Cleaning cleaning cleaning

Eowyn
Sat 7 May 2011 15:25
 
 
Éowyn is berthed at Le Phare Bleu marina, Grenada in position 12:00.191N 061:43.469W
 
Firstly in the unlikely event that anyone reads this drivel, I apologise for the delay in updating the blog. We have had almost mon existant wifi in Prickly Bay despite paying lots of $ to Hothothotspot - now at Phare Bleu we have a good enough signal for our sad sad skipper to catch up with the last month's episodes of the "Archers"
 
After we left Bequia we has a comfortable, easy but wet sail to Chatham Bay on Union Island. There is a new mini resort called Aqua and having eaten there on the way up, I wanted Chris to try it too. If you eat there, you can use one of their moorings so our 0445 start the next day was just a matter of slipping our lines and heading South. I had decided to head straight for Prickly Bay and we cleared in there early enough to avoid the overtime rate!
 
We have been giving Eowyn the most thorough spring clean of her 7 year life, with no stone unturned and I must admit she is now looking and smelling better than ever. It's very hard work in this heat but we don't expect too much sympathy from the folks back home. We found time to visit Jonathan Fisher of Island Water World who is retiring at the end of May - he will be sorely missed particularly as the voice of the Grenada Cruisers Net, broadcast daily on VHF 68 at 0830 and one of the best in the Caribbean. In the treasures of the bilge section, I managed to sell our Waterlog emergency watermaker together with our spare water containers but promptly spent the money on a brand new Wichard boom brake! Still, we did make enough room to store all 5 spare sails under the forecastle bunk, tidying the boat as a result.

Amongst the work we did find time to have 4 great dives with Scubatech and one night dined with Jochen & Sabine at their apartment which has a great view over Prickly Bay. We have run stored food down to a minimum so tried out some of the new menus at De Big Fish and the Tiki Bar. De Big Fish has a great new dinghy dock and they have live music most nights (at a volume we approve of!) so Ricky is reaping his reward for those efforts with very full tables.
 
On Wednesday 4th we motored to Le Phare Bleu which is also much improved - a new chef at the pool bar restaurant is just brilliant and his specials are such good value that we treated ourselves to lobster last night. We had missed Dick & Irene of Tucanon by a few days and I must say it is really strange to be separated from our World ARC family with whom we shared the last 16 months adventure. Of course Tucanon, Voyageur and Tzigane will be in these waters next season and we expect to also see Uli Kramer who has bought Destiny from Wolfgang and who expects to stay here for a couple of years.
 
We had to wait till Thursday to get our mainsail and genoa down and folded in the dry but in the meantime Dave Royce has been onboard sorting out some small canvas and rigging issues and we have continued our spring clean. We motor to St David's on Monday to prepare for our haul-out and our final lay-up works. At the moment the heavy rains of the last couple of weeks are holding back so conditions are hot but quite pleasant.