purchase these off the shelf (design and photos on our web site (Boat Details – Modifications).Grenada has the friendliest and most helpful people we have ever met; many of them have lived in or visited England, or have relations there, and it's very easy to end up chatting to a complete stranger for a half-hour. In St Georges one day we asked about a cobbler and the lady insisted on taking us right to him.
The local bus service is great - 15-seat mini-buses that will have 18 squeezed in when full, owned by the driver who usually has a "conductor" on board, each bus licensed to a particular route. They all run from the bus station in St Georges, departing when full (squashed in). Driver/conductor touts for business as they go along and pick up/drop off along the road as well as bus stops; they will divert from the route for an extra fee. Buses are cheap, noisy, friendly, fun and very frequent in the south-east.
Every morning (except Sunday) at 07.30 we listen to the Grenada cruiser net on channel 68 on the VHF radio. There is a different net controller each day, one of whom is the manager of the local chandlery, the remainder being volunteer cruisers. The weather is read out (obtained via the internet); other sections include safety & security information, arrival & departure notifications, parts & services, cruiser events, "Treasures of the Bilge (buy and sell), and advertising by local businesses – it's a great source of information. Most cruisers also have their radios tuned to 68 whilst on the boat as it is also our primary means of communication.
A couple of weeks later we motored round to Mount Hartman Bay (the next bay) and anchored. It's a particularly calm bay with a very short dinghy ride to shore – very suitable as Jim's sister Margaret was due to fly out from England on 9 September to join us for three weeks.
The day after Margaret arrived she had recovered enough from the journey to join us on the Friday shopping bus to the local mall and supermarket. She was amazed to see so many imported English goods including some of the Waitrose Essentials range; they also have Branston Pickle, Marmite and English sausages – three goodies which we hadn't seen anywhere since leaving England three years before!
The next few days were intended for relaxing on the boat and some gentle swimming off a beach a dinghy ride away – that is apart from the pot luck dinner (bring a dish to share), the BBQ evening at the marina, the Sunday Mexican Train dominoes, the Monday bus to town where Patrick, our driver, treated us to jelly coconuts, and of course the Wednesday and Friday shopping bus to the mall where we developed a taste for the lovely banana bread with our coffee.
The middle of September we all went on a cruiser-organised trip with a dozen others to the Seven Sisters Waterfalls in the Grand Etang National Park rainforest. The views were marvellous on the way there and the rainforest was lovely with beautiful trees and flowers, including both cocoa and nutmeg trees. At the car park we each picked out a stick and our local guide led us on an hour long hike along a muddy and, in places, very steep track to get to the lower falls. Well worth it – the falls are lovely with a high fall into a large pool then a lower fall into the smaller pool. We all swam in the large pool – it was lovely swimming in fresh, cool water for a change. Anne leapt the lower fall then, emboldened by this, decided to join the group who were going further up to leap the higher falls. After a 20-minute muddy uphill scramble we reached the top fall. After a photo session those not leaping returned down the path. Our guide (who was excellent) at each fall showed us how to take off, how to leap and how to land, and helped us all through the fast
flowing water in the chute between two of the falls. For the smaller falls we landed in a seated position because of the limited depth, one we could shallow dive into the pool, but the last fall was 35ft high – scary, and we were supposed to land feet first and upright. Anne got this one badly wrong, landed in a seated position and stayed in the pool for a while to cool her badly stung thighs. Not only did she end up with severe bruising on her thighs but also had a bad back for a couple of weeks. In spite of that, it was a fantastic experience and she would quite happily do it all again.On 19 September we took Margaret for a short sail round to Clarkes Court Bay where we dropped the anchor near Hog Island, this being convenient for local buses to St Georges (for Margaret and Anne's girls' shopping trips) as well as evenings out at local restaurants and being nearer the beach for swimming.
We all wanted to go to Fish Friday at Gouyave – two streets of stalls cooking and selling locally caught fish every Friday, a "do not miss" evening in Grenada - but couldn't get a reply from the taxi firm which was known to organise a bus. In the end Anne organised her own – ending up with 22 people on two buses. We left early enough to see the scenery on the way up the west coast of Grenada and had a stroll around before the stalls got going – as this was low season it wasn't as busy as normal, but the atmosphere and food were still great and we had a marvellous evening.
Another day the three of us went on an island tour with CB Historical Tours. Clement, our driver, was full of fascinating information about the history and the island. He took us to St Georges, then to the last working nutmeg processing plant (most nutmeg trees were destroyed in Hurricane Ivan in 2004, it takes six years before replanted trees start producing), via the Leapers Leap where the native Caribs leapt to their deaths rather than submit to French rule, the Belmont Plantation for a fabulous lunch (unfortunately they are too busy making cocoa to run tours at present), to the River Antoine rum distillery with the last working watermill where they still make rum in the traditional fashion from locally grown sugar cane, returning through the Grand Etang rainforest – where it really rained heavily! Altogether a marvellous day out.
One evening we booked for dinner at The Little Dipper – to quote our pilot book "the best little restaurant in Grenada". We arrived at their own dinghy dock at dusk and climbed the lit path up the hill to the restaurant. We were the only people there (hence the need to book, otherwise they don't open). We sat on the veranda, the view across the bay was wonderful and our food was lovely. It started raining but we didn't want to leave the view, so we just pulled the table back a little way. As we left we were each handed a stick to help us down the now very slippery path. An enchanting evening!
We'd had a lot of fun and it felt very quiet after Margaret's return to England. We went back to doing odd jobs around the boat, the usual shopping trips every week and the various social activities organised by cruisers. These included pot luck dinners, dominoes, the monthly book swap for charity at a local chandler, a kayak tug-of-war off the beach at Hog Island (we watched), cruiser cricket matches (we watched!) and Halloween BBQ, and a cruiser organised visit to The Aquarium restaurant with swimming and marvellous snorkelling off its beach – and the food was excellent too.
Towards the end of October we began to think about moving north as the hurricane season is normally over by this time. BUT right at the end of October a tropical depression formed off South America which turned very quickly into Hurricane Tomas and headed straight towards the Windward Islands (south-eastern Caribbean), it's forecast track being possibly Trinidad, Tobago, Grenada or the Grenadines - right where we were! All the boats prepared, removing awnings etc, some put out an extra anchor, we let out a lot more chain and cleaned the propeller just in case we needed the engine. Everyone had an anxious few days, but Tomas turned further north, causing a great deal of damage and loss of life in Barbados, St Lucia and St Vincent, whilst the south of Grenada had a flat calm and no rain!
On 18 November, we moved round into Mount Hartman Bay to clean the bottom of the boat in the clearer waters there. This involves a lot of diving with breath held, and scraping as much as possible until you surface because of natural buoyancy in the extremely salty water. An extremely exhausting job carried out over several days and only in calm weather.
With a clean bottom, we left the bay on 6 December and had a lovely sail round to St Georges where we took a berth in the marina for a few days so that we could clean and check the anchor chain, refit the windvane, and do a last bit of shopping before leaving Grenada to head north for the winter.
We have thoroughly enjoyed our summer here and intend returning next summer after a winter spent cruising the eastern Caribbean islands.
For more photos please click here
No comments:
Post a Comment