Grenada - Catching up with friends and having an extension built!!

Imagine Of Falmouth Online Log
Jon Constantine
Mon 10 Nov 2008 09:00
Haha!  We've just turned the VHF radio on to listen to the cruisers net.  It's only 7.30am but we're used to getting up early now!  Oh joy, after the net in Trinidad which seems to be all about dominoes nights and pot luck evenings!  It's good to hear the dulcet tones of Jonathan from Island Water World doing the weather forecast again!  Great to meet up with a lot of cruisers from last season too -  Happy Spirit, Tranquility, Blue Sky and Cheetah II to name just a few, all preparing to head up the island chain........

True to their word, John and Andy on Happy Spirit anchored yesterday in Prickly Bay and we're finally going to get together.  It's actually Andy's birthday today (Tues 11th) and we've been invited over later this morning for coffee and carrot cake. Yummy. 

It was great to catch up and John, the home made carrot cake was fab.  When we finished we all caught a maxi taxi into Grand Anse for lunch.  We had beers on the beach and then went to the Food Mall for Rotis.  Very cheap at only 11 ECs (about £2.50).  Can't eat out for much cheaper than that and they are delicious.  After a quick shop in the supermarket we went back to the boat for a swim to cool down and then invited them and Rachel & Richard from Cuchine over for sundowners before all heading ashore to hit Choos Light, the local Chinese restaurant.  Great meal, lots of wine and good company.  I think playing 'bumper cars' with our dinghies on the way back to our respective boats meant we'd probably had one drink too many!!!  No photos I'm afraid.  Completely forgot to take any!

The same with our get together a week later with George & Michael plus Alex on Blue Sky!  Another re-union and more drinks, this time in the Tikki Bar for happy hour.  After many 'happy' beers with them and Happy Spirit we decided to have pizza there.  After waiting nearly two hours for our meals (a long time even for island time!) and having consumed 2 bottles of very over-priced wine while watching other people getting their take-aways with barely a wait, we paid for the wine and left: not a pizza for us in sight.  Not happy bunnies but that soon changed as we ended up back at Choos and had another fabulous meal there instead. 

We didn't go back to Hog Island this time although we would have liked to.  The weather turned a bit iffy.  Happy Spirit went back a few days after the birthday do and reported back that some boats had dragged.  We had too much to do anyway and being in Prickly Bay is so much more convenient for shopping, laundry, cooking gas refills etc.  We also wanted to check out Spice Island Marine on the other side of the bay as we'd heard that we could get stainless steel work done there.  We're very keen to get this A frame now so that we can mount our new KISS wind gen.  We need more power.  We did have to re-anchor a couple of times in the bay though.  Once closer to shore to get away from the swell (it gets very rolly in the middle of the bay) and then again as we kept banging into a mooring ball.  All good fun. 

So, to the main reason for staying in Prickly Bay - the stainless steel A frame.  We located Nick of TechNik and after a quick chat he confirmed that he had the stainless in stock and he would give us a quote after measuring up the boat.  To cut a long story short, after a bit of to and fro-ing we are now proud owners of a stainless steel A frame which includes dinghy davits and a pole for the KISS.  It only took about 2 and half weeks to complete and we are thoroughly pleased with it.  It doesn't ruin the boat lines too much either.  Here are the photos......

The Team    Workshop
                        Nick (middle) and his Measuring Team                                                                 The completed frame in the workshop

Carlos      Happy
                                           Senor Carlos                                                                                                  Say cheese!

Install 1      Installed
                                           Will it fit?                                                                                                       Of course!

Skipper     Dinghy
             
A very happy skipper with hauled up dinghy                                       Yikes - now we have to clean the dinghy.  One job just leads to another!!!