Moving On

Happy New Year to anyone reading this. It has been rather quiet and somewhat relaxing here. After the big push to get the major projects done it is nice to take a break. Not that nothing has been happening. Cori has been busy making covers for our fuel and water jugs. We carry extra fuel and water on the deck and the ultraviolet is harsh on the containers. She has some material that she uses, it lasts several years and this is the year to replace it. She is able to sew since I have been running the generator often. More often then I like but we are still using more power then the solar panels and wind generator can provide.

The winds have been blowing and most cruisers are staying put, us included. There is no reason to go out and get beat up. The beach at Hog Island is a short dinghy ride and we have been joining the group that congregates there. We also found that the restaurant in the boat yard next to us has a happy hour every Friday. Two for one beers and $1 wings. We have been going over since with the exchange rate it is an inexpensive evening. Usually the bill comes to about $40 EC which is about $14.80 US. We have made a couple of trips out and about: dinghying to other bays, bus to town for shopping and sightseeing (I love going to the local markets), music and entertainment at a variety of places depending on the evening. There is a large cruising community in Grenada and every morning the various activities are announced. We participated in one of the hashes our last weekend here. A hash is an event that involves a hike along a marked trail with a party following with about a hundred “hashers” participating. We brought our friend Sperry’s daughter, Alexa and her friend with since she had joined us in previous years and we got a chance to catch up and say good-bye. Overall it has been a relaxing and enjoyable way to spend our last time in Grenada.

Finally the winds moderated and it was time to move on. Boats that come into Grenada get a thirty day clearance and we were close to the thirty days. In the past I have had to pay for an extension just to leave a couple of days later. This year the timing worked out. On Monday, the 20^th, we pulled anchor and moved into the marina to top off the water tanks. After that we motored out of the bay and moved around to the West side of the island to anchor outside of St George, the islands capital. The next day we took the dinghy into the main harbor for a look at the town from the water then stopped for lunch with a couple we had been on the hash with. After lunch we checked out of the country with Immigration and Customs and went back to the boat to prepare to leave in the morning.

It’s time to move on, we have a lot of miles to go this year. We have visited several of the islands nearby so we decided to make a bigger jump. We were going to do an overnight sail to Rodney Bay on the north end of St Lucia, about 150 miles. We pulled anchor about 8:00 am and started out. The winds were forecast to be light and they did not disappoint, except when they were too light to sail and we had to motor or when they were blowing 15-20 knots kicking up a swell we had to pound through. The winds are light while in the wind-shadow of the island and then kick up as they funnel through the openings between the islands and then you also have to deal with current and tides. All went well except at one point when my hat blew off. Most would say “it’s just a hat, let it go”. Not us, we do hat overboard drills instead of planned man overboard drills. It was now time to recover the hat. The hat incidentally is an $80 Tilly hat and this is not the first time it has been recovered. Once it was back onboard we were off again. We saw only a couple of ships during the trip and very few cruising boats. We arrived in Rodney Bay and dropped anchor at 10:00 am covering a distance of 136 nautical miles in 26 hours. We arrived just in time for a rain shower to wash the salt off the deck. We got a hold of our friends on Dreamcatcher and found they were just waiting for the shower to end and they were leaving for Martinique. After the rain shower we dinghied into the marina to check in and pick up some very important provisions. Unfortunately the Customs and Immigration offices were closed for lunch and would not reopen until 1:30. We went to the Duty Free shop to make arrangements for our purchase once the paperwork was complete. We were planning on checking in and out at the same time, leaving in the morning, and we needed the check out paperwork to buy the rum. I have found a favorite spiced rum made in St Lucia that I wanted to stock up on. Another disappointment, they were out of my rum. The store next door had it but a little more expensive. Saying what the heck, I bought five bottles and we decided we didn’t need to check in, we were pulling anchor and leaving. St Lucia is a beautiful island with a lot of wonderful people. As everywhere there are also the not so wonderful people. Rodney Bay now has the reputation of more dinghies stolen then any where else in the Caribbean and the officials are doing nothing to stop or prevent it. As expected cruisers are bypassing or keeping their visits short.

It was 1:30, time for the offices to open when we pulled our anchor and sailed the 20 miles across to St Anne, Martinique. At 5:30 we are anchored next to our friends on Arctic Vixen and talking to Dreamcatcher. The next morning we go ashore to check in. The French Islands are the easiest. You bring your paperwork to wherever they have set up the computer, some places it is a shop, a restaurant or tourist info location. We filled out the single form, printed it, the clerk stamps it and collects their fee. In this case three euros at a small cafe. Done, you are now free to wander aimlessly about the island. And wander we did, we joined a group of cruisers going for a hike. It turned out to be more then we had planned. We hiked across the island and followed the shore around the south side of the island. Stopping at Saline Beach, a very beautiful beach, where we met up with others who had opted for the shorter hike. After lunch we continued on back to town, with this leg passing through the nude beach. We won’t discuss the sights that can’t be unseen. Back to town we rewarded ourselves with ice cream. It turned out to be an eleven mile hike, more then we are used to.

Yesterday, Saturday, we took the bus into La Marin for shopping and we stocked up on french provisions. Somehow that ended up being an all day affair. Today is a quiet Sunday with Cori off with friends while I run the generator to bring the batteries back up and recommission the water maker. We will be back to making water rather then buying it. At the grocery store we saw cruisers with carts loaded with bottled water and can’t imagine where we would put it and what they do with the empty plastic.

In case anyone is interested, my project to eliminate the rattling inside the mast is a complete success. No matter how much we rock the cables are totally silent. Amazing what you can do with pool noodles.

That will be it for now, I am sorry that I don’t have the bandwidth to include pictures this time. Also I am having trouble with the No Foreign Lands map feature but I will get it sorted out. That is the link over on the right side that shows where we are on a map and the route we have taken to get there.

Until next time, Fair Winds and Following Seas.