Still St George’s (but via True Blue and Prickly Bay – more later…)

Tuesday 11^th July was the big day. The mate had reached a major milestone birthday, beginning with a 5. Our friends Steve and Jude came over from their boat on the next mooring for pre-dinner cockpit drinks and we all went over to a superb restaurant by the waterside in St George’s Carenage. It’s not often you can tie your dinghy up outside a restaurant and walk a few metres to your table, and very nice the whole thing was too. After a super dinner and a few beers and rums we ended up back on our boats all in one piece – I’m not sure quite how, but we did!

The Mate with her birthday chocolate and nutmeg ice cream complete with massive sparkler!

The following Thursday, Steve and Jude had arranged an island tour with a local taxi driver they’d met at the airport. This was a great way to see the island and as it wasn’t an organised tour it was the most cost effective way to do it. We travelled all around St George’s (the capital) into the centre of the island (Annandale falls and Grand Etang). The latter was a crater lake with monkeys in the trees. The mate’s not too good with monkeys after a bad experience in Bali where they stole bananas from her rucksack, but everyone else was fascinated by them.

Skip and Mate under a Flamboyant Tree

Looking across to Port Louis marina – soon to be our home for a few months

Looking out over the moorings. X marks SG

Tropical foliage

Steve dives at Annandale Falls

Mona monkey clearly up to no good!

The tour continued around the island and it was so nice to see the interior of Grenada; most towns are by the coast so you’d never really have a chance to see the countryside in the middle. It was luscious, green rainforest and very spectacular. We carried on to the Atlantic coast (via a rum distillery and chocolate factory) and the north of the island and then returned back down the Caribbean coast.

View down through the rainforest

Lake District? No, Grand Etang crater lake!

Nutmeg tree

More tropical foliage

Lake Antoine (another crater lake)

For some reason the Coconuts II initiative tickled Skip…!

Happy Jubilation and Stargazer crews with our host for the day, Desmond

OK back to Stargazer and what’s been going on. We’ve had a few comms issues of late because my phone broke and all contacts etc were lost, including the ability to pay our blog subscription (hence a long time between updates). The situation is now recovered (I hope!). Since the last blog, we’ve had some decent weather between squalls and it has been very hot. Sadly though, some days have been pretty cloudy and our renewable energy sources have not been able to keep the batteries in the state we would like. We monitor batter charge religiously and never allow them to drop much below 70%  The answer was a portable generator, but where to get one? In retrospect I should have got one in the UK as the price and choice is exceptionally good. Over here the prices are high and the generators are too big for us (stowage is a real issue). I’ve been in occasional contact with Stargazer’s previous owners and found that they managed to find space for a suitcase generator and therefore so must we! Having done my research I concluded that a 1kW generator would suffice for our needs and that a Honda would be a good choice. Where to get one? We were about to go to a shipping agent to see about having one shipped over from the UK when the mate (who does these sorts of things) saw a Swedish boat advertising one on Facebook. Better still, the Swedish boat (called Puffin) was in St George’s at Port Louis. Even better, the Swedes use 230V – perfect for us. So I wasted no time at all bombing over and buying it [this was particularly heroic as it was the morning after my birthday and I was finding being in my next decade rather tiring!! – Mate]. Puffin, as the new generator is called (for obvious reasons) has charged up our batteries in next to no time - even his mere presence onboard has relieved a lot of stress as we no longer have to worry about battery charge percentages. The mate is very pleased at this.

Puffin – the newest addition to the crew and the end of our power generation problems :)

We’ve still been having tropical wave after tropical wave coming through. Some bringing pretty bad squalls and many bringing swell around the top of Grenada which makes St George’s anchorage a pretty rolly place to be. Some rolling you can take, but if it goes on for days and makes sleeping difficult it does become bothersome.

We’ve been booked into Port Louis marina from 1^st August until end October and so last Friday we thought we’d head off and take a look at the southern bays of Grenada.  A lot of cruisers spend the entire hurricane season in these bays and the mate has been listening to the VHF radio nets to find out what’s going on. A dinghy ‘poker run’ took her fancy and so we aimed for Clarke’s Court Bay where it was based. As another possible tropical storm is in the offing, we intended spending the weekend round there and returning to St George’s on Monday with a view to going early into Port Louis. The latter was decided by another two tropical waves coming along after the possible TRS. We headed off from our buoy without issue, raised all sail and Stargazer (hull fouling aside) was going well. Until… we turned onto a close reach near the south western corner of the island and the leech of the genoa was flapping badly. Our sails are still pretty new and I was very nonplussed by this. Looking aloft I saw a problem at the head of the genoa, a possible tear, or something just not right. The wind increased (the forecast was: Caribbean Sea 12kts, Atlantic 10kts) to 23kts on the nose so with a relatively short distance to go we furled the headsail altogether and motor-sailed past True Blue Bay and off Prickly Bay. Sailing in the Caribbean dictates that it’s best to know when the moon’s meridian passage is and we did, but we didn’t quite expect the short chop caused by a near new moon. So off Prickly Bay, I said to the mate “the genoa has a problem, there’s a possible TRS en route and we can only have a couple of nights in Clarke’s Court Bay anyway. As the sailing isn’t that pleasant, how about we call it quits, head back to St George’s organise going into Port Louis and re-think our plans?” We did and we took the bus to Clarke’s Court instead on Saturday. Except, not knowing where we were going we ended up back at the same bus stop that we got on at. We’d unknowingly had a short circular tour of the southern part of Grenada! Luckily buses are cheap and we just caught another one – this time getting off at the correct ‘stop’. The mate may wish to describe the huge amount of food she ordered for lunch, I won’t embarrass her :) [Still getting to grips with the local cuisine I opted for grilled fish (unaware that this would be served with salad and garlic bread) and couldn’t resist macaroni pie. When I opened my lunch box I was faced with a massive pile of fish, salad, garlic bread and an enormous cube of macaroni cheese! In my defence I didn’t eat it all at once – Mate].

Whisper Cove, Clarke’s Court Bay and Hog Island

Caribbean construction site above Clarke’s Court Bay – note the bamboo acrows!

So, back we are on the same buoy in St George’s harbour. I’ve arranged with the marina that we head in tomorrow (Monday 24^th). We’ll let the weather go through and then drop the genoa to assess the problem with it. Stargazer hasn’t been in a marina for three months now, so both the mate and I are looking forward to proper showers, being able to walk ashore and all the other luxuries that come with marina life. For once, size is on our side. A 40’ yacht in the UK is a decent size – over here, it is small. Whilst mooring buoys (when forced to take one) are priced per buoy, i.e. a 67’ catamaran will pay the same price as Stargazer, this is not true of marinas where the usual charge per foot length and beam apply. What this happy news means is that this time with Port Louis out of season rates we can take Stargazer in for only a little extra than being out on a buoy – not so for a big ‘fat’ catamaran. Ah, there is some justice in the world…

We will update you on marina life once we’re all settled in (and after we’ve enjoyed several showers without worrying about water usage!)…