I will continue to add a selection of the e-mails sent during our travels to give an insight into our time in the Caribbean... but here is a brief summary of our first year on board Alhambra...
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| Map of Caribbean islands |
In summary we
sailed Alhambra 1,830 miles, on 86 days, totalling 397 hours and visited 15
different countries (most of which twice).
In order to visit these countries we had to check in and out of
customs/immigration a total of 57 times (we are planning on writing a book
entitled ‘Customs Officers we have known and loved’. Some of the experiences with these ‘officers’
have been exactly that, an ‘experience’.)
The longest sail
was from the BVI to St Martin, a total of 103 miles and
took 17 hours and concluded in our first ‘night anchor’ as we arrived at 8.30pm. The shortest was only a third of a mile from
Trellis Bay, BVI to Marina Cay BVI. We
have completed two and half night sails.
We have stayed in beautiful, unspoilt, deserted bays and also lived on
board while Alhambra was in a boat yard where the humidity was 100%.
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| 'No Complain' Willy - Bequia |
On our travels we
encountered many attitudes and differences among locals and ‘cruisers’ (as
we are known) but most of our experiences have been very good ones. Some of the sailing has been ‘a breeze’ and
some of it has been ‘a little bit on the difficult side’. We had days of howling wind and other
days with no wind at all. We have been
‘stuck in places for days, even weeks, waiting for ‘weather windows’. We haven’t (yet) run aground, but we did
crash into a bridge (luckily with not much damage).
We’ve had to
speak English (of sorts), French, Spanish and the local ‘Caribbean
dialect’. We always try to use the local
transport, which in some places has been on very old fashioned buses and in
others in modern ‘pick up trucks’ converted to 18 seaters with the loudest
reggae you can imagine.
We’ve been on
trails, treks and hikes; we’ve been up mountains, through rainforest and down
rivers. We’ve been on beaches with
hundreds of people, on beaches with no-one but us and a beach with a WWII tank
on it! We’ve been on ‘turtle watches,
had monkeys eat from our hands, and watched humming birds sip sugar syrup right
in front of our faces. We’ve swam and
snorkelled among rays, turtles and fishes (and just round the boat).
We’ve shopped in
all manner of ‘supermarkets’; the strangest was in the Grenadines where they
often had black plastic bags of ‘chicken parts’ in the freezers. No, we never bought any so I can’t tell what
‘parts’ are included, but we have seen chicken feet and gizzards on sale! We have been taught (verbally) how to catch,
skin, remove the poisonous glands and BBQ a form of Trinidadian rodent! We’ve had ‘dinner parties on board and been
to ‘pot luck’ dinners.
We’ve managed not
to get sunburnt, only had to find a local doctor once and have had hangovers
(but what did you expect). We’ve even
learnt how to play ‘Mexican Train Dominoes’… and it all started on 9th April 2007...
9th April 2007 St Martin - The
first official update from the sunny world of Alhambra.
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| Alhambra and our hire car |
Our adventure began in April 2007. The previous November David had been to St Martin to have a boat survey of Alhambra before we put our money where our mouths were and put our plan in action.
Our first week on
board flew by in an instant. On arrival, we went straight to visit our new
home. There she was, was still sitting in the boat yard, but looking at bit
sorry for herself, she needed a good scrub. A nice young man came along and
offered to give her a good scrubbing for only $150 (inlc materials) and have it
completed before she went back in the water. We thought this was
excellent value and would save either of us having to do this horrible
job. Brilliant! Off we went to find our hotel, and we quickly found
ourselves a place at the bar and enjoyed a bevy or two before hitting the town
– sorry heading for bed at about 10pm. Haven’t been up past 10pm yet…. It
must be an age thing.
Next morning we did all sorts of flying around the island buying everything we needed, especially a dingy and outboard. We tried out a second hand one, which didn’t last its first outing and we had to get a tow back. We immediately went and bought a brand new one. Having collected all the things we needed, we headed back to the boat to see if she had been polished – not yet. Must be a Caribbean time thing.
Thursday morning we provisioned and headed to our nice shiny boat, yes shiny and polished ready to go in the water. Then the fun started, what works, what doesn’t, what goes where, what fits into what space. I am sure eventually everything will have a place and place will have something.
We have also arrived over Easter weekend – and nothing, and I mean nothing – is open all weekend. So we cleaned, tidied, ate, drank and slept – and that was our first week on board.
We have also arrived over Easter weekend – and nothing, and I mean nothing – is open all weekend. So we cleaned, tidied, ate, drank and slept – and that was our first week on board.
15th April 2007 –
second official update...
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| Anchored in the lagoon |
Not much
different to last week really only this week we spent more, mended more, tidied
more and cleaned more, oh and found more things wrong that need to be
fixed. Nothing major just bits and bobs
that need fixing. For the uninitiated,
we spent most of last week on a dock in a boatyard having the rigging
fixed. Here we had the pleasure of
plugging into shore power, yes a very big plug plugged into a big socket on the
shore. However, once the riggers had
finished the work they booted us off the dock and we had to go and find
somewhere to anchor. Anyway the problem
is that we hadn’t got all the batteries fixed up and working along with a very
nice new battery charger and an extremely nice (so I am told by ‘him in doors’)
Battery Monitor Indicator (BMI). This
apparently tells us how much we’ve used, how much we will use and how long it
will take to recharge the batteries. You
see I always thought your BMI told you whether you were over-weight or not….but
what would I know.
We are anchored
in the lagoon and it is much cooler as we are in a constant breeze. However we are in the middle of a lagoon
which is a bit like being in the middle of lake Windemere; everyone uses it for
their watersports and whiz around on their ski jets and the like, so no peace
for the wicked.
Tomorrow we move
to another boatyard and will be having the wind generator fixed up, which will
then give us independent power to the batteries so we won’t need to even hook
up to shore power if we don’t want to, or run the engine (only for the fridge).
David has spent most of the time fiddling and swearing and running around like
a Tasmanian devil – that’s so unlike him!
He’s even been up in the bosun chair to the very top of the mast to fix
the mast light. He sits in the chair and
I hoist him to the top. Nope I’ve not
been up there yet, but will if I have to.
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| Socialising... |
Today we put the
Jenny sail back up which was a bit of an exciting time – yes we shouted at each
other when things weren’t going right, but we got there in the end. Tomorrow we have an early start to get the
last of the bits we need, new anchor, boat numbers for the side, spare water
and fuel containers amongst other things.
When David said we would spend the first 2 weeks shopping this is not
what I expected.
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| St Martin Lagoon lifting bridge |
However, we head
out through the bridge to the Caribbean sea, where we will get to give Alhambra
her first sail to check everything is working properly with regards to
sailing. We then head straight into a
big bay where we go back on the dock til Friday. The first of our guest arrives on Wednesday (not
sure where he’s sleeping at the moment, one of the cabins is completely bare of
all walls and beds where the batteries are being fixed, and the other cabin in
full of the stuff from the battery cabin.
David has promised to have it sorted in time.
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| St Barts town quay |
St Martin to St Bart’s – 14 miles heading South East 127 Deg - Out into
southerly winds which are against us so decide to motor all the way. Two
hours later in quite large swells we arrive in St Barts and take the easy
option of mooring against the town quay (its only €13).
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| An interesting runway |
Sun 22nd April
2007 - St Bart’s on a
Sunday is dead, well it is around the main harbour. We finally get a car
sorted and go for a ride around the island, what a beautiful island she is,
bougainvillea everywhere in every colour imaginable. Lush and green and
very clean, amazingly expensive and exclusive. We head for the beach at
St Jean Baie, just at the end of the runway (an interesting runway at the best
of times). The beach is probably one of the best I have ever been to, the
most amazing coloured water, white sand that tickles your toes and not a stone
or shell in site and to top it all aeroplanes landing and taking off above your
head every half an hour. I mean literally above your head.
Tues 24th April 2007:
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| Bloody Point |
St Bart’s to St Kitts (Basseterre) - 30 miles heading 180 deg - St Kitts and
Nevis are two islands that are part of the same country/government. St
Kitts is supposed to be the sort of ‘working man’s island’ whereas Nevis is the
tourist island. We had a really lovely sail all the way and the weather
was beautiful. The northern end of St Kitts is very mountainous and it
gradually becomes flat at the southern end. The first site you see along
the coast is Brimstone Hill Fortress. Even from the boat you can see the
remains are wonderfully preserved. Heading further south along the island
we go past many remains of sugar plantations, some in ruins, some have clearly
been converted into hotels and restaurants. St Kitts history is a bloody
one, which I discovered reading the guidebook. At ‘Bloody Point’ more
than 2000 natives Caribs were slaughtered by the joint British and French
armies in 1626.
