Sister in Law on board – St George’s, Grenada

Work was frantic on Stargazer during the latter half of September and the first part of October (well it usually is anyway, but this time even more so). The reason was that the mate’s sister was coming over for two weeks; two weeks where I promised the mate that there’d be no jobs to do and we could relax and enjoy Grenada.

Beach day – relaxing!

I was first to see Vicky as she exited the airport – the mate was too excited to be paying attention. Weighed down by bags (with a lot of stuff for us) she’d arrived safely. After little argy-bargy with taxi prices we were soon onboard Stargazer with a beer in our hands. We’d promised not to go ‘overboard’ on the first night as can so often happen and maybe have one or two drinks and a relatively early night. But, you know how it can be and the next day, after clearing our hangovers, we showed Vicky around the local area and got her settled onboard. Not being a sailor, she took to life onboard with ease and even managed to operate marine loos with no problems (not everyone can do this). I’m certain that the mate will have plenty to say about Vicky’s visit, but for me, one day rolled into to the next and we did so much that it was difficult to remember what we did on what day. Highlights for me were numerous, but the major one was snorkelling. Now, if anyone has been paying attention to these blogs, they might remember that I haven’t a clue with such matters, but Vicky was determined and she booked a snorkelling trip with the local diving company in the marina. I wasn’t without my doubts about it, but in the end what a wonderful trip it was and I found out that I could snorkel – mind you, I’m not sure what those fins (flippers) are all about. Maybe I don’t need those :) Anyway, thank you Vicky!!

After finding the beach bar!

Above St George’s

We did so much more, but I’ll leave it to the mate to add the details…

It had been 18 months since I’d last seen my little sis and I was sooooo excited that I couldn’t even finish my beer at the airport bar! Luckily Skip swooped in to help with that one. It was such a wonderful two weeks a) because Vicky was here, and b) because we parked (almost all – Skip sent Vicky up the mast to do some touching up with zinc paint!) the boat jobs and spent time enjoying the island. Beaches, waterfalls, city highlights, dinghy rides, beach bars, evening braais, snorkelling, rum punches, swimming, eating out, yoga walls, Palm Tree Yoga studio, sundowners with cats, riding on the buses, eating doubles, and lots and lots of laughter :) I thought we had similar mannerisms and looked like we were related, but people kept asking if we were twins! The only thing we didn’t manage was to actually get out sailing on Stargazer – this was thanks to Hurricane Tammy who arrived late in the season (once many of the forecasters had said hurricane season was over). She didn’t become a hurricane until she was well to the north of us but she did cause some rather squally conditions before her arrival and then stole all the wind as she headed north. It was so sad to wave Vicky off but a promise of another visit made it a little easier. The boat did seem rather empty for a while after she’d left.

Skip in the jungle

Yoga bats!

Two sisters at Seven Sisters waterfalls

Final night sundowners

It was sad to see Vicky leave but we can’t stay around Port Louis forever and the mate and I have to get Stargazer ready to go. So what’s our next plan? Ah! Not so quick… we still have our friends David and Trudie around and a new singlehander, Kylie has arrived. David and Trudie are ‘doing music’ soon in the local bar – which we must see - and Kylie has singlehanded all around the Caribbean – which I must pick her brains about (nothing like proper info from people on the ground)…

However, back to Stargazer. Why is it we are the smallest boat in area with less solar power than everyone else the mate wanted to know. Because others have over complicated their boats and caused themselves to have more ‘grief’ I replied. That seemed to satisfy the mate… We have a few jobs to do whilst still in Port Louis and our friend Steve is returning from the UK who’ll be spending a night with us before getting the ferry to his boat which is up in Carriacou. Speaking of which, Carriacou is where Stargazer’s going next. Taking pity on the fact that she’s been in the water for over two years and the antifouling is ‘no longer as the name suggests’ we’ve booked a lift out in Tyrell Bay boatyard for ten days. This will see Stargazer’s ‘bottom’ cleaned, sanded and dried out ready to receive any and all attention required. Her rudder will be checked out and all her anodes will be renewed, then we’ll put on plenty of antifouling. Antifoul is expensive over here (three times UK prices) but we got lucky – we saw a local fishing boat lifted out some months ago and it was clean as a whistle, we asked him what antifoul he used and it turned out to be one of the cheaper ones. The mate and I got hold of the data sheet for it and compared it to much more expensive brands and it was at least as good (on paper) as the best. So that secured our ‘deal’.

Ten days is a long time on the hard with no running water or proper loos, said the mate, so in a moment of ‘madness’ I agreed to booking an Air BnB. People had told us how much to expect so I was surprised to hear some quotes being nearly three times that. C’mon I said and after some, let’s call it ‘negotiation’ we got the price we wanted and expected in the first place.

We’ll report on our Tyrell Bay experiences in the next blog (from the air conditioned comfort of our Air BnB – Mate)…