After a leisurely breakfast, cereal and fig bananas, we headed off to Carriacou leaving Union Island as planned, achieving a perfect three point turn in a 15 knot wind, between very scary reefs, and Bob letting go of the buoy at exactly the right angle of swing.  I did my passage planning as per the Book of Day Skipper but couldn’t understand why the chart said it was 35 miles but we could see it very clearly in the not too far distance.  I had misread the scale of the map and was out by fivefold.  Doh!  It was a mere skip and a jump and since we would have to bring in the sails as soon as we had got them out we opted to motor across (and charge the batteries, Bob is still obsessing about his amperage).

We arrived in Hillsborough, named after a plantation owner not anything to do with football, and parked in a virtually empty bay discovering rapidly quite why it was so lacking in yachts, it was rather rolly.  We decided to hang in there because we had to immigrate and check in to customs and this was the only town to do so and roller coastered our way into the dodgy commercial dock in the dinghy where we tied up and leapt out, except I don’t really do leaping, on the crest of a wave and tottered up the rickety steps that looked alarmingly as if they would burst at any moment.  Immigration was easy to find but it was closed for lunch so we ambled down the road and grabbed a bite to eat, jerk chicken and pork with macaroni, rice and peas, the chef was Jamaican, which was rather tasty.  We decided to check out a restaurant with a good write up for this evening, “booking essential”, only to discover that it had been closed for several years, as had the plan B choice.  Such is the Caribbean.  At least the Immigration office did actually open when they said they would although the young man behind the desk was supremely superior and intoned rather sarcastically when Bob said our next port of call was Grenada.  “I think you will find that you are checking into Grenada so how can your next port of call BE Grenada”.   We made up an answer just to get him off our back.  He then did seem to want to know where in Grenada we were heading so we made that up as well.  It did the trick.

Forms duly completed in triplicate, we then decided to take a taxi tour of the island with Dunstan Bristol, I hate to think how his family came by that surname, thinking that most island tours take at most an hour. He was an excellent guide and we worked our way round the island seeing: lively villages where they had Shakespearian drum dances, meeting a woman from Yorkshire who had retired to her husband’s home, fresh water ponds still used today, the grand homes of native folk who had gone away to GB and the US and returned with their wealth, built a house and parked their container in the garden, an old tumbledown house typical of a bygone era, incredible views from very high vantage points, an awful lot of goats and sleek cows.  Dunstan had a story to tell at each place.  It was very enlightening.  We didn’t get back until 5:40pm, some four hours later,and seemed to have picked up on the way: a fragrant woman on the way to a rehearsal for a mass Pentecostal gathering tomorrow delivered to the stadium and a big bruiser of an arrogant American who boasted his way back into town.

We left Dunstan and headed back to Windy, receiving a good soaking as we headed boldly into the waves and have decided on a pyjama party evening on board with plenty of beer, because we can.  Cheers!