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| Basseterre town |
Finally reaching
the capital of Basseterre we decide to have a night in the marina as the
anchoring places are not good with the swell and make for a rolly night’s
sleep. We clear customs and head into town to check the place out.
It is a strange and quirky place in that it looks very Caribbean British.
Thick grey, stonewalls with brightly coloured wooden tops and roofs. The
buildings have been around for centuries and are now shops and
restaurants. We decide on what looks like a reasonable local restaurant
where the food was very good. Next day, after walking around the town for
a while we came upon St George’s Anglican Church, a huge two steepled English church
set among the palm trees and brightly coloured houses – very surreal.
Wed 25th April
2007: St Kitts, Basseterre to Ballast Bay. 5 miles heading southeast, roughly
an hour’s sail along the coast and we came to Ballast Bay. Nothing there
at all, just us and two other sail boats anchored in the bay.
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| Another calm anchorage |
Thurs 26th April
2007: St Kitts to Nevis -A lovely, seven
mile sail, down to Charlestown on Nevis. We clear through the Port
Authority and head off for some lunch in a very nice café run by an English
lady before shopping and moving the boat further up the coast to a prettier
spot. An early start tomorrow so dinner on board and early to bed.
Fri 27th April
2007: Nevis to Antigua (Jolly Harbour)
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| Not all calm seas |
Sat 28th April
2007. Antigua - Jolly Harbour
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| English Harbour |
Our first guest
left today to stay in a hotel. We head off to customs, immigration and port
authority. Immigration sorted, customs, the official hasn’t turned up yet
and Port Authority don’t work at the weekend! Brilliant, in a port, who’d
of thought that people would want to arrive on a Saturday. After a little
negotiation they allowed our guest to be signed off the boat and agreed that we
could pay the Port Authority when we moved to English Harbour the next
day. The plan was to stay here the day/night, get some boat chores out of
the way and head off to English Harbour.
Sun 29th April
2007. Antigua – English Harbour
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| English Harbour shops |
English Harbour
is amazing – I recommend you find a website and have a look. The
preservation is fantastic; it is peaceful, beautifully kept and very tranquil
with a strange sense that you are stepping back in time to Nelson’s era.
It actually feels like you are there in the time, you can hear in your mind the
sounds of the sailors. All of the original buildings have been maintained
and are being used as shops, restaurants, hotels.
9th
May 2007 St Vincent and beyond
Time for a brief update before we set off
again. We are having to take a fairly swift trip through the islands as we
go to meet John and Anne in St Vincent as we have lost about 5 days in
Antigua. We are off to Dominica (Thurs/Fri) then Martinique (St/Sun) then
St Lucia (Mon/Tues) and then onto St Vincent (Wed/Thurs). This gives us a
couple of days in hand to get the boat looking spick and span for when they
arrive.
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| English Harbour |
We had a car out on then Thursday and did a tour of
the island. I wasn’t really looking forward to Antigua but I/we have been
really pleasantly surprised. We got stuck behind a funeral procession of
about 10 cars which ended in a small village. When they arrived at the
church all the cars stopped, everyone got out in their finery (the clothes are
amazing) and wandered slowly into the church. The cars went round the corner
and just stopped – caused a massive traffic jam, but hey, we’re on island
time…..as we got passed we went along one of the main roads which is lined with
mango, lime, coconut and banana trees. You can just stop and pick them
(if you can get David to stop quick enough and not have to walk half a mile
back to get them!)
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| English Harbour Race Week |
Saturday night in English Harbour was a
sight. The end of race week, so all the locals come out and set up
stall. It was like being at a Cambridge festival only with
sunshine. We found a nice Mexican restaurant (cheap, good food, nice view
and free internet). They had some good music playing unfortunately it was
drowned out by the huge stack of speakers set up on the street from the Rasta
Bar, where anything goes, if you get my drift. Speaking to the barman
this happens every year and the speakers get bigger and bigger. It was a
good night tho’, everyone was out, young and old…all the usual stuff at a
festival.
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| Guadeloupe Deshaies (as seen on Death in Paradise BBC) |
Tuesday we headed down the coast to the islands
called Les Saintes. Again another annoying sailing day, either no wind,
wind in the wrong direction or howling gales…..I thought the Caribbean had
standard weather of 10-15 knots, south to south east…..Anyway had a day here,
wandered around, looked at the airport and did the touristy things. It is
a really pretty little island. We are off to send these e-mails now before
another rain shower comes and gets us. Early start tomorrow (about 5am)
to get to the top of Dominica, well that’s the plan.
Thursday 10th May 2007 – Guadeloupe to Dominca
We left Les Saintes, Guadeloupe at about 7.50am and
headed south, it looked like the weather would be against us again. As we
headed out of the bay, we spent 30 minutes avoiding the fishing pots (if you
thought driving around the M25 was hazardous then you have never had to avoid
the fishing pots of Guadeloupe! All the guidebooks warn you about them.
I wouldn’t mind but the choices in the restaurant weren’t that great when it
came to fish)….heading past the various little islands of Les Saintes we let
the main sail out and headed for the tip of Dominica. As it turned out
the weather was on our side and we let out all the sails and headed south.
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| Dominica Boat boy - Indian River |
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| One of Dominica's hurricane casulties |
A couple of hours later we arrived in Roseau where
were met by Pancho, a rasta guy in a fishing boat with a huge outboard.
Luckily, we had heard about him on the net before we left and knew that he was
a nice guy, who helped without hassling, he welcomed us to Dominica and showed
us to a mooring buoy. The anchorage is not very good here as the seabed
drops off very quickly and is quite deep, the chances of your chain dragging
are quite high. We went ashore, arranged a taxi to take us to clear
customs.
As Craig, our taxi driver, drove us through the
main town and coast road, we commented on how beautiful and unspoilt this
island really is. He told us of the nine different waterfalls, the
sulphur spring, rain forest trails/hikes and of course the Indian River. We
came back to the hotel where we had anchored outside. A very nice young
lady served us a couple of beers and said we could use the swimming pool, which
after 7 hours of sailing, a 30 minute non-air-conditioned taxi ride, followed
by form filling at customs, was unbelievably fabulous. We spent the rest
of the afternoon there. We sat watching our boat start to roll in the
anchorage.
In fact Alhambra started to roll uncontrollably….
the swell was something to behold. This swell, although sometimes a bit
big was never like this, apparently, unless you have the Perrett Persecution
Syndrome (PPS, it’s not a complex, it’s a syndrome, these things really do
happen to us)…we went back to the boat, changed for dinner and headed back out
in the dingy. An interesting manoeuvre as the boat is going in all three
directions and you are trying to get into a dingy going in three opposing
directions. We made it, off to the restaurant for a rather uninteresting
meal, but I was not cooking on a rolling boat that night.
After dinner, we headed back to the boat and the
same attempt to get on as we did to get off. We had decided to only have one
glass of wine at dinner, trying to board the boat from the dingy in these
conditions and one too many to drink would have been a very silly thing.
Looking at how the boat was rolling we decided to set up the saloon table into
the bed that it converts to. This way we could lie ‘the wrong way round’
and not roll out of bed with the pitching of the boat. We spent 30
minutes stuffing t-towels and t-shirts into cupboards where things were rolling
about to stop the noise and tried to get some sleep. Not a hope.
What with pitching and rolling, the jars and crockery moving and then the local
disco starting up, what chance did we have? Well David was fine, he woke
once and that was it. I on the other hand woke every 30-60 minutes.
We had to be up really early as we had a long day ahead down to Martinique.
I guess I will be sleeping on the way…
Fri/Sat 11th /12th May 2007 –
Martinique
As we moved further along the coast, the island began
to take on a very ‘English’ look. Green fields marked out by farmers
ready to sow their seed in amongst rolling hills undulating in front of our
eyes. The South Coast we thought…then as we moved further along, little
villages came into view and the landscape took on the feel of a Swiss lake,
Lausanne maybe, from our travels in that part of the world. A typical
Swiss church steeple, rising out of the middle of the town, pretty houses
making up tiny villages all along the coast. We headed to a large
bay where the main town of Fort de France sits and where customs are waiting to
check your papers.
