A very festive Festive Season in Bequia.

A very festive Festive Season in Bequia.

We left Carriacou on Tuesday 15^th of December, sailing in company with Mahalo to meet Paw Paw for Christmas.  They will be leaving on the world ARC so this will be the last time we see them for a few years. As we sailed past the Sisters, Uwe (our engineer) phoned to say the injector had finally arrived but he thinks it is wrong again! We decided not to turn back as this is the only decent weather forecast for going north until after Christmas. Also we suspect not a lot would be done about it over the Festive Season anyway.

We spotted a pod of pilot whales south west of Bequia and called Mahalo to tell them to look out for them. Then we heard My Way call Mahalo. Obviously we were too far away for her to reach us and was checking if we were heading for Bequia too. With Paw Paw’s friends on Ti Sento meeting in Bequia as well we now have 5 boats together for Christmas.

A Deceptively calm anchorage

After snorkelling to check the anchor and spotting a juvenile Jack Knife fish and a turtle, Lew from Suzanne came to meet us, they are friends of Exit Strategy. And then there were 6! We all decided on a quiet night and to meet up for sundowners on the beach the next afternoon. 

Sundowners on the beach

After checking in, we met Platinas crew on the dingy dock – we had met them previously in Carriacou. And then there were 7! Back on Galene we saw Infini re- anchoring ahead of us. And then there were 8! It was time to get ready for sundowners when Maia arrived and anchored ahead of us. And then there were 9!

SVG Coastguard to the rescue - This boat was one of many towed back and put on a mooring or re-anchored by the coastguard over Xmas. They also rescued several dinghies that went 'walkabout'. - Well done the coastguard!

Our anchor had dragged a bit at first but now we were well dug in. Another boat dragged that evening and this set the pattern for our entire stay. It was very windy by now, 25 - 30 knots with stronger gusts and boats were dragging all over including a small freighter and one of the cruise ships. Fortunately there were only two collisions (that we know about). Unfortunately one crashed into Maia but luckily no damage.

We had nearly three weeks of great fun, in spite of the strong wind and getting paranoid every time a new boat came in hoping they were not going to anchor in front of one of us! The ladies all joined in Noodling (water aerobics) and our last morning we persuaded the men to join us which was hilarious. They just don’t seem to have the same sense of balance as the ladies. Lews comment was the best “This is a lot harder than watching you from the boat.” 

The Xmas lights

On the 19^th it was the turning on of the Christmas lights. In ‘Bequia This Week’ it said at “about 6:30pm” so we all met ashore at about six. We hung about near the stage at the Almond tree (Where all events in Bequia take place) watching a lot of activity like wiring and connecting sound equipment. With it looking as though not much was going to happen very soon, we decamped to the new bar just over the road.

We had a few drinks and sampled the street food on sale and watched everyone wandering around. Of course, there were many children all dressed up and excited. Eventually the little ones were being carried and then falling asleep! About 9pm the compere came on and after a prayer from the vicar and thanks to the organisers she said “We are going to move on to the lighting ceremony shortly.” Then followed about an hours’ worth of speeches from everyone involved! All the locals did not seem to mind at all and clapped and cheered. Eventually the children sang a carol and the lights came on at about 10pm! They were very good for such a tiny community. Then we had a band and we left at about 11:00 with the party still in full swing. We just felt sorry for all the little ones who had not seen the lights come on.

Christmas Eve we had booked to go to the Frangipani who were doing a BBQ with a steel band. It was a very good evening, meat or fish nicely cooked and a fabulous array of salads buffet style.

Xmas lunch - Caribbean style

Christmas Day we all went to the Fig Tree restaurant. We were joined by another boat with a family on board as well. They were closed but Cheryl said we could use her veranda area and even her BBQ if we wanted. We had decided to do a traditional Christmas dinner with everyone bringing a dish or two. We had ham, turkey, chicken, pigs in blankets, roast potatoes and an array of vegetables. Cheryl and her grandson joined us which was nice. To complete the meal we had three different desserts, a real feast in a lovely venue overlooking the sea. As a small thank you to Cheryl we collected some cash to go towards her Reading Groups.

After more sundowners on the beach and on various boats it was Paw Paws last day. We went down to Lower Bay to De Reef where they have a band on Sunday afternoons. A fun farewell and then time to organise New Years Eve!

We started at The Plantation House, recently reopened, with pizza for supper and then a few drinks on Mahalo, before a few of us decamped to Galene to watch a really good firework display over the bay. They seemed to be using a few presumably out of date flares as well as some of them lay burning on the water for quite a while! A bit dangerous considering how many boats there were in the bay.

