St George's and Prickly Bay, Grenada

Imagine Of Falmouth Online Log
Jon Constantine
Sun 19 Jul 2009 12:00
Sat 18th Jul 09 to Sun 19th Jul 09

We've decided to head down to Grenada today.  We've left it a bit late to get to Prickly Bay in one hop so we're heading for St George's first and will move onto Prickly the next day.  We're a little sad as this is our last major island hop for the season, Grenada being the place where we'll haul out and head back to the UK from.  As much as we like Carriacou we are itching to catch up with Lee & Cindy on Tranquility in Grenada before they head off for Trinidad.  The Carriacou Regatta is at the end of the month so we may well just head back up here then for a few days.  We'll see.

We hauled anchor and were out of the bay by 9am with full main and headsail out.  There's not much wind forecast so it'll be a bit of a slow journey we think.  We started off well with the wind just forward of the beam cruising at a little over 6 knots.  That didn't last long though.  We lost the wind and had to motor sail as we got near to the small islands of Kick em Jenny Rock, Isle de Ronde, Les Tantes and Caille Island; just 6 or so miles off the North coast of Grenada.  There's an active underwater volcano here too, also called Kick em Jenny.  There have been no recent warnings but we still stayed outside the 1.5km exclusion zone just in case.

   
Les Tantes, Isle de Ronde and Kick em Jenny Rock with Grenada                                           Kick em Jenny Rock
                               in the background

As usual, the rod was out.  It would be really nice to catch one more fish this season.  Not to be I'm afraid.  We spotted lots of birds out to sea and figured they were there for the fish so motored out towards them for a couple of miles.  When we finally caught up with them we saw that they were Boobies and they weren't fishing but just bathing and chilling out!  Really bizarre.  We turned around and got back on course.  A bit disappointing with regards to the lack of fish but fabulous to see all these birds gathered together.

    
                                                                                      The Booby gathering!
                                                   

We got the wind back at around 13.30 but again it didn't last.  The wind dropped and what we did have shifted too, right on the nose so we dropped the sails and motored the last few miles into St George's where we dropped anchor next to a very pretty yacht called Strider, at around 17.30.  The holding here is not the best; very rocky but we got the anchor behind a big rock and put plenty of chain out.  There aren't any strong wind warnings so we should be fine for the night.

    
                                                                            The Grenada coast and St George's

It's Sunday morning and we're in no rush to leave as it's only about a 6 mile sail to Prickly Bay.  We've got an excellent wifi connection here so we caught up with our emails before heading off at 11.30.  As we were leaving we could see a rain squall moving along the coast.  We saw the same last night but it never came out to sea so we figured it would do the same this morning. Ha!  No such luck.  We should have known better.  We weren't too worried about strong winds as the wind was behind us.  It was great at first.  We shot out of the bay under headsail only doing over 7 knots but then the heavens opened and the wind disappeared completely.  We made the most of the rain though collecting well over 30 litres in a matter of minutes.  Lovely.  On went the donk and we motor sailed the rest of the way into Prickly Bay, dropping anchor on the East side.  We know from past experience that it gets pretty rolly in this bay and the closer to this coast and the reef the better.  We've spotted both Tranquility and Samarang so we're looking forward to catching up with them over the next day or 2.

It continued to rain pretty much all day and into the night which was great for water collecting but meant we couldn't spend much time in the cockpit.  I still need to sew side panels onto our makeshift boom tent but that will have to wait until the rain stops.  So, it was dinner down below.  We always eat in the cockpit and this is probably only the 2nd time this season that we've had to eat below, so not bad really considering how often it does rain here, especially at this time of year.  Hopefully tomorrow will be dry.....