The anchorage here is very uninteresting and full
of ferries taking people from town to town. The guidebook informed us
that most people head across the bay to Pointe Du Bout. Apparently,
“Martinique’s most developed resort at the southern end of the bay, resembling
a miniature Las Vagas (not in our opinion) with neon-lit streetscape and fake
facades…” We anchored at the top end of the peninsula along with 4 or 5
other boats, again the book had told us to look for the landmark of the
Meridian Hotel. Right in front of our eyes, a large, typical
Mediterranean hotel stood empty and battered in the process of repair. We
were not sure if it was being renovated, or had been hit by a hurricane in the
past. However, it meant that the area was completely free of holidaymakers
and very quiet. The anchorage was calm and peaceful. We were
staying two nights, just what was ordered after the night’s lack of sleep in
Dominica. We found a local hostelry and popped in for a couple of
refreshing drinks. The next day off to the shops and laundry…luckily for
David we did not have time for me to meander around the boutiques in this
little village as I did see some particularly nice shops that I may have to
revisit on our return…..
Sunday 13th May - St Lucia, Rodney Bay
The trip over to Rodney Bay was, at best, a number
3 on our scale (1 being awful, the full scale has yet to be set up). It
was a long, five and half-hours, and tedious, in that it was one large stretch
of open water between the southern end of Martinique and the Northern end of St
Lucia. The water was unsteady with quite a big swell and there was
nothing to look at. We headed off at about 8am and settled in for a
boring journey, but hey they can’t all be amazing days.
We arrived in Rodney Bay early afternoon and David
immediately went to sort out customs/immigration while I got some lunch, then
off for an explore around the marina and bay. It being Sunday no shops
open, but a very nice bar with swing seats overlooking the pool. Rum
punches all round followed by a snooze. Low on fresh food stocks I had to
become ingenious with the store cupboard and concocted a strange but tasty
pasta dish. We finished with a drink in the bar and a glass of rum before
bedtime. Off to the shops tomorrow, well off to a chandlery to get the
bits we need to fix the leaks we have – nothing major just water coming in the
stanchions every time we sail, a whiz round the supermarket and we are off to
Marigot Bay.
Monday 14th May - St Lucia Marigot Bay
Along came the next one selling ‘souvenirs’.
I looked at the pretty soap stone turtles but became a bit more interested when
he mentioned necklaces. Hook, line and sinker, 2 necklaces later and I
was happy…..now to start the fun of fixing the leaks in the stanchions, my that
sounds like a fun job.
This part of the island is looked after by the
Marine Management who carry out a variety of things including scientific
research, monitoring of coral reefs, water quality and other environmental
factors and resources and public information among other things. You are
not allowed to anchor in any part of this area so were guided to another
mooring buoy. This time the ‘boat boy’ was nothing to do with the
Management and just wanted a few dollars for helping us with the buoy. A
bit of pain but it goes with the territory.
Sat in a bay looking onto a small beach surrounded
by a large Hilton Hotel Complex you don’t realise the imposing mountains either
side of you. Moored between the Petit and Gros Pitons gave me the same
sensation I had when David first flew me through the mountains, you suddenly
feel very insignificant in this marvellous world in which we live. For
the most part we are oblivious to its beauty and wonders, but sitting on a
little boat with these enormous lumps of granite rising out from the sea (which
incidentally only 100 yards from the beach was still 300 ft deep…) you are
drawn to the beauty of nature and all that is around you. Later that
evening (after partaking of an extremely expensive beer in the Hilton, although
the grounds were stunning) we lay on the deck of Alhambra and stared at
thousands of stars, Petit Piton outlined by the dim lights of Soufriere sitting
at the bottom of this amazing mountain. Again, as we did not have time
this trip, we missed out on the Botanical gardens, Diamond Waterfalls and
drive-in volcano (not sure if you get fries with that!)
Wednesday 16th May - St Vincent – Bequia
An early start, we set sail at 6.30am. We
have two choices – go into Wallilabou on St Vincent (where you WILL be hassled
we had been informed the day before), or continue straight down into Bequia
(pronounced Bek-way), the first of the islands making up the St Vincent
Grenadines. It would mean another 50-mile sail but would get us there two
days in advance to get the final things fixed on the boat before our next
guests arrive on Sunday. The weather leaving St Lucia was good, wind out
of the NE this time about 15 knots, up went the sails and we were happily
sailing along. However, as we entered the main channel between the two
islands the waters became rough and unsettled, the wind stronger and changing
direction. We had read that the crossing can sometimes be rough.
After being covered in water for the third time, out came the sailing jackets
(not for the first time on this trip). In the end it was easier to take
the jenny sail in and motor across this nasty section of water. 
(as they had on all other islands as the sea is
masked by the land). Not this time, the swells and seas carried on way
down the island. At one point, the gusts caught us completely off
guard. The only pleasing part of this trip was the massive pod of
dolphins at the beginning of St Vincent, there must have been 30-50. A
couple of miles later and another pod, this time I did get some reasonable
shots. Finally, the sea calmed, the island took on a much prettier look
and we decided to continue all the way to Bequia.
The final 12 miles were fantastic, sails up, engine
off and whizzing into Admiralty Bay. Buoys and Customs sorted, find a
bar...and there are loads of them on the main beach. The guidebook had
warned us that this place makes sailors linger, I think they could be
right. Dinner at the ‘Devil’s Table’ followed by a live reggae
band. As usual, I have made friends with the locals and tomorrow we are
joining them at the ‘Jump Up’ (party) at the Frangipani Bar, just two minutes
from the Boat. We will stay here until Saturday when we will head back to
St Vincent to a little bay called The Blue Lagoon, where we will meet John and
Anne on Sunday when we will all head off for a couple of weeks around the Grenadines.
Planned islands to visit are Mustique, Canouan, Mayreau and The Tobago Cays.
17th
May 2007
For those of you who haven’t or don’t want to go on
a boat, I thought I would explain some of the practicalities of on board,
including a typical day. So here goes.
Having arrived from another country, tired and wet
from sailing all you really want to do is have a beer and a sit down. In
fact what you have to do is spend the previous half an hour reading the sailing
guide and the guidebooks to see ‘how the land lies’. Having done this you
have to decide where you want to anchor, this can take a while as you have to
be just far enough away from the shore, but close enough that the dingy trip is
not too long. Far away as possible from other boats (this doesn’t mean
that other people will come and anchor right next to you, cos that’s exactly
what they do). Once the space has been found you need to get the anchor
set. Most of the time we do this first time. We seem to have this
past time down to a fine art now – yes I am the one who gets wet and dirty
dealing with the anchor…
Anchor set, off to customs/immigration.
Initially we went together, but realising that we have to lock the boat up
whenever we go out I just send David and I get food/drink ready for his return
and put the blue and white stripy awning up. Upon his return, a quick
bite to eat and then off to explore. Unlock the dingy, take the outboard off
the back of the boat and place onto the dingy, get all the rubbish bags ready
to take with, guide book, camera, money, credit cards, hats, sunblock,
sunglasses, keys/padlocks, close and lock all hatches, get the front door out
of the locker and lock the door. (our front door is two thick Perspex
panels that fit into the companionway opening with a sliding roof which has a
big padlock which goes through the hole lot). Off we go. Find dingy
dock. Have row about where the best dock is to go. Find dingy
dock. Attempt to tie dingy up and get off up to a dock that is 6 feet up,
up either a ladder or in most cases a stack of tyres tied to the dock.
Lock dingy, find rubbish dump, find bank with ATM, find bar, internet café with
wifi, public phone that works and a shop that sells the cards you can use in
it. Sit down for an hour and do nothing. Stroll and check out
bars/restaurants and general area. Walk through fruit/veg market, have 14
different sellers ask you to try their pineapple/mango/passion fruit/bananas/guava,
you get the picture. However, the fruit here is amazing to eat and I
can’t remember ever eating this much fruit. Go back to dingy, unlock, get
back in dingy, have a row about best way to get in dingy, bet back to Alhambra,
attempt to get hold of the small bit of rope we use to grab hold, manoeuvre
from dingy to Alhambra, tie up dingy, unlock house, open all hatches, open
laptop and see if wifi reaches the boat for free, move awning to back of boat
to protect as sun moves round…..sleep. Wake up couple of hours later,
decide if we are going out early and internetting or having dinner first (this
all depends on whether we have any food and how knackered we are). Get
ready, check if laptop is charged….lock up boat and get front door out of locker,
attempt to get into dingy in rolly sea, go ashore, lock up dingy, go to bar,
drink and/or eat. Chill out. Leave bar, unlock dingy, go back to
Alhambra, attempt to board her, open door and hatches and decide the plan for
tomorrow.
