St George’s, Grenada

We loved Tyrrel Bay and Carriacou. We wanted to stay longer, but the weather had other ideas. In fact whilst we were there we had some strong, gusty weather so, being at anchor, we spent more time on the boat than we’d like to have done. Nevertheless, Carriacou scored a big hit with us – this was the friendly, uncrowded, relaxed Caribbean we’d wanted and we’ll definitely be back. The mate, may have more to say about our brief time there…

Arriving at Customs and Immigration, Tyrrel Bay

Tyrrel Bay anchorage with one of the rustic dinghy docks in the foreground

The reason why we left was storm Bret. We’d been following the development of an unusually early tropical wave/then depression/then storm for a few days. Not only was it unusually early, it was unusual for it to form as far south as it did. All the forecasts were for it to develop into a category 1 hurricane and to cross St Lucia. This placed the centre of the storm only around 95/100NM away from us. Not only that, but boats were leaving Martinique and St Lucia heading south and the way Tyrrel Bay was filling up didn’t look good to me. It does seem that people anchor way too close to other boats and put out insufficient chain, so with all that in mind, I looked at the mate and said “time to leave”…

Our options were obviously Grenada, but where? I reckoned that the bays on the south would be quite full of boats running south and since anchoring there is the norm we may have ended up with similar problems to those in Tyrrel Bay but with less wind and gusty conditions. I called Port Louis Marina (where we will be in August, September and October – on a good deal) to ask for a few days in there. Having baulked at the price, we thought we’d anchor outside St George’s harbour (where Port Louis is). A good plan, we thought – far enough from Bret and although an open anchorage, pretty sheltered from all sensible directions. I happened to mention our plan to a new mate of ours, called Peter, who’d we’d met up in Rodney Bay. Peter has been cruising the Caribbean for 10 years and knows his onions in terms of what’s what etc. He told me that anchoring was no longer allowed and pointed me to a website where you can book one of the newly laid mooring buoys. Under normal circumstances of being offered a mooring buoy in the Caribbean, my answer would be “no thanks” (for the reason of questionable quality), but under our current circumstances it seemed our only option. We also reasoned that as they were newly laid, they ought to be in decent condition. So off we went for a short 35NM sail to Grenada.

The sail itself was pretty good. The mate had cleaned the hull (she’ll elaborate on that later, but I don’t think I’ll ask her to do it again – better to get my snorkelling, or lack of it, up to scratch). So we cruised along nicely under full genoa only at around 6.5kts.

We arrived in St George’s, Grenada in the afternoon of Wednesday 21^st June and secured to a mooring buoy (we have warp spliced to chain for this purpose, such that if anything ‘gives’ it won’t be our own gear). The moorings were nicely spaced and we were pretty happy with it all. As more boats arrived, the buoys filled up and despite the fact that anchoring is supposedly no longer allowed, boats anchored aft of the moorings. But, quite frankly, what else could they do. So, we were all settled, far enough from Bret and all nicely spaced out and we were quite happy.

Last night (22^nd June) Bret crossed St Lucia. Cruisers reports were of very gusty conditions in Tyrrel Bay and they’d opened the mangrove areas both in Tyrrel Bay and Le Marin, Martinique. The idea behind this is that you could drive your boat into the mangroves until she was aground in the roots and then tie off with all your lines to the biggest trees with stern anchors out. Sounds good, but it wouldn’t be without some damage to the boat and if everyone did the same it could end up in a bit of a mess.

