Tyrell Bay Boatyard, Carriacou – 13^th to 23^rd November 2023

After a decent sail from St George’s, Grenada (where we’d been for far too long in my opinion) we arrived in Tyrell Bay, Carriacou. After a couple of nights at anchor we entered the ‘marina’ ready to be lifted out into the boatyard. This ‘marina’ was actually a couple of long-ish pontoons, advertised as rock steady and like walking on land. In actual fact you could see them snaking along side to side and up and down. So bad was it, that it brought back memories of Cape Verde’s ‘marina’. We actually berthed next to a boat we last saw in Cape Verde!

After slackening the lines a bit and putting all the fenders out we went to bed. The look on the mate’s face the following morning was not good – knowing the mate, as I do, this meant that she hadn’t slept at all. I could understand this as I’d had trouble myself. Another night followed of the same proportions and we were both ready to find the person who wrote the above words about the pontoons and throw them in the water. Sadly, we couldn’t find the culprit…

On the morning of the 13^th - our lift out date - I went to the boatyard office who told me that we were the first to be lifted that day. Superb we thought, that gives plenty of time to get sorted out and head off to our rented room. I went to see the lift operators who said that we couldn’t be first, or even second as they had us down as a 59’ catamaran. ‘No’, I said, ‘we are 40’ and a monohull’ – they didn’t believe me until they went into the office to see the paperwork. Clearly the office paperwork said 40’ but the yard ‘paperwork’ said 59’. Needless to say, after the usual Grenadian farce (Carriacou is part of Grenada) we were in fact lifted out that morning albeit 3.5 hours late. However Stargazer was chocked to my satisfaction and the mate and I went along to our rented room.

Stargazer emerges from the water after two years and five months afloat

Before we describe our boatyard activities, let me tell you about the room (the mate may have more to say). Our ‘room’ was a friendly enough place, assuming you liked being within earshot of loud children who scattered the path leading to the door with toys. Once inside we soon discovered that ants would swarm the small work surface if we left even so much as a crumb. One morning, just outside the loo door, I found the largest cockroach I had ever seen, thankfully it was dead and assuming that it had crept in through a gap under the back door, we soon blocked the gap. The air-conditioning was OK though and that pleased the mate.

We had to eat out every night, as the rooms ‘cooking facilities’ were well below par and that’s even if you could deal with the ants. I’ll definitely leave the mate to tell you about that (food being one of the mate’s favourite subjects, as we know).

Our little pixie house

Back to the yard. The first morning I arrived, it had rained (it was subsequently to do this almost every morning), albeit not serious UK type rain but rain enough to sodden the ground and it was like a quagmire. The land was a sort of white clay which stuck to your shoes and thence to the ladder to get onto the deck and of course onto the deck. We were having none of this, so the mate valiantly sacrificed her old T shirt (well, it was mine originally, but she forgets that) to put down onto the deck as a sort of doormat.

I looked at the hull and was pretty pleased with it, but I had fallen a little ill a few days before and still felt a bit low in energy, so the yard gave me a quote for sanding the hull (to remove old antifoul) which was acceptable and within budget. I got them to do it. Two of them showed up with heavy duty dry sanders and got started. Dry sanding antifoul, I thought, mmm… if that was done in the UK you’d probably find yourself up against the Supreme Court (because of all the toxic dust being released). Nevertheless, they did it, but more than once I had to stop them going through the barrier coat – I couldn’t take my eyes off them in this regard, as if the barrier coat is breached then you would have problems down the line… I’m pleased that the yard referred to all this as a light sand, because I certainly wouldn’t want a medium one. I think if they did such a thing as a heavy one, there would be no boat left!

A very tired and blue Skip after finishing the sanding!

Afterwards I went to the office and was told that the consumables used (which were charged separately) included a scaffold tower, tape for the water line and other bits and pieces. I told them that there was no scaffold tower in sight and in fact they had stood on a beer crate, plus they went nowhere near the water line (I had to do that) and thus no tape was used. The bill was quickly amended!

The days went by after that, one blending into another. I would head off to the yard about 0745 and the mate would join me around 0930 after sorting out our room, making lunch and buying some water on the way (as the water in the yard wasn’t potable and an interesting shade of brown!). We faired the hull, added any epoxy where we though necessary and even where it wasn’t, just for good measure. I sanded and repainted the boot stripe and in the mornings I’d touch up the varnish inside where it’d worn a little. So on and on each day went until we were ready for antifouling.