Next day: Check shopping list, get laptop, go
ashore (see above), find phone, phone home, find internet café, send/receive
e-mails, check weather and various other sites including BBC News and do any
banking. Go to supermarket and see if they have anything that resembles meat
or poultry, sometimes that can be a guessing game as they don’t always label
the packs and sometimes the packaging is in black….Go back to Alhambra and do
any number of jobs that still need to be done. Do washing (by hand if
just smalls, use laundry if large amount. This can cost anywhere between
£1.50 to £6.00 and load), clean showers/toilets, clean generally, tidy up after
David, get ice for the fridge, rearrange the fridge (you have to take
everything out to get to the bottom, we are still trying to buy a basket to
hang in there, we are already using an unused battery box for the drinks
cartens). Wipe the salt of the whole boat after a long sail, hang washing
up, prepare for tomorrow’s sail, plotting, reading, charting, checking, getting
boat ready. Go out (see above).
Next week: how to use the toilets on board…..
Hope this gives you a brief insight to our current
life.
Sat 19th May 2007
Next Visitors Bequia (pronounced
Bekway) the Grenadines and Back
 |
| Bequia Buoy |
After 2 very windy, rolly nights on a mooring buoy we moved and
anchored just off a lovely beach a bit further round the bay, the after a final
bit of shopping and scouting around on Saturday we left Bequia and headed for
St Vincent, Blue Lagoon Resort. The crossing over was nice, just the
right seas and wind in the right direction, we got there in an hour and 30
minutes.
Reading the guides it appears that heading into Blue Lagoon bay
is tricky. To the west, there is a small marked pass, with only 1.8m
water over it. This is not a problem for us as we have a 1.4m draft, one
of the many benefits of this boat. However, upon approaching it we were
met by a couple of guys from Sunsail telling us that the tide was low and there
was only 4ft 5” through the pass. Quick calculation, we have 4ft
9”. This means we have to go through the southern pass. This is
apparently even more difficult, and we need a ‘pilot’ to take us through
safely. There is a small dogleg through the coral reef with waves
breaking over it. On hopped a guy from the Sunsail base who took us
through. Off into the marina and onto a berth.
The whole time we
were here people kept coming and asking us about the Alhambra. She was
originally a Sunsail boat and one guy even told us he had sailed her from the
BVI to here. They were very complimentary about her condition and the
work we had done, which is always a nice thing to hear when you have spent so
much time working on her. We managed to get all the teak on the toe rail
finished while we were here and a bit more polishing completed. We
met a few ‘live-aboard’ sailors and a really nice guy from the States who had
already sailed the area we were planning to, so we got as much info from him as
we could. Our next guests, John and Anne, arrive tomorrow, just enough
time to tidy the boat and get the laundry done.
Monday 21st May
After breakfast and unpacking we gave J&A a boat briefing
and set them to work on the polishing...only joking, well John did a little bit
of teak oiling while Anne and I went and did some provisioning. The plan
for today is to sail over to Bequia and stay for the night. With
everything stowed away and all the bags unpacked we left the Blue Lagoon via
the west entrance which now had more than enough water for us to get
through. Heading out of the bay and into the channel the weather was
perfect, it appears J&A have brought sailing weather with them. Sails
up, engine off and heading off to Bequia, making about 5 knots, the journey
took about an hour and 40 minutes. Straight to the place we had anchored
before, just in the lee of an outcrop to protect you from the wind that funnels
down the two mountains/hills of Bequia. The weather was fine and the
water crystal blue. Anchor set, time to do some exploring and buy a
fishing line.
Now we have that we will never want for food again – ha ha ha.
Anne and I left the boys and went to market to buy some fruit. What
an experience that was. As you walk inside the colours and smells are
amazing, vibrant and pungent. You are then bombarded by 4 or 5 rasta guys
forcing fruit into your hand and slicing you slices of mango, pineapple,
bananas and things you’ve never seen before. “I’m the mango man, I’m the
man for passion fruit….” and so on. They all have roughly the same fruit
and veg on their stalls, they are all shouting at once “buy from me, buy my
mangos”. In the end I did the only thing I could think of. I stood
tall and shouted “Stop, one at a time. You, tomatoes, you, mangos, you,
bananas, I will buy one thing from each of you”. They all began to shout
at once again and shoving their fruit into my face. I stopped again.
“STOP, ONE AT A TIME. Bananas first”. Along came the first guy “here you
go man! bananas, $10”. (that’s EC dollars which are roughly $5 to
£1). “$10 for bananas, I’m not paying that, I’ll give you $5”, “No man,
$10”. We got them for $8. We went through this process with each of
them. I think they were a bit confused by the whole ‘english lady’
telling them what to do. It was all done in good humour and we had a real
laugh with them. Anne found it all a bit too much of a hassle.
There were a couple of guys we didn’t buy anything from but I made sure we saw
them at the next visit. Back to the boat, drop off the food and go to the
Frangipangi bar for a sunset drink, followed by dinner on board.
Tues/Wed 22nd/ 23rd May – Bequia to
Mustique
Whilst sitting at breakfast we heard a whistle coming from a very
little boat
alongside us. As the little boat slows this guys pops up and
says that he has some things to show us, but will be back after we have
finished our breakfast. It seems that wherever we go we will have to deal
with ‘boat boys’. However, when he returned he stopped, asked if we
didn’t mind seeing his wares and showed us some very interesting pieces of
jewellery, not only the finished items, but the pieces he was working on.
He gets old ‘brown coral’ which washes up on the shore (which I know he
shouldn’t use, but he is a local), he boils it, soaks it, bends it and polishes
it. He gets old shark’s teeth and he carves into various shapes (faces,
sailboats), he ties them to a cord and sells them to us. His little boat
has no engine, he rows everywhere and when the wind blows, he gets out the
tiniest of sails that he holds with both hands and secures with his foot and
lets the wind take him. His name is Willie and he tells us of his life
which he is sad to say he wasted most of it on drugs, but he has ‘in his words’
found the right way and now sits and makes jewellery on the beach and goes to
church on Sunday. His boat is called “no complain” and that’s his
philosophy in life. He is one the nicest Caribbeans we have met.  |
| Our transport |
The trip to Mustique was an uneventful one, mostly motor sailing,
finishing with a nice sail and having to content with a nasty buoy to grab hold
of, which, without the help of John I would not have been able to get hold of.
So here we are in Mustique, probably one of the most expensive islands in the
Caribbean. Watch out David Bowie, I’m off to find your house…..or Mick
Jagger, we don’t mind. Off to the famous (?) Basils Bar for a drink,
which did not impress us, well not the staff. The next day we decide we
hired a car and see the island. We got a Kawasaki Mule, which is a bit
like a small jeep, but bigger than a Mini Moke.
 |
| Firefly Restaurant |
 |
| The Atlantic side of the island |
The first place we come
upon is Firefly, which the guidebook tells us, is a very expensive bar,
restaurant and hotel, but very nice staff, not snooty at all. We stopped
for a lunchtime drink and to check out the menu, and the guide was right.
We booked a table for that night. The island is very well maintained
(some of the roads leave a lot to be desired, but most of the houses are stunning).
We were told by the hire company that most people who live here have no problem with you looking at their houses from afar, but do not enter their grounds, which is understandable. We found deserted beaches and coves, the Atlantic side was dramatic with waves of blue and turquoise crashing onto a white sand beach with not a sole on it.
We continued around the island
and came upon what we think were the first houses built on the island (apparently,
Princess Margaret was one of the first to invest in the island back in the
60s).
The road opens up through a bird sanctuary and into the Cotton House
Hotel. We stopped for afternoon refreshments. Not a sole on the
beach, not a sole anywhere, but very good fruit punches, before heading back to
the boat to get ready for dinner. The restaurant sends transport for you
as it is up a steep hill. The food, atmosphere and company were
excellent. We had a really stunning evening and would recommend anyone to
go there. A really good way to end the day.Thursday 24th May –Mustique to Canouan (pronounced Cahn-ooh-aann)
We had a lazy morning and then headed off. 2 hours and 15
minutes arriving in time for some lunch before heading off for an
explore. Canouan is an odd place in that it is quite large and hilly at
one end and then very thin and beachy at the other. As an island it
disappoints. There are the Raffles and Tamarind Hotel, which are both
very plush, the Raffles has a golf course, which is maintained at the expense
of the island; while the greens are being sprinkled the islanders struggle to
get water. We didn’t feel comfortable here at all, we didn’t get a
friendly welcome and the village was really untidy. We stopped for a
drink at the hotel, which of course was lovely, but all at the expense of the island.