As I write this (1100 Friday 23 June) the mate and I had slept quite well. You can get 35kts any day of the week on the UK south coast and we didn’t think it was any worse than that where we were. In fact it’s gustier now – I’m keen to go and check the lines up on the bow, but the gusts and rain are too strong at the moment. The forecast, though, is for everything to calm down by tomorrow, so we’ll just sit tight and see it through. Luckily we have food, water, beer, rum, Grenadian chocolate etc. all onboard as a super friendly American chap on the boat opposite took pity on us yesterday when he saw we’d have to unwrap our dinghy, inflate it, launch it, recover it and deflate it just to nip into town. He actually lent us his large, fast, hard bottomed tender so we could go and get everything we needed. Having a large boat, he keeps it on easy launch davits. Returning from town, we saw our friend Steve had arrived. “Oh no, danger!” cried the mate – every time he shows up everyone drinks too much. “Not to worry”, I said, “it’s too rough for him to come over just now”. “Phew”, replied the mate, “that was a close call” – but today’s another day…

Carriacou really was lovely – just as I imagined the real Caribbean would be. Friendly, relaxed, a bit ramshackle, charming, with rum bars, white sand and blue waters. “Welcome to paradise” said an older chap we met on the street one morning. It turned out he had grown up in Huddersfield and used to visit Blackpool with his family before returning to the Caribbean. We all looked out into Tyrrel Bay and marvelled at the contrast! We will definitely return – hopefully this season.

Busy Saturday afternoon in downtown Tyrrel Bay

Rufus’ fruit and veg shop, Tyrrel Bay

Tyrrel Bay beach

New hazards to cope with!

Shortly after we arrived in Tyrrel Bay I had snorkelled on the anchor to check we were well dug in, and had noticed that Stargazer had an incredibly dirty bottom. She hasn’t been out of the water for almost two years and it appeared that very little antifoul remained as we had been sailing around with our own marine habitat, complete with small crabs! It was time to take action. With one of the oars from the dinghy and a rope around my waist so I wouldn’t drift out to sea, Skip sat on the deck holding the rope and I scraped the underwater carpet off Stargazer. The wind kicked up and I regularly got water in my ears, but three hours later she was clean and I was shattered! I spent a lot of the evening lying on my right hand side trying to drain the water from my right ear. There were periods of gurgling but no water emerged. Just before bed I felt that the water was finally going to drain out and tipped my ear over the kitchen sink to catch the drips. However, the sound I heard didn’t sound like water hitting the metal sink… It took me a few minutes to pluck up the courage to look, only to discover a small crab about ⅓ the size of my little finger nail looking up at me!!! I don’t know who was the most surprised! It was safely returned to the sea and I went to bed.

The following day we were introduced to the rum bars by the aforementioned Steve. Perched on wooden stools by a wooden shack we were served ⅛ bottle measures of rum (using a funnel and an old Schweppes bottle to decant into!) by a guy who came from Notting Hill Gate seven years ago for a two week holiday and stayed. Mixed with fizzy grapefruit and limes quartered on the wooden bar we watched the sunset over the bay :) We enjoyed quite a bit of rum, but I didn’t think we really overdid it. However, the following day I woke up and looked in the mirror to be met with a vision of an incredibly puffy face and double eye bags! “What on earth?!” I thought. Had I had way more rum than I thought?? A quick body scan revealed I wasn’t having an anaphylactic shock, but was covered in a red rash. Skip managed to keep a straight face when he saw me and realised that it must have been a delayed skin reaction to the underwater antifoul scraping the day before. After spending the day in the shade, drinking lots of water and cooling with ice packs my face subsided somewhat, and had almost returned to normal the following day. It is now three days later and the body rash has nearly gone, phew. I am not rushing to clean Stargazer’s bottom again…

It is now the afternoon after TS Bret hit the Lesser Antilles and thankfully the swell that came ahead of it has subsided. Last night was very calm wind wise, but that meant we were rolling all over the place with the swell. I usually wedge things in the galley before we go to sea to minimise things crashing around, and was lying in bed last night wishing I had done it before going to bed! The wind picked up this morning, along with heavy rain, but both are now subsiding. Everyone around us is still in the same place. Reports from Tyrrel Bay suggest things were a bit chaotic with anchors dragging and dinghies blowing round, so I am pleased we headed south and now have another island to explore.