I walked the 10km to the Airport to pick up Zissi and we took a taxi back. At the airport I had met Gerd who I had got to know in French Guiana. He was also expecting a crew. Unfortunately that crew turned out to be more work for him than sailing single handed but that is another story.
My laundry was still hanging out to dry in the local bar so Zissi and I (unbelievably happy) had a few beers, picked up my laundry and then rowed over to the boat. It was already dark then.
There was still too much wind and waves forecast for the next few days so we explored the island. We went to the beach at Grand Anse, visited the market and the city of St. George’s and the Concord waterfall. We had wanted to hike further to the next waterfall but because of the amount of rain the path was unwalkable. We took small buses to all these excursions. They are really 9 seaters with an extra small bench in the back and I counted 20 of us one time. If someone in the back wants to exit, everybody needs to get out and then everybody gets back in. All this is accompanied by very loud music.
We met new friends from Austria who were also friends of Andi and Kudi’s and hung out with them a few evenings and tasted our first rum punch. I didn’t think I would like it so much but I was wrong. It is something I could get used to. On Tuesday we had moved Amy into a small marina (The Cove) which was very comfortable. They had showers and water and a small restaurant (yes, they also had rum punch) and we enjoyed it a lot.
Our dinghy was subject to some remarks like “it’s cute”… my reply “it’s perfect”. I have started to develop a certain pride in having the smallest boat everywhere I go.
We took a walk to Hog Island which was also very quiet and beautiful. The weather forecast was opening up a window for Saturday. On Friday we went back into town for some grocery shopping and just made it to the chandlery before they closed in order to by some important spares.
I was happy with what we had bought and also with the price. Everything is really expensive over here and these prices seemed about the same as at home.
Just as we left the chandlery and they locked after us I saw on the bill that we had paid 200 US $, not EC $, which would have been about 70€. So we had actually paid three times more than I had thought. I was unbelievably annoyed but luckily Zissi found it rather funny and there was nothing we could do anyway.
We took off early the next morning. The trip was around 40 nautical miles, so we were hoping to arrive before dark after about 8 hours. It took us about 20 hours. I had not thought that Amy there would be a whole forest sticking to Amy’s underside. We also had a lot more current against us than forecast and so we were hardly making more than 1.5 knots the whole time. If that wasn’t frustrating enough, we got sucked into the channel between the two islands by a 4-5 knot current and could to nothing (neither sail nor motor gave us enough propulsion) and so we were transported west towards some nasty coral reefs and rocks.
Luckily we found an opening in the rocks through which we could sail and then we had a while of easy going in the lee of Ronde Island. It was dark by now and only to make life even a bit more interesting the squalls passed over us with 35knots leaving me soaking wet in the cockpit and Amy even another 10 miles further west from our destination. It took another 8 hours to tack our way back.
The bay was very crowded and at first I didn’t want to go in and wait for daylight. But then I decided, it was probably better to get stuck in a mooring line or hit an anchored ship than falling asleep and ending up on the rocks. So we nosed our way into the bay and after our eyes had become accustomed to all the lights and the dark sea surface it wasn’t so bad. We found a spot in Tyrell Bay at 3 a.m. and were pretty exhausted.
The next morning I dove for 2 1/2 hours to clean Amy’s hull. After that we took a walk to the unbelievably beautiful Paradise beach. We hung out with friends and on the next morning cleared out of Grenada (Cariacou belongs to the state of Grenada) to leave for St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Union Island would be our destination.
