Oy Vay, Prickly Bay!

Adonde
Neil & Tracy Batcheler
Fri 16 Mar 2007 23:26

Position 11:59.8N 61:45.7W

 

Sorry it’s been a while since the last web diary entry, but we’ve been busy…

After all the mayhem of carnival we decided to get Adonde hauled out for a few jobs, primarily to change the saildrive (gearbox) oil which can’t be done in the water and has to be done every 100 engine hours – like that’s going to happen. Whoever the bright spark at Yanmar was who introduced that design feature deserves a poke in the eye. I expect he tortures dolphins on his day off. Anyway we moved down to Peaks yard in Chaguaramas for the haul out as they have a nice wide lift that could accommodate us, and very fine it was too. We spent six days out altogether – the oil changes took about 5 minutes but needless to say we found a few other jobs to do…

 

After relaunching we spent another few days loitering around and went on a trip up into the hills and into a mangrove swamp for a bit of nature – a welcome relief after all the hustle and bustle but frankly I think you can do too much bird watching. Each to their own. Just to prove it, here’s a bird:

 

 

No idea what kind of bird it is, obviously.

 

Anyway, after a peaceful night at anchor in Scotland Bay on the west coast (Parrots, Ospreys, rain forest right down to the water’s edge, strange noises and beasties) we headed off back to Grenada, which ended up being 11 hours of bouncing around into a north-easterly sea (albeit it with an easterly wind) before arriving back in Prickly Bay, Grenada. Tracy’s stopped feeling sick now.

 

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Trinidad, which ended up being a month rather than the two weeks we’d planned, and we hadn’t expected to enjoy it as much as we did. We’ve both been there before but only for a day or two, and I have to say the place grows on you. There’s lots of talk in the yachting community about the “security issues”, and there’s undoubtedly a reasonably serious crime problem, but I have to say we never once came across any trouble, rather we met with great friendliness and courtesy (not to mention just having a bloody good laugh!) wherever we went, and were very sorry to leave. It’s a fascinating place in many respects, being made up of a population of 40% African descent, 40% Asian, and 20% “other” – Orientals, Europeans etc. Now that’s what I call a multi-cultural society. Special thanks of course to Simon and Jacquie for all their help (car, carnival craziness etc etc).

 

Here’s a piccy of Simon, Jacquie, Hannah and Joe (AKA Crackpot) with Adonde in the background (Ben, their eldest son, is missing as he’s away at school in the U.K. developing a healthy taste for Marmite):

 

 

So now here we are in Prickly Bay, where we’ve been for the last week. We’ve been getting some work done on our mainsail which we’ve just got back, so tomorrows job will be refitting that and seeing if it works. We’ll probably hang around this area for a few days longer as there are some nice anchorages along the south coast of Grenada which we might not get to see again as on our way back south we’ll probably skip Grenada in order to get to Tobago. But that’s a way away yet as we’re heading north, up beyond Antigua hopefully before turning around to get out of the hurricane zone before summer (end of June). Don’t fancy hurricanes much.

 

 

Finally, I’m trying a different way of laying this out, as I’m aware that the last few diary entries have ended up being really wide meaning you have to scroll right and left to see it all, which is most certainly a pain in the arse. I’m not sure why that has started happening but hopefully this one will work properly…or not….