Relaxed Grenadine quicktour.
Oriole
Sun 9 Apr 2006 15:55
On Monday in spite of dire warnings to the contrary
Liz arrived on her little twin engined aeroplane slightly ahead of schedule with
all her baggage and her first comment: "Well you two look very relaxed".
Perhaps we really do get on to "island time" while we are out here. We
certainly are pretty relaxed most of the time and it is difficult not to be
relaxed at an airport with two staff, one flight, three passengers and a couple
of cold beers.
Drinks were served as the sun set.
Bequia.
On Tuesday we sailed straight for Chatham Bay
on Union Island, a lovely and enormous bay which still has absolutely no
development. Unfortunately the sea received Liz's lunch, but with stiff
upper lip she claimed to enjoy the fast sail in a good beam wind, and (it has to
be said) a fairly benign sea. Chris took Liz on a snorkling expedition which
produced eulogistic comments from our charterer. We had acquired some
lobsters which made a great feast.
Trunkfish idling in black
corals.
Onward to Carriacou the northern outpost of Grenada
where Liz was introduced to the perennial task of customs and immigration
clearance - recently eased here by new self carbonated forms to fill in in
quintuplicate Previously if you had not printed out crew lists on
your computer you could be there for hours filling in the required 5 forms. It
is all the Brits fault for starting this crazy administrative nightmare. In
order to boost the local economy of little Carriacou and its 6000 inhabitants we
purchased another and enormous lobster which more that fed us for supper and
some of the wine for which Carriacou is famous.
Supper arriving in Carriacou (cooking
pot forward on loan).
Although not officially a duty free port the
wine comes at duty free prices, but we ask no questions. We left Liz to
lime on board while we had another dive with our favourite dive guide
Connie. The conditions were ideal and and all was very relaxed until we
surfaced to find the dive boat had disappeared. After 5 minutes of
whistling and calling a rather shamefaced Kenneth appeared from the other side
of the rock we were diving where he had been chatting to another dive boat
driver!! Connie was not amused!!
We are now in St David's Grenada where Oriole
weathered Hurricane Ivan after quite a slow quiet sail yesterday. Liz will no
doubt be prostrately relaxed by the time she leaves but we will be left
wondering if she chats to Michael non-stop from early morning to late
at night. In spite of all the rich food and some quite lengthy sails gastric if
not verbal continence has been maintained.