GRENADA North, 12:01:00N, 61:10:00W
Restless of Auckland
Roland and Consie Lennox-King
Sun 16 Feb 2020 15:03
We left Restless in Grenada Marine in June, and flew back via London, where we stayed with Gilbert, Pip, Emmeline and Frederick in their house in Kingston on Thames.
Then we flew to Hong Kong, where we stayed with Olivia & Shenton, and sailed on their beautiful Swan, ‘Athena’.
We returned to our bach in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand, end August 2019, and along with other maintenance jobs, Roland spent his time renovating a bathroom.
We had a wonderful fortnight visit from Olivia and Shenton in December, then a short visit from Jane & Oliver, followed by a fortnight visit from Gilbert, Phillippa, Emmeline (now 4) and Frederick (2). Then Feyona and Andre visited us from Sydney, and Caroline came from Washington, among others.
A slightly pregnant Olivia spent most of her visit throwing away a lifetime of hoarded books and perceived treasures, to make space for some of the furniture from our house in Auckland, stored for 15 years, and now well past its use-by-date.
Shenton refused to be involved in family squabbles over junk, but helped to lift and carry to trailers and to the tip. We made a trip out to The Hole in the Rock, at Cape Brett, on our friends’ fishing boat, ‘Craig Isle’, unfortunately Shenton did not manage to catch the tantalizing kingfish that hovered just out of reach, but he did catch a large Snapper.
Gilbert and family arrived in time to help put the ornaments on our Christmas tree, and we had an enormous family Christmas with 17Jack cousins for ham lunch at ours, followed by turkey dinner at the Jacks’. We had several sails together to tiny beaches where both Emmeline and Frederick swam and played in the sand and declared it was ‘The Best Day Ever’. The New Year’s Day Race off Te Uenga Bay (the first Race in the World on Time zones) was as hotly contested as ever, it has now been running for 50 years.
29 Jan. We set off for a 42 hour journey from Auckland via Canada to Grenada. We had a great surprise to see brother Oliver at Toronto airport at the baggage carousel.
We stayed 2 nights at the very Pink hotel La Sagesse near Grenada Marine, where Restless had been on the hard since the beginning of the hurricane season, in June. Some stinging ants had found their way aboard and we had difficulty getting rid of them. Antifouling while standing on ants’ nests is not much fun! Roland is not very attractive to mosquitoes or ants, and he only had a few stings, Consie on the other hand was stung all over, and only antihistamine helped. We found ants don’t like vinegar, and with several washes down, they eventually left.
The next holdup was that an engineer started work on the engine, but most of the yard’s mechanics and engineers were in a car crash and work was delayed.
We went back into the water on 6 Feb, but with rough weather we stayed by the dock, waiting for 2 new sails, and left Grenada Marine on 14 Feb to sail in rough weather a few miles west to Surf between reefs into Clarke’s Court Bay.
Our nephew Peter, his wife Ruth, and 2 small pirates Jack and Ben are due to arrive at True Blue the next day. They are Here!
