Fresh pressed recruits
A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back
Sam and Alex Fortescue
Tue 4 Jan 2011 23:23
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A new batch of pressed men (and women) are on their
way as I type to bolster the dwindling crew of Summer Song. Celia and Andy -
both friends from Edinburgh days - have landed and are busy negotiating
Grenadian bureaucracy at the immigration desk. Jesse, Will and the little Twoo
returned to the chilly climes whence they came a few days ago, so we've been
shorthanded ever since.
While we wait for our crew, we're moored up to a
rickety pontoon in Grenada's capital city, St George's. The city is on the west
coast around a huge natural lagoon, which our guide marks as a perfect
anchorage. Of course, it's eight years out of date now, and a whopping
superyacht marina has been dropped in to cover most of the formner anchorage,
onliging yachts to pay a fortune to stay the night instead of dropping the hook
for free. We managed to anchor up in thick grey mud nonetheless last night, but
came in to rewater and connect to the mains while we did some food
shopping.
We're poised now for an early departure to sail up
to Carriacou, the next large island north of Grenada. Technically it's a
'Grenadine' but the Grenadine islands are carved up between Grenada and St
Vincent, so we're not actually leaving the country just yet. In the same chain,
there's Bequia (which everyone raves about), Mustique and Tobago Cays, where
tremendous snorkelling abounds. This in itself will be a treat, as nowhere we've
anchored so far has been able to offer visibility more than a couple of yards,
or fish bigger than the tiny tropical beasts you see in aquariums.
It's going to be good to get the sails up again and
get a good pace up - enough to wipe the light coating of green algae off the
hull. Happily, there's been no sight of the fearsome polyps we picked up around
the Cape Verdes, since Thomas, the skipper of ARC boat Honningpupp, scraped them
off our hull in return for getting his fridge going again mid-Atlantic. but we
haven't sailed more than five miles in nearly two weeks, and I know Summer Song
is keen for a good canter round the park as well...
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