Friday 25th May – Canouan – Tobago Cays
Direct from the guide “On
the chart the Tobago Cays look like five small islands lost in a mass of coral,
though accessible through lots of passes and protected to seaward by a huge
barrier called Horseshoe Reef and by another further to the East called World’s
End Reef. The Tobago Cays have beautiful beaches, clear water still with
lots of fish and well-protected anchorages. These delights are no secret
and the downside is that in high season the Cays are saturated with sailing
boats. In low season the anchorages are a tad less crowded”
yeah right, less crowded, about as less crowded as a shopping centre on a rainy
afternoon. I would hate to see what it is like in high season. Yes
the beaches are wonderful and we head off for a snorkel and a sunbathe, (David
saw a nurse shark and I some squid amongst other things) but on board you are
hassled every 30 minutes by boat boys selling t-shirts, necklaces, fish,
barbeques etc etc etc. Luckily as the day drew to an end the day-boats
disappeared leaving about 15 boats anchored at the cays. We had G&Ts
for sunset and wine and lobster for dinner. What more could you ask
for.
Saturday 26th May - Tobago Cays – Union Island
When we woke in the morning John called out to me “Michele there’s
a man selling fish, do we want any?” I popped up to the cockpit to see
what was going on and there was a young lad showing us some tuna he’d caught
that morning. I had a chat with him, sorted the price and then went onto
his boat to see him clean the fish. Whilst I watched him he told me about a
party on Union that night. I asked him what would be there and he told me
“girls”. I replied that I wasn’t really interested in girls. He replied “there
will be boys there”! What more could I ask for. We had planned to stay for 2
nights at the Tobago Cays but decided that we had seen enough, so after a trip
around to see the T-shirt lady on the beach, we headed off to Union
Island.
An odd island, described by one guide book as “The transient nature of the visitors has had a strange effect on the
town, which can feel built-up and touristy, yet empty and local all at once”
We arrived on Saturday afternoon to find that all the shops were closed.
It was a strange place, as the book described, we had lunch and a drink at the
yacht club, wandered for a while and then headed back for G&Ts at sunset
and the Dave and John prepared the BBQ whilst Anne and I prepared the
fish. All in all a lovely evening on board.
Sun/Mon 27/28th May – Anne’s Birthday – Union Island to Mayreau
Only and hour a 10 minutes away was the lovely, and I mean lovely,
beach of Saltwhistle Bay, on the island of Mayreau. Straight out of a
holiday brochure, and as we have a shallow draft, we can go in close and drop
the hook and wonder at the beach and water before us. A thin
isthmus divides the island from the Tobago Cays and protects you from the
Atlantic.
The next day we took the walk up to the town of Saline. There is a
steep hill before you reach the church, but the view is worth it. The
town itself is odd, lively, quiet, local and touristy. We were there on
Bank Holiday and a lot of people had come from the other islands for a day
trip. We stopped at Dennis’, a well regarded hotel, restaurant and bar
and had an ‘interesting’ lunch. However, the place was friendly and then
took a leisurely walk back to the bay where we stayed for the rest of the
afternoon and happy hour, before heading back to the boat. This
really is a very special place and well worth a visit.
Tues/Wed 29th/30th May – Mayreau to Bequia
We went shopping, and beaching and finally picked up new
cushions for the boat. We had a choice for dinner on that night. A nice
new hotel just off where the boat was anchored - good food but not sure if
anyone would be there. A French restaurant with a band playing - average food,
noisy band, but good atmosphere or the Frangipangi where we have had drinks and
it seems to be a good place so we opted for that – big mistake as Anne would
say. Rubbish food, rubbish service and rubbish atmosphere, back to the
boat for a nightcap. We stayed until lunchtime on Thursday before heading
back to Blue Lagoon, St Vincent.
Thursday 31st May – Bequia to Blue Lagoon
The crossing back was a bit rough, we had quite big seas and it
took about 2 hours as we had a current against us, we managed to get onto the
dock for the night and will be here until we leave with our next guests on
Sunday. We went out to a restaurant that had been recommended to us, a
French restaurant with a west Indian feel. It was fabulous (thanks John
and Anne). Food was perfect, wine lovely, view stunning, service
excellent, company – spot on. Just the right end to a holiday. All
in all I think/hope that John and Anne enjoyed their stay with us, well we
really hope they did.
We wait now until our other friends (Ray and Steve) to arrive
early on Saturday morning, off now to clean the boat and provision, now were is
the cheapest supermarket……..
18th
June 2007 - Grenada
We have said goodbye to all our guests and
are now in Grenada for a couple of weeks.
I won't go into the journey with Ray and Steve as it was almost the same
as it was with John and Anne, with one difference, that being we visited a
turtle sanctuary in Bequia which we didn't visit with John and Anne.
The sanctuary is run by a guy (Mr King to
you and me) purely out of the love of turtles.
(The Old Hegg - http://turtles.bequia.net/). Run entirely on donations its purpose is to
increase the numbers of turtles in the wild.
He has people all over the Grenadines helping locate either the eggs or
the babies, which he then rears until they are 4 or 5 years old and then
releases them back into the wild at all the beaches throughout the Grenadines.
The Sanctuary has a hospital where he looks after sick turtles and a turtle
that only has three flippers (legs) which Mr King says should be OK to go back
when the turtle is a bit bigger. When
they are very small, they fight each other and this unfortunate tutle lost his
flipper in a fight, but he seems to be OK.
Sadly, Mr King has rescued a turtle that
that will never be able to return to the wild. It has a deformed shell and
cannot swim properly (his aerodynamic shape is all wrong apparently) so Mr King
will look after him as long as he can. Named
‘Old Hegg’, the sanctuary is named after him.
There is another turtle called Busy Body, which Mr King takes
snorkelling, and she always comes back to him.
It costs around £300 per week to feed all the turtles and run the
sanctuary; there can be up to 600 turtles at the sanctuary at any given time.
It was a real privilege to see such good
work going on and the turtles were just adorable. We have been lucky enough to see a few on our
travels in the ocean (only this morning we saw a leather back swim alongside as
we went to Prickly Bay). Whilst at the
Tobago Cays with Ray and Steve there were two swimming around the boat! David
got in to snorkel with them. He said
they were huge and very fast, whenever a boat came too close they swam to the
bottom very quickly. I tried to get
photos, but it's about as easy as getting photos of dolphins…
However, I digress...
We left Union Island for Carriacou, which
is the first place you can clear customs going into Grenada. Grenada consists of Grenada, Carriacou and
Petit Martinique. We cleared customs,
which was the usual wander from office to office trying to get the correct
papers sorted out. We then headed down the coast to Tyrell Bay, which is supposed
to be the 'happening place on Carriacou'.
Not so, not a thing to do. We
found a nice bar for the evening where we had pizza and I think all of the
yachting community were there. We won't
be staying long. In fact looking at the
weather we will be heading to Grenada tomorrow.
The sail from Carriacou to Grenada had a
bit of everything, sun, wind, no wind, rain, an underwater erupting volcano…
...There is an exclusion zone of about
1.5km around it, which extends to 5km when it is active. The Reed's Nautical Almanac (Caribbean 2007)
has this to say about it. "Carriacou to Grenada – Caution: The undersea
volcano, Kick 'Em Jenny is located west of Ronde Island. Regardless of whether the volcano is actively
erupting, considerable amounts of volcanic gas are likely to be escaping. If these bubbles become concentrated and the
water density drops, any boats entering into the area will experience a loss of
buoyancy and may even sink. Stay out of
this area." We did!
We headed for St George's, Grenada's
Capital. The bay here is very calm but
the holding is not very good (mud on top of rocks for those who want to
know). It is a nice calm bay with a
Yacht Club to the north, a chandlery to the east and supermarket to the south. Everything
you need if you live on a boat. To the
west (just at the entrance) there is a new marina being built by Peter de
Savary. Hurricane Ivan wrecked the area in
2004 and apparently, its ownership has been in dispute for years, now de Savary
has bought it and developing it. For
those looking for a quiet harbour in the future, forget it. In essence, you will no longer be able to go
and drop anchor in St Georges Bay without paying a premium. Local attitudes are divided as, although
locals will get some of the work, the majority of the money will not go to
them…but that's progress for you.