A variety of boats in the bay.

There was a constantly changing backdrop of interesting boats in and out of the bay, old and new. We looked up a few including one of our favourites we had seen before in the Virgin Islands. It was James Dyson’s Nahlin, a small retro cruise ship built in 1930. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor had sailed on her. Another was a lovely 4 masted barque, Sea Cloud built in 1931.

Tenacious arrives in Bequia

Gradually all our friends were leaving, mostly heading north. We, of course have to go back to Carriacou! Leaving on Tuesday morning, the anchor windlass was not working! Richard investigated for ages and discovered that it was the solenoid. He had to haul the chain up by hand and add another job to the list!

We had a brisk sail down to Chatham Bay 32 miles in 5 ½ hours. Not bad. We saw tropic birds and red footed boobies, which you only see off shore but no whales this time. Chatham is a lovely calm bay with very clear water and many pelicans, brown boobies and terns fishing. We want to spend more time here but not now. Raising the anchor next morning, the winch worked again! Now we can cross a job off the list for a change!

A glorious sail south

We sailed 13 miles to Tyrell Bay, Carriacou in 2 ¼ hours and anchored easily – it almost feels like coming home now! Richard went to check in and meet Uwe and check the injector....... You guessed it, it is wrong again!

Grenada Island Tour November 2015

Grenada Island Tour November 2015

With a mixture of history, art and agriculture Cutty’s tour was one of the most interesting we have done.

St Georges from the hilltop

A drive up the hill behind St Georges showed us a beautiful view of the Carenage and port. We were below Forts Matthew and Frederick which the Americans tried to bomb in 1983 but instead bombed the mental hospital! Below was the prison with an extensive farm has been in use since the 1700’s!

Down the hill we passed the cricket stadium built by the Chinese. At the opening ceremony the Police band played the Taiwanese National Anthem. Bet that did not go down very well. It was also severely career limiting for the bandmaster as well! The road was cut into the cliff and we stopped to see ancient petroglyphs right at the roadside. 

A modern 'petroglyph'!

The tradition is still continuing as there were many modern ones as well. We continued through Happy Hill, the birthplace of Lewis Hamiltons grandfather and further on the home villages of Johnson Beharry, VC and the Mighty Sparrow, Calypso King of the World. Most villages had hand painted murals dedicated to celebrities or politicians.

Cutty with a coco pod

Cutty would stop now and then to show us various plants and describe their uses. Oil nut, used in cooking. The inside of prickly pear leaves can be used as a shampoo and body wash – I only knew it as a fruit. Nutmeg is of course the crop synonymous with Grenada which has healing properties as well as culinary. Soursop, a rather ugly knobbly fruit is a newly discovered cancer cure and is taking over as Grenadas biggest crop. It makes a delicious healthy juice as well.

Wherever you looked there were crops. Most farming is mixed where crops are grown in layers with taller trees like coconut providing shade for others. 

Typical mixed farming

Cocoa is a big crop here too. During Hurricane Ivan the cocoa trees lost all their fruit but the trees were undamaged and continued to fruit. Many of the nutmeg trees were damaged and Grenada still has not reached pre-Ivan production levels even though there seem to be nutmeg trees everywhere.

There are citrus trees, star fruit creepers, guavas, bananas, breadfruit, avocado, cassava, pawpaws, turmeric, maize, sweet potato and more. It is incredibly lush. Cutty said no one in Grenada need go to bed hungry, there is always something in season.

Fresh coconuts at the roadside

Leaving the coast we went east to visit the Concord Falls, a dramatic two part waterfall. There is another section higher up but we did not have time to walk up. Even here in the highlands we were surrounded by edible plants as well as the beautiful forest flowers.

Concord falls

Next stop was the Goyave nutmeg processing station. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside. It is really just a huge shed and most of the work is done by hand by women. Above them is a mechanical nut cracker and the nuts come down a central wooden chimney. The women sit all around this and sort the nuts into sacks of whole or broken. They remove any shell remaining and the shells all go in sacks too. They get paid per sack of whole or broken nutmegs. The sacks are hand stitched and stencilled with destinations world wide. Grenada produces the words finest whole nutmeg. 

The view from the exclusive Petty Anse hotel - yes they did let us in!

After a brief stop at the Petit Anse Hotel to see the lovely garden, waves crashing on the beach and a view all the way to Carriacou our next stop was Sauteurs also known as Caribs leap. 