Our antifoul came in a royal blue or black colour. Royal blue isn’t a Stargazer colour and neither is black, but the two mixed together made a decent job of things. Unfortunately the best mix was 50/50 but we’d got more blue than black so the first coat or two, especially on the keel and rudder were blue. Nevertheless, we got on with it and made short work of it. Actually, we made too short work of it as we didn’t really wait the stated number of hours before re-application (we never have before and this is usually OK with antifoul) but maybe this one was low in VOCs as it didn’t seem to dry very easily, possibly not helped by me refusing to buy antifoul thinners and using white spirit instead. However, Stargazer did look very smart with her freshly done hull and new boot stripe – we were very pleased with ourselves and also attracted more than one comment about how hard we’d worked and how good the job was, which was very nice…

We also attracted attention with the mate’s choice of antifoul for the prop. There are all manner of potions that can be painted on propellers and some owners spend thousands of pounds/dollars on this. The mate isn’t convinced that anything works so had done some research into the use of egg whites – yep, just egg whites and no yolk! The online sailing community appeared to have some success with this so we decided to give this budget option a go. The only problem was that eggs seemed to be scarce in the shops of Tyrell Bay. After a fruitless shopping expedition someone on a neighbouring boat on the hard gave us some eggs as long as we promised to keep him updated on the success (or otherwise) of the eggsperiment. The mate went ahead painting ten coats of egg white on the prop and feeding the yolks to a very appreciative stray puppy in the yard. At the last check it seemed to be working. We’ll keep you posted!

A very tired mate and the newly egged prop

When the yard staff moved the supports so we could finish our antifouling job I made them put some plastic sheet between pad and support, just in case… It was needed as when the lift came to re-launch us, some of the paint under the supports did come off a little, but we managed to roll some more on. Anitfoul is a very odd paint, I’m sure that if it were possible a boat could be painted underwater! Certainly people paint between tides in the UK when just drying out on a pile – I’ve done this myself and it didn’t have any negative effects…

Stargazer ready to be launched again – check the shine!

On the day of our launch, I went to the office to confirm our time. ‘You’re not on the list’ came the reply. ‘I have to be’ I said, ‘we’d booked this months ago and I told the yard manager yesterday just to confirm’. Long, Caribbean type discussions resumed and in the end, I went to find the yard manager who told me that he’d ‘do me a favour’ and ‘fit me in’, but we had to hang around all day as it might be short notice. Eventually he said to me, ‘OK, you’re next’ and along came the hoist, the slings went around the hull and Stargazer was lifted into the air, manoeuvred over to the launch area and lowered down. Now, in the Caribbean, it’s not the same as the UK, the line handlers shout but don’t listen and you are told where to get onboard at the last minute. In our case, this was at the bow. Picture the scene – Stargazer swinging in the hoist, line handlers nowhere to be seen and the mate trying to fend the bow off the concrete wall of the dock. That was the moment when I said to myself no way am I coming back to this yard – ever! It was, to put it mildly, a total joke… To cut a longer story a little shorter, we managed to find a couple of line handlers and we got onboard. The line handlers walked us, at speed, to the end of the dock and let go without any warning. Thank goodness the engine worked fine and I had an inkling that this was about to happen…

Stargazer looking smart with her new, bespoke antifoul :)

Another night on the ‘rock solid’ pontoon followed before we left and anchored out in the bay for a couple of nights before checking out and leaving Tyrell Bay (we won’t be rushing back)…

Stargazer looks very good after all the work and the only slight issue is that the hoists slings (they didn’t have the protective sheet on them, as we were rushed in) had scraped off a little of the proper colour antifoul leaving a couple of small stripes of the blue, but it’s a long way underwater and unless heeling a lot, no one will notice!

After living onboard for so long I was very excited about the prospect of staying ashore with aircon, a proper shower, plenty of space etc etc. The room was a little more compact than I expected (it was a bit of a pixie house) but did have an almost proper shower and aircon that worked. Skip prefers the ambient temperature to be a little warmer than I do so after some discussion we agreed to have the windows open and the fan on for the first night. Even with our earplugs in the fan turned out to be the noisiest fan in the world and, in addition, all the open windows allowed the sounds of barking dogs, music and a very exuberant cockerel to penetrate our sleep. From the second night onwards we closed the windows and went with the aircon. Sadly this couldn’t block out the cockerel that started crowing at 0300 (it doesn’t start getting light until about 0530) and went for it pretty much every hour after that.

After a couple of days rustling up lunch as quickly as I could to keep the ants out of our sandwiches I asked the owner for some ant powder. After a healthy dose was sprinkled at the edge of the worktop and all foodstuffs moved to the fridge things improved. However, this did minimise space in the fridge for after work beers! I was also excited about not having to cook and eating out for ten nights. Google maps had revealed a plethora of restaurants along the seafront so I thought there would be plenty of choice and we might even visit a different place every night. Tyrell Bay is a bit scruffy (which is fine) but the majority of the restaurants (the ones which were actually open) didn’t seem to have a matching price tag. Anyhow, we found a couple of places that we alternated between so we didn’t go hungry. After ten nights in the pixie house I was excited to get back to Stargazer :)