Having walked into St George's a couple of
times, David and I decided to discover the island by bus. This was an experience and a half. The buses
(sort of mini buses with about 16 seats) have a driver and a 'conductor'. There are bus stops, but you don't have to
wait at a stop to get a bus. As you walk
along the streets, the buses continually beep their horns and the 'conductor'
(a local who takes your fare and chooses the reggae played on board) checks if
you want a ride. Waving 'no' is
sufficient or saying yes will put a smile on his face. The bus stops, the conductor slides the door
and you find the next available seat in the bus. Journeys cost generally $2 EC (40p)
for most places. When you want to get
off the bus, you bang the side of the door and shout ‘bus stop’. Anyone sitting in front or next to you gets
off the bus to let you out and then they all get back in again, probably moving
seats nearer to the door for when they get to their stop. There are loads of buses around; you will see
one about every 10-15 seconds on the main roads. If the conductor thinks they have missed a
passenger, the driver will go round a roundabout or reverse up street to go and
get the person. The following is an
article in the Official Grenada Tourist brochure about driving in Grenada and
reads as follows.
"Road
Hazards – ie bus drivers. Give them a
wide berth – if necessary stop and let them pass. They are busy private entrepreneurs with an
urgent appointment with death. They will
screech to a halt where a fair might possibly be lurking – or might have been
lurking in which case they reverse at speed to pick it up (so look out for
reversing bus drivers as well as ones who are merely hurtling along or are
overtaking another bus that is hurtling along).
Sometimes bus drivers can suddenly metamorphose themselves into private
limousines (the fair is better if you're a limo). I don't want to be too unkind to all bus
drivers because they do an excellent job of transporting the workforce from the
country to where the jobs are and that keeps the economy going. But my advice is: err on the side of caution
– assume they are all certifiable. What
is more, our bus drivers have a sense of humour and that is illustrated by the
names they give their vehicles. They range from the philosophical ("Why
Worry?" or "Fret Not Thyself") to the intellectual ("Well
Redd"), the mysterious ("With a Difference") the cautionary
("Menace") and the downright honest ("Assassin"). Advertising vignettes are featured on trucks
from other trades also. The vehicle
recovery company that collects road-side wrecks has a poetic message on its
lift trucks: "We Meet by Accident".
My favourite is the one used by the sewage disposal company that cleans
out septic tanks: "Number One in a Number Two Business"…Grenada has a sense
of humour.
After a few days in St Georges, we moved
the boat to Prickly Bay. It's a pretty
bay, but it is very rolly, so we won't be staying too long. Last night there was a live band in the local
bar who were excellent so we even stayed out and had pizza. Not a brilliant night's
sleep as the boat is rolling quite a bit when the tide changed. Oh well, you can't have calm all the
time.
We may head off to Hogg Island, which is on
the south coast, as apparently there is a bit of a 'Caribbean style' party
every Sunday afternoon in the bay. Other
cruisers have told us about it and most appear to be heading that way. Then we want to go to Clark Courts Bay to
check out a marina there.
We haven't done the 'island tour', that's
next week, and by all accounts it's excellent, rain forest, wild animals,
treks, the whole lot, so expect an update after that.
23rd June 2007 – Grenada Hogg Island and the Tour
There is nothing on Hogg Island but a small shack,
which sells beers, and on a Sunday has a BBQ at 3pm. We headed off round
to the bay having checked the route. It is riddled with reefs, which are
marked, but all three of our sources of information informed us of different
buoys marking the entrance. As we came out of Prickly Bay, the waters
were quite rough. Once around the headland we headed for the bay and looked out
for the reefs. It was quite a scary 20 minutes as we scoured the horizon
for signs of the reefs and markers, which once we had spotted them, realised
they were completely different from the books, charts and chart plotter.
We entered the bay very slowly. Inside it was calm and very
beautiful. We spotted someone we had met back in St Vincent, Martin, who
has been in Grenada since the 20th May, apparently going a bit stir
crazy as he hadn’t met anyone he knew for a while.
The afternoon was great and we finally met the
‘elusive’ cruisers that we have read so much about over the years. We are
finally in what is known as ‘non-charterer’ waters. Ie those people who charter
boats don’t tend to come down as far as Grenada and stay mostly around the
Grenadines etc. Everyone here is living on his or her boat.
We met people who have been out here for years and people like us who have only
just started out. We exchanged stories of our travels and the trials and
fun of living aboard. We found out about the 7.30am broadcast to all
sailors which gives the weather, information about the emergency services,
organises trips, allows you to buy and sell things between each other and any
manner of other bits of information. We finished the day/evening chatting
with a couple (Howard and Lindy) who are about our ages and have been out here
for a year. The whole day was really good fun and we met a lot of lovely
people.
Yesterday we went on the Island Tour. This
was great value for money (£10 per person). We were collected at 9am and
dropped off at 7pm! The tour included a trip up to Fort Federick (built
by the French in 1779 and used by the British to defend against the
French). We then went inland up to the Grand Etang National Park.
We stopped on the way and were shown different vegetation grown on a
small plantation (coconuts, cinnamon, sugar cane, nutmeg, coffee, vanilla,
cocoa, mangos, limes, lemon grass, bamboo, bananas etc). We picked,
smelt, tasted all manner of vegetation, things used for herbal remedies, things
that taste and smell like other things (saffron and garlic). Each of the
plantations around the island all grow a variety of produce and sell it on to
bigger corporations on a weekly or monthly basis. As we went along the
driver would stop at the side of the road, pick something off a tree, and come
and explain what it was. Red eye crab beans are used for decoration in
baskets, cashew nuts straight from the tree. Cashews hang from the trees
with an additional fruit which is sweet when ripe but very bitter when young,
as we found out. The nut itself is toxic when fresh and has to be taken
from the fruit and then dried to clear it of toxins. We were shown
‘Sleeping Beauty’ a plant which is used for helping high blood pressure.
When you stroke your fingers over the leaves the plant sort of folds up and
goes to sleep. This plant was used during slave times. If the
slaves escaped the owners could see where they had run as the ‘Sleeping Beauty’
plants would all be folded over where they had run through, carelessly leaving
a trail for the owners to follow.
From there we headed further north and upward deep
into the rainforest. As we
drove through the guide pointed out various
parts of the island devastated by hurricane Ivan in 2004. The majority of
the rainforest was blown away and is struggling to return (to see vast areas of
what should be lush rainforest stripped of its foliage through a massive force
of nature, and this is 3 years on is devastating). We stopped at the top.
From here, you can take guided tours/hikes all around (something we may do
another day). As we stopped, the very friendly monkeys came out to see
us, obviously very used to the fact that visitors always have food for
them. It has been a long time since we have been above sea level and it
was quite nice to feel the temperature drop and the fact the mountains were
covered in cloud made a real change for us.
We then headed down towards the east coast and into
the second largest town on the island, Grenville. Here we stopped in the
Ebony Restaurant, which is a traditional Grenadian restaurant, where we had
chicken roti before we walked around to see the nutmeg and mace factory.
Grenada used to be the world’s second largest producer of nutmeg before
If we thought the chocolate factory was ancient,
nothing could prepare us for
the rum distillery. Again all manually
worked. The sugar cane is cut to size, then placed on a conveyor belt
driven by a water wheel. This takes the cane to the press. The
liquid then drains off to another plant for fermenting and distilling whilst
the dry cane is used as fuel to heat the distillery. The actual press was
at least 150 years old and of British design. After fermentation and distilling,
they produce rum of 69% and 71% and about 600 bottles a week. At the
tasting you realise that it’s not rum, it’s rocket fuel they are producing!
Finally, we toured all along the East coast back to
our base. As we drove around the guide showed us huge areas that Ivan had
completely wiped out. A village set high in the mountains where the wind
speeds must have been accelerated to 180 mph. They moved from one house
or building to another waiting to be rescued. Throughout Grenada 39
people died and 90% of buildings and homes were devastated. Ivan was
followed by waves of desperate looting and vandalism and many residents spent
months without roofs or electricity and with only limited access to running
water. The country received massive support from Trinidad & Tobago
who sent troops in to maintain order and Cuba who sent in armies of workers to
fix infrastructure problems.
Life is continues to return to normal but all
around you can see the remains of mother nature’s wrath which doesn’t choose
between colour, creed or religion. Age and sex discrimination are beyond
her. However there is also a constant reminder of how people work
together to get things done. We have not seen unhappy people who complain
that they have nothing, we see children playing out in the streets who wave as
you go by. Complete strangers saying “good morning” as you pass along the
way. People are interested in where you have come from and why you are
here. They stop and ask questions and ask about your country. Some
of them can be grumpy, but they normally at work and want to be somewhere else,
but they are far and few between. There is a massive amount of money
being invested in Grenada wherever you look. The government is working to
establish better housing developments for those who live right on the sea edge
by giving them a bit of land and a new house. Some don’t want to move,
others have already started living in the new developments.
This afternoon someone has organised a ‘Dingy Drift’ – not been on one of these yet, but apparently you all meet up at the beach, tie your dingys together and drift across the bay. Bring your own beer and a snack to share….sounds like fun.