The gardens at Petite Anse

When the French took over the island the last few Caribs leapt off the cliffs to their death rather than surrender to the French. A sad tale, sadly repeated on several other islands.

View towards Carib's leap

We had a delicious lunch at Helenas restaurant just next to the Post Office. Her veranda overhangs the sea just around the corner from Caribs Leap so we had a lovely view and a lovely sea breeze. Chicken, turkey and fish with all the usual island side dishes was served buffet style accompanied by Passion fruit juice – of course, you could buy a beer at the bar – and rounded off with nutmeg ice cream and melon. This was less than £10.00 for the two of us!

Recycled cannon - as a traffic bollard

We headed south to Arthurs Seat (!!) and the Grenada Chocolate Factory which has been a cocoa processing plant since 1774 but only recently began making chocolate. Very small factory but very nice chocolate!  Four little bats jockeyed for position over the door as we entered for our tour! 

Bats by the door!

No one seemed to mind them at all! Cocoa trees grew all around with other crops below like everywhere else including pumpkins, calaloo and lemon grass. The cocoa fruits grow up to about 20cm with many beans inside. Cutty broke one open and we all had a taste. They have a gelatinous coating over each seed which you suck off, slightly tart but very nice, a bit like a Litchee. They only make dark chocolate in a few flavours, nutmeg being one, of course! 

There have been huge amounts of Sargassum weed in the Caribbean this year and piles wash up on the beaches. Here they collect it and mix it with the pods from the cocoa which are slightly acidic. This counteracts the salt in the seaweed and makes very good compost. During the turtle nesting season, cruisers had been helping local wild life rangers to clear the weed off the beaches as the turtles were unable to move the weed to dig their nests.

The old Rivers distillery

Rivers Rum Factory was next, we went there last time we were in Grenada but it was still interesting. They have been producing rum since 1785 and still only make enough for local consumption. 

Pretty old technology - but it still works

The white rum they produce is 150 proof! It is too high an alcohol content to take on an aeroplane, so they make a 130 proof for the tourists! Both are rocket fuel! We had a tasting of course and their latest product is a chocolate rum! 

A walk into the rainforest

Back into the interior we had a little forest walk at Grand Etang through tree ferns, huge trees and colourful heliconias to look for Mona monkeys. We did not see any but when we got to the end of the walk and the bar – naturally – the barman said we had just missed them. They are not indigenous, once again escaped pets but have become naturalised. They are hunted but this area is a reserve so they are quite tame.

Typical country house

We drove back through Grenville, the second biggest town in Grenada and it was certainly very busy. A lot of the businesses here are run by Syrians. Not recent immigrants but descendants of Syrian settlers from the 1800’s. 

Contrast a restored plantation house

As usual every bit of history raises more questions than answers. Back to the yacht club for a last drink before making our weary way back to Galene after a fascinating day.

Did we do all that in a day?

Grenada again November 2015

Grenada again  November 2015

Having spent part of September and the whole of October back in Europe having a lovely time visiting friends and family it is time to head for sunnier climes.

Waiting to leave Gatwick and being delayed by fog for about 3 hours was something of a shock. So was arriving in Grenada to be faced with a week of torrential rain and strong winds and not much chance of getting our outside jobs done. Too wet outside and too hot below as the driving rain meant every hatch and porthole was shut!

Everything soaking wet!

It really felt like we were ‘going afloat’ even though we had only been ‘laid up’ in the water for 6 weeks. Systems needed re commissioning, we had a light coating of mould on some surfaces, mainly due to the extremely high humidity while we were away. We wanted to get our jobs done and be away from the marina, but not before we managed to arrange an island tour and book our engine in for a rebuild in Carriacou.

We had a fun reunion with Paw Paw, Exit Strategy, Star Charger and Somewhere. At the marina restaurant on the second night, which serves really delicious food, I had Callaloo stuffed chicken breast with a divine creamy sauce. Most boats are off soon, north or west, so we will not see some for a long time. We met Puddlejumper in the marina and Stuart from Sea Gypsy popped in for a visit so it was quite sociable in spite of the rain and all the jobs

An unusually calm day in the marina

Our jobs list just seemed to get longer no matter how hard we worked! We declined invitations to lunch, jazz evenings, hikes and other social gatherings preferring to work on our list. Eventually we fitted our new solar panels, repaired the cockpit grating, climbed the mast to silence the wind turbine nose cone, fitted our new CD radio, fitted a new seawater tap in the galley, serviced the outboard, inflated the dinghy and cleaned the boat inside and out. The only advantage of the rain was we found the leak into the cockpit locker via the gas locker! Unfortunately it was too wet to fix it for several days!

