12:00.04N 61:44.55W

Friday 15^th, Saturday 16^th and Sunday 17^th April

Coffee with the Roches in the morning gave us the chance to brief them about the islands they are heading up to visit, then they were off but the winds were pretty light and the forecast very unusually is for the wind to pretty much die away over the next three or four days. All really strange: the two things you can depend on in the Caribbean are good winds and sunshine, and the heavy cloud and frequent showers have put paid to the second of these all week.

We headed off into St Georges (the capital) using the local private bus system. These are modern minibuses run along the same lines as most of the islands and the dolmus’ in Turkey. You don’t need to flag them down as they all slow or even stop as you walk along offering you the ride. Price is fixed so there is little to discuss, but the slick development out here over the dolmus system is that the driver has an assistant who rides by the sliding side door and leans out of the window and hails anyone either he or the driver feel might be in need of a bus ride. He also takes the money and crams everyone in, leaving the driver to concentrate on driving as fast as possible. There are so many of these at work that you could never wait more than a minute for one to pass headed your way.

St Georges was fun and we spent some time first in the fruit and veg market as Sarah  selected her goods, as ever trying not to upset all those you do not buy from whilst avoiding getting ripped off by those that you do. Very colourful place with some wonderful old buildings that mostly survived hurricane Ivan a few years back. Sarah had done her homework on St Georges and so I found myself being taken on a very carefully planned trip around various art shops, galleries and the like before we jumped in a passing bus back to Port Louis.

A quick word or two about the marina which is comparatively new and has been pretty well designed (apart from the mooring system) and the showers get a gold star from us and must rank up amongst the best we have encountered in some 16,000 miles of sailing in Serafina. The marina staff wiz around the jetties and quays on Segways which is pretty slick and very efficient.  It is hot down in the basin which is protected from the prevailing wind and overlooked by two high peaks, both topped off with forts which provided the protection from invaders in days gone by. (The last invaders were the Americans in 1986... but they don’t count.) Remarkably one of these forts is now the police headquarters and the other, which must rank as prime real estate with stunning views, is the prison!

In the afternoon the Oyster regatta came sailing back into St Georges and clearly Eddie Jordan had been feeling a bit left out where he was moored before, so he came and tied up alongside the quay next to ours. Racing rarely brings out the best in people and we were soon hearing stories of crews ‘having words’ and one paid skipper and his wife who we had met at the beginning of the week had walked off the boat and packed the job in! Some others were showing the strains.....

Saturday was the last day of their racing and they all set off first thing in the morning less than enthusiastic about the complete absence of any wind. We were moving on ourselves today and after putting the finishing touches to Sarah’s stainless polishing, we headed off to Hog Island. Mind you the leaving from the marina was not all that easy. We waited whilst Bobby Moncur (Former Newcastle United captain) parked his catamaran next to us then the marina staff came along and untied us, but their system is pretty convoluted and they managed to untie our bows before letting us release the stern so we drifted back gently onto the quay before we were able to rescue the situation. Then as we headed out of the marina and into St Georges’ main harbour area, which is tiny, we met all the Oysters returning as their race had been abandoned after barely 30 minutes of actual racing.

We motored round the south west tip of Grenada and then threaded our way past a series of nasty looking shoals and reefs into a beautiful looking tranquil bay tucked behind Hog Island. The route in has a few buoys marking it, but the pilot book warns that these are not official, are very possibly now in the wrong positions and largely missing anyway!  The anchorage is quite spacious and not at all crowded, but over time we did come to realise that a lot of these boats have no-one living on board. There is a shed/bar on the beach on Hog Island but again no electricity or road access and it is all very basic;  the rest of the shoreline around the bay is fringed with the ubiquitous mangroves.

The night was the stillest we have experienced out here and was almost quite eerie and without any wind, pretty hot.

Sunday dawned with even the open sea absolutely dead flat and still. We took the opportunity to take down our mainsail ready for the lay-up and found that the bimini we had made last year in Turkey makes an ideal platform for folding the sail up on and so this was easily our least fraught sail folding session ever! We were just completing this when an English couple, Bridget and Paul from Brightlingsea (Essex) came past in a neat inflatable kayak and paused to ask (like so many others) about the fact that Serafina is registered in Maldon (Essex) and this led us to invite them on board for coffee and we enjoyed a fascinating hour or so learning more about the area from them as this is their 3^rd season in the Caribbean.

In the late afternoon things began to liven up on the beach and bar as Sunday is the day they have their beach BBQ and a live band which we had been told by various souls, was very good fun. Mostly this involves Grenadians who arrived in a fleet of battered fast boats, but once we saw a number of dinghies arrive from various of the yachts in the bay, we launched our dinghy and rowed ashore. We soon met  a number of very interesting and varied folk from all over, but sadly the band had some sort of technical problem and in due course they packed up their equipment and went home. This meant no dancing tonight, but did have the advantage that we could at least hear what people were saying. There is  quite a community of live-aboards here with two boats sending their children to school locally. Several like us are about to fly home to various parts of the world, but unlike us they are leaving their boats afloat here in the bay throughout the hurricane season! They put their faith in ‘sand screws’ driven into the sea bed by a diver and the natural protection offered by the geography of the bay. Given that a number of the boats are occupied throughout the year by friends, there is always someone here to keep an eye on things if there is a problem. Well that is the theory anyway.

Stainless Steel: Sarah saw an advert in a local magazine for some new American product that looked to be the perfect answer to everyone’s problems and so we bought some Island Water World in St George’s to try. You simply paint this stuff on, leave it for 30 minutes or so and then wash off with a hose. It requires a high ambient temperature but nothing much else! To good to be true really but she used it on all of our stainless whilst we were in Port Louis and have been astounded by the early results. Time will tell of course as the additional feature of this product is that you must not then add polish etc, as it claims to retain its protection for 6 months or so. So we will know more about this when we return to Grenada in November – hopefully not arriving to find a rusty hulk!!