I hope the next couple of weeks are as good as the
last few have been, I finally feel like we are experiencing the life we have
read about for so long.
28th June 2007
We’ve been out of e-mail for a while. There
is e-mail available in places but the quality is rubbish and you pay by the day,
so we are only getting it when we need to get the weather and send a batch of
stuff. Anyway, we’ve been on a turtle watch.
We were collected at 18:45 by Cutter, our usual
guide in a bus full with other excited ‘yachties’. No-one really knew
what to expect. We knew we were heading to Levera in the north of the
island and the journey would take about and hour and a half. We all
introduced ourselves and chatted about where we had been and what we had seen
etc, all the usual questions when you meet new people. The journey
followed the east coast, through towns and villages all out celebrating
Saturday night. We decided if we didn’t get to see any turtles we’d come
back to one of the parties….Further on up the coast the paved road gave way to
a potholed dirt track off the ‘beaten track’. With no lights other than
those of the bus we had no real idea where we were going. After about 15
minutes we turned into an open area with cars parked. Cutter asked us to
stay in the bus until he had checked everything out asking us to leave the bus
lights off. We were obviously here, wherever ‘here’ was!
Cutter returned with the good news that there were
already two turtles on the beach, and we were to head onto the beach slowly and
quietly, no flash photography or any white lights at all. As we hurried
off the bus and across a sand footpath, through the flattened dunes and grass,
I hadn’t noticed the beauty of the scene in front of me. The white sandy
beach bathed in the bright white light of the moon, a thousand stars twinkling
in the moonlight and the horizon etched with the outline of Sugar Loaf, Green
and Sandy Islands. When we were sailing toward Greneda these islands
stand out proud, Sugar Loaf in particular as it is a perfect triangle shaped
island, almost as a child would draw a mountain.
Then as I walked slowly along the beach, I realised
that the upturned fishing boat in front of me is in fact a 6ft female
leatherback turtle starting to make her nest. Further along the beach,
another had finished her nest and was already laying her eggs. Then one
of the conservation team met us. Trained by Ocean Spirits, a marine
conservation non-governmental organisation, that has been researching turtle
nesting populations in Grenada for the past five years. Every night from
March to August, they patrol the beach to record turtle activity, tag the
females, monitor the nests and educate the locals about this vital work.
He explained how, with their hind flippers, the
females dig deep into the sand and curve the nest down and backwards for the
eggs. Their movements on land are slowly and painstaking to watch, but as
you see them begin to create the nest you realise the dexterity of her enormous
hind flippers, and they slowly scoop out what look like tablespoons of sand at
a time. She meticulously moves the sand around her creating an egg
chamber. Our guide explained that no-one really understands why and how
they do what they do, they believe it is inbred instructions created over millennia
of time which tell her what to do and when.
We were instructed to stand behind her until she
had ‘committed’ to laying her eggs. After about 30 minutes our guide
(goodness knows what action he saw to confirm this) told us she was about to
start laying her eggs. Using the red lights on their hats, we could see
clearly the wondrous site unfold before us. We watched in awe as she lay
upwards of 70 eggs.
Each turtle is estimated to lay between 70 and 120
eggs. Within that number, one quarter will be ‘non-yoke’ eggs. Our guide
explained that the true reason for this is unknown but it could be as a heat
layer, or some form of camouflage for the yoked eggs. Of the yoked eggs
laid, only 50% will make it through the nest, up to the surface. Of that
50%, probably all of them will fail to survive in the open. The estimated
survival rate of leatherbacks reaching maturity to lay eggs is 1 in 1,000 and
even that is an overestimate they actually believe it to be nearer to 1 in
2,500. Therefore, if 10 turtles arrived on the beach that night and laid
100-yoked eggs each, possibly one would survive! This is mainly due to
predators such as bigger fish and sharks, but their biggest threat is
man.
Educating local people about poaching eggs and using
turtle shell is starting to have an impact. However, trawl fishing is the biggest
problem the turtles face. They get caught in the nets and effectively
drown. Man’s ability to throw rubbish into the sea without thinking of
the consequences, those little plastic containers that hold the cans of drink
together, unless they are cut up young turtles manage to get caught in them and
strangle. When you think of the small chance the baby turtles already
have of surviving, trying to educate people to understand the impact humans are
having on a creature that has been around since the time of the dinosaurs is
vital. Without a change in our actions, within a few years they might be
completely wiped out. Our guide explained that the population of the
turtles around the Caribbean is very slowly increasing due to the work of
conservationists, however the population of turtles, especially leatherbacks in
the Pacific has been virtually wiped out and they don’t believe it will ever
recover.
Having watched ‘our’ turtle lay her eggs and
carefully place the sand back on top of the eggs with exact pressure, she
proceeded to camouflage her nest. With the same dexterity and precise movements,
she slowly manoeuvres the sand to hide any notion of a nest. Our guide
placed a ‘twig’ in the nest so that, after the turtle had gone, the guide would
come back and check that no evidence of a nest remained. It took her a
good hour to move the sand from place to place until she took one final look
around at her work, and then headed for the sea. As she laboriously
manoeuvred herself towards the water’s edge, she waited for the waves to help
her glide back into her natural habitat. It took about 10 waves to help
her get to a depth where she could effortlessly swim away and then she was gone.
All that remained was a twig in the sand to remind us of the wondrous site we
had been privileged enough to watch. I took some photos on ‘night scene
setting’ but there is not much too see. However, the vision of that night
has been truly etched into my memory, and is not something I want to
forget. The beauty of nature doing what she does best, set in the
streaming moonlight, is a vision that will stay with me for a very long
time.
It is then a great reward as we sat this morning
having our breakfast, watching the world on the water go by, when out to the
side of the boat swam a turtle, not a very big one, she/he popped her head up a
couple of times and then was gone. One of the lucky 1,000 that has
survived to remind us of what we experienced.
Next stop Tobago. I think we are planning to
head there on Monday. We have got another crew for the passage. A
chap called Martin who we met in St Vincent who is sailing ‘single handed’ and
doesn’t want to take his boat there alone. He is joining us for the trip
to Tobago and then over to Trinidad where he will get a ferry back. I
will report back after the sail and our arrival in Tobago.
5th
July 2007 Grenada-Tobago
With 81 miles ahead of us, we left Grenada at 5pm
Monday and needed to take up a heading of 130 degrees but were in fact heading
165 deg, with the current pushing us even further south on a course over the
ground (cog) of 175 deg (this is for the sailors among you). As I said
before, we have a friend, Martin, with us so we could rotate the watches of 4
hours on and 2 hours sleep. David went to sleep first at 7-9pm.
Martin and I sailed along at about 5 knots, so it should take us 16 hours.
After the sun had dropped behind the horizon, the
first stars started to appear in the clear sky. The sea was reasonable, a
bit of swell but nothing like we have had in the past. Slowly, as the sky
got darker, before the moon rose, the night sky was full of what looked like a
million pinholes in a deep blue velvet scene. Away from any land, there
was absolutely no light pollution, only stars. Some were so bright and
big that they lit up the water as the moon would. At about 8.45pm the tiniest
hint of a milky yellow ball appeared in front of us as the moon began to
rise. It was a full moon on Sunday so this was near as damn a full moon
rising slowly above us. As it climbed higher into the sky, its brightness
overpowered the stars, but the light reflection made up for the missing
stars.
Before we left I had feelings of trepidation, as we
were about to enter our longest sail, and our first at night with no land in
sight for some considerable time. We could still see the lights of
Grenada about 15 miles away but they soon disappeared below the horizon.
It is a strange sensation watching the ocean at night, on the one hand, it is a
vast black nothingness lit brightly by the moon and on the other it is an
amazing scene to behold.
Every now and then, you think you can see something
lurking in the water, a whale maybe, some debris, all things that you have to keep
a look out for. It is not just a case of sitting and enjoying the view,
but there is a serious side to night sailing and you have to be alert.
However, we have a very good autopilot and that took some of the stress away
leaving us to enjoy the night sky as well as allowing us to keep watch.
I was asleep when the sun rose, apparently it was
nothing special as there was a layer of cloud on the horizon. I
volunteered to make bacon sandwiches, which cheered us all up. At 7am,
Martin spotted land on the horizon but it was to take us until 1.30pm to get
into the bay and drop the anchor.
On arrival we anchored in Charlottesville on Tobago,
in a beautiful bay
surrounded by stunning green rainforest. Only two
other boats are in the bay, but lots of small fishing boats with large bamboo
rods hanging over each side of the small boats. This bay apparently
provides 50% of Tobago’s fish. Ashore we checked into Customs but
Immigration are not based here and we will have to take a bus to the capital,
Scarborough, tomorrow to ‘clear in’, which is an hour and a half bus ride down
the southeast coast.