Bailing the dinghy again - Note the floating petrol tank!

While cleaning we ended up replacing some headlining that fell down and discovered a piece of canvass that was lurking in a locker that made an ideal shade cloth. We also found a tin of Ravioli from Lidl in Gosport, we haven’t quite worked up the courage to eat it yet! But it’s got to go!

Finally we had to replace our old BBQ purchased from a camping shop in England, after 3 years it was completely rusted away. We now have a shiny stainless steel unit clamped on the aft rail fuelled by a propane cylinder, minimum mess and fuss, maximum braai experience! Hang the expense!

Enjoying our new Braai!

The marina has a lovely pool so some evenings we managed to quit work early enough for a swim before dark and enjoy their beautiful gardens.

The Carenage St Georges -  from the Nutmeg restaurant

We did a lot of provisioning as there is a good variety of supermarkets in Grenada and we had tried to empty the boat as much as possible before we left. We also plan to cruise the Grenadines for a while and many of the anchorages will have no shops. We are really looking forward to the peace and quiet – Grenada always feels hectic.

Having been marina bound for a week longer than expected we eventually managed to get away. It is always a heart stopping moment wondering if our engine will start. Thank goodness we now have the spares for the Illustrious Uwe to finally fix it. Start it did, eventually, thank goodness! (TF! for our Irish readers).

We had another week at anchor in Martins Bay, just outside St Georges. We had planned to go round to Prickly Bay just to experience “Camp Grenada” to the full, but southerly swells made us decide against it. It is apparently a swelly anchorage anyway and as it is open to the south it would not be pleasant. 

We sorted out all our odd jobs like posting the Navtex back to England for repair, getting watch batteries fitted in town, a last nice haircut by Michelle at the Spa in the marina, organised our Island tour and final shopping. At least out here we can swim off the boat, watch the boobies and terns, enjoy the sunsets and have a braai (BBQ).

The Grenada Island Tour will be a separate blog to follow, as it was so interesting.

With a forecast of Easterly 15kt winds and 3-5ft seas we are on our way back to Carriacou where Uwe has his workshop. Armed with new injector tips and sleeves, a full gasket kit and Uwe’s workshop and engineering skills we are confident we can fix just about anything.

Why does the forecast never play ball? We end up motor sailing most of the way. Carriacou is NE from Grenada and the current sets you east, so why is the wind now NE 20-25Kts and the 5ft waves are the small ones? Our tired old engine struggles to push this heavy boat at more than 4.5 Kts against wind, waves and current. Arriving just before dark we anchor in Tyrrel bay near the back of the fleet. Time for some serious engine work and a bit of R&R! 

Choppy seas off Diamond rock

What seemed like an age to get here in fact was only seven and a half hours, the log read 39 miles, exactly the same as on the way down to Grenada. An average speed of 5.2 Kts. About what we always seem to make. (We passage plan at 125 miles a day)

Uwe our mechanic wastes no time in removing the cylinder head for some time in the workshop. The injectors are pulled and are seriously worn, the valves are removed and reveal some badly pitted seats. Nothing unrepairable and it seems the diagnosis regarding the engine was correct. The bottom end is fine so we can put it all back together. Not so fast! We have a problem with one of the new injector nozzles. It appears to have been incorrectly manufactured so won’t work. It will have to be sent back to the UK for a replacement. 

Headless in Carriacou!

The decision is made to rebuild the engine using one old injector so at least the engine will work while we wait for the replacement.

Moment of truth time, start it up is the command! I turn the key and verrumm! A perfect start, a few adjustments and we are almost ready to go apart from the raw water pump which has mysteriously developed a leak. This pump was replaced 18 months age when we had the engine work done in Antigua. The skipper is not happy. Removing and disassembling the pump reveals the tension spring on the water seal has rusted away. Rust, surely not? This component is immersed in seawater so it should be made of a material that is resistant to this environment? Fortunately we have spares for rebuilding this pump on board.

Another morning doing a job that was not originally on the list! Rebuilding the pump also revealed a water hose that had been abraded by the alternator belt. The hose is one of the few spares we don’t have so we have to order it from the chandlers in Grenada. Yet another delay, oh the joys of cruising, fixing your boat in paradise! Still we have discovered another excellent 10 year old locally made rum. It just has to be sipped slowly over ice while watching another perfect sunset!

Now we wait, at anchor, for the new injector to arrive, fettling the boat and seeing a bit of Carriacou.