Clarkes Court Bay, Grenada

Austins' Travels
Chris & Lynn Austin
Thu 1 Mar 2012 17:40
12:00.438N 61:43.806W
We motored from St Georges to Clarkes Court Bay – one of the large bays on the South coast of Grenada.- in about 3 hours. Most of the trip is directly into the wind, which was the normal 20 knots or so, and the whole inshore area is only 5-10 meters of depth which throws up decent waves so progress was only 4 knots or so. Oliver wasn’t seasick so he may be improving although he did sleep for an hour or more. The trip along the south coast is interesting due to the shallows, reefs with breaking waves, rocks that are barely visible and a couple of small islands just metres above the water. The entrance to Clarkes Court Bay isn’t too bad if you know it (which we do) but it still requires turning in at the right time very close to the island on the east side (and later than you might expect) to avoid the reefs that extend a long way from the west side of the bay.
This bay is where we first had our last yacht which was damaged beyond economic repair in hurricane Ivan seven years ago, so returning has a special significance to us. We have anchored in the same little bay that we spent about 5 or 6 weeks last time we were here. At that time we were the only boat anchored and maybe once a week another boat would stop for a day or two. Today there are seven other boats anchored and three on permanent mooring buoys so it is more popular but still plenty of room and a lovely spot.
During the night we had torrential rain and in the early morning strong gusts of wind from the south east (quite unusual recently) so the new anchor, now correctly set up, was tested for the first time and performed fine. During the morning we had continuous rain or drizzle which reminded us of a typical day on a boat in the Solent, except that it was still 25 degrees! By lunchtime the wind had dropped and reverted to the more normal easterly and the rain stopped but it was still a bit overcast. We are looking forward to our time here where we can swim off the boat and dinghy to a a couple of nearby islands with several (deserted) beaches.