Wednesday morning we ventured back into the village
and bought our bus tickets (80p one way for a 15-mile ride). We found a
seat at the back of the bus, which arrived on time at 9am. As we drove
out of the village, up through a winding road through forest we realised that
this road may not be as good as we would like. However, we were
completely surprised by the journey. This country is astoundingly
beautiful.
Scarborough is the main town and once we had sorted
the immigration side of things out, went shopping and caught the bus
back. So far we are falling for Tobago as we did Grenada, watch this
space for the updates as we sail down the coast checking out the small bays
along the way.
15th
July 2007 - Tobago
Some facts and a brief history. Only 116 sq
miles and population of 47,000 it does not feel crowded. It has changed
hands more times than any other Caribbean island between Dutch, English,
Courlanders and French, sometimes the count is 24, sometimes 31. This
figure is vague because for many years, no country had a firm grip on Tobago
and a change in administration was hardly noticeable. As the book says,
who’s counting? Possibly spotted by Columbus in 1498 (I bet it took him
more than 20 hours…) there was no permanent settlement for 150 years. The
island changed hands over the years until the British regained control in 1793
and remained in power until Trinidad and Tobago (known as T&T) became an
independent country in 1962. Tobago was united with Trinidad in 1899
after its economy had totally collapsed and no one knew what to do with it.
Although thought to be just outside the hurricane
belt, Tobago has been hit by hurricanes. In 1847, a hurricane blew the
roofs off the buildings at Fort King George. Hurricane Flora struck in
1963 and almost laid waste to the island’s agricultural base. It lies at
a slight angle to the trade winds and therefore does not really have a windward
or leeward shore. It has a varied wildlife including 210 species of
nesting birds, many of them brightly coloured and so unafraid that you can spot
them from the road. One of the guides says that after a while if a bird
doesn’t have more colours than a traffic light you hardly bother to look!
Tobago’s national bird is the cocrico. A big bird, that looks like a slim
long tailed turkey. The cries of “cocrico” start at dawn, continue
irregularly throughout the day, and reach a second crescendo near dusk.
Protected by law, however the din, its habit of eating crops and the fact they
are quite tasty have contributed to the perception that it is better dead than
alive!
As I said in my previous e-mail, we arrived in the
small town Charlottesville on
Tuesday. The main bay in which we anchored
is Man of War Bay, but we
actually dropped the hook in Pirates Bay. The
cliffs surrounding the bay rise up to 800 ft. The bay is nearly 2 miles
wide and a mile deep so there are limited places to anchor and we did so in
about 60 ft, the deepest anchorage yet. It took all the chain and all the
rode, but it felt safe enough. After every long sail, we sat for an hour
to take in our surroundings and check out the procedures for entry into a new
country, with a beer - of course if it’s passed midday. Having come from
such a busy place in Grenada it was an odd sensation listening to a new sound -
birds and the sound of the rainforest. The water is dark black/blue, but
incredibly clear and slightly colder than we’re used to. The strange
looking fishing boats in the distance and the various birds swooping around make
you feel like you are in another era, maybe 100 years ago. It’s not eerie,
it’s sort of refreshing. The fishermen wave to you as they go by as they
catch small fish on their way out to the regular spots.
As I said before we went ashore to check with
customs and immigration only to find we need to go to Scarborough the following
day. We checked out the Charlottesville, where to buy our bus tickets,
where to get a beer and where to find internet access. This is
particularly important now, as there are a lot of ‘waves’ heading our
way. No, not the sort of waves you get in the sea, they are a pulse of
hot air mass that originates in the Sahara and travels across the Atlantic,
just north of the Equator. It is a bit like a warm frontal system in the
UK, the only difference being is that they have the potential to develop into a
hurricane if they start to spin…..they seem to come by about once every 5
days. They bring with them higher winds than normal and lots of
rain. It is after all the rainy season. We have to watch to see
which direction they are going. Although Tobago is off the hurricane
belt, it doesn’t mean we will miss the outer lying storms and Tobago does not
have too many protected bays to get into. Our plan is to stay here about
7-10 days.
Our journey continued round the island through
King’s Bay, Roxborough,
Glamorgan, Pembroke, and Goodwood, past Fort Granby,
along Studley Park, Hillsborough, Hope Town and finally Scarborough –
Caribbean! It was just like driving through the UK. We took the bus
to the Bus Terminal and walked back past the Cruise Liner Dock (Immigration are
in here). As we walked along the main road, we saw Courts Furnishing, KFC
and a shopping centre. Are you sure we’re in the Caribbean…..
Having sorted Immigration we went and did some
shopping (new cutlery and finally a blender to make proper cocktails…), we
stopped for a drink whilst waiting for the bus. Having bought a new blender
I stopped at a local market stall and bought all manner of fruit (bananas,
pineapples, watermelon, guava etc etc) fruit punch when we get back!
We stayed in Charlottesville for 2 nights before
deciding we needed to head along the coast, nearer to Trinidad, in case the
weather changed. We next stopped at Plymouth, Courland Bay, which is a
long, tan coloured beach with vendors all along it. We saw a fence with
lots of people around a pool. We ventured in, an all-inclusive hotel,
with a pool, just what we fancied for a day. We checked it out, we could
use the facilities and pay for lunch, dinner etc. If we wanted to, we
could have a 24-hour all-inclusive rate, which we didn’t take advantage of as
we knew we would just feel compelled to drink all day as we’d paid for.
Spending a day lying by a pool was marvellous. However, we soon became
the tourist attraction, as we were the people who lived on the boat anchored
just out to sea. Holidaymakers would bring their kayaks alongside and peek
in as we were eating breakfast. It was a very pleasant couple of days,
just like being on holiday with evening entertainment provided. However,
2 days here was enough, time to move further down the coast.
Wednesday, Martin went to Scarborough, whilst we
checked the weather out; if we need to leave tomorrow, we will need to ‘clear
out’ of the country. We found the internet, checked the weather, bought
tickets to Scarborough and got on the bus to go and clear out with Immigration
and Customs. It rained, must be the rainy season. Had a KFC, cos we
can, got back on the bus and got the boat ready for an early start tomorrow
(4am!). Early to bed, really early to rise.
16th July 2007 - Trinidad
Tobago to Trinidad – we left Tobago in the black of
the early morning, about
5am, before the sun rose. This is the first time
we have set off in the dark, so armed with an enormous spotlight, we took up
the anchor and shone the light ahead of us to avoid any other boats and
hazards. We motored for about a mile before taking up a direct course to
Trinidad, Chaguaramas Bay, and the home of the yacht world in the hurricane
season. The trip was roughly 60 miles so we were expecting to get there
about 12 hours later at 5pm (we estimate that we sail at about 5 knots to give
us a guide). Our course meant that we would be out of sight of land for a
few hours but that we would be converging with Trinidad constantly along the
way. Sunrise was a bit of a non-event, as it was cloudy and showery, in
fact we had rain showers most of the way. Finally, land came into site
but it was still about 10 miles on our port side, in fact it was just an
outline under the clouds to start with. However, our day was made all the
better by the fact that the wind was behind us, we were motor sailing most of
the way, but because the swell and current were behind us we were almost
surfing the waves, and for most of the time we were hitting 7-8 knots, at one
point we hit 8.5 knots! As we got closer to the land we could see the
route we needed to take around the headland, through some islands, and then
finally into the Bay. Chaguaramas is a working port with huge transport
boats, mega yachts and boats of every size. There are areas that you
cannot anchor in and you need to be aware of what is happening around
you. As we rounded the final headland the rain really started. We
were soaked even in our waterproofs. We had already arranged to go into a
marina but had to clear customs and immigration first. We tied up on the
dock at 2.30pm, only 8.5 hours! When we tied up in the Marina, we were
greeted with a whole bunch of people we knew from Grenada.
There are two downsides to Chaguaramas. 1 –
You can’t get in the water for a swim as it’s not very clean here as you can
imagine from a working port. 2 – The humidity is unbelievable, 89% today,
temp 82F (28C), but because of the humidity it feels hotter (a bit like a wind
chill factor only in reverse) and today it’s 86F. You are constantly
dripping, everything is soaking all the time and nothing dries very
quickly. However, because there is so much rain now, when it does rain we
stand on the boat and have a cooling shower (no, with our clothes on!).
The showers are free so we do use them on a very very regular basis. One
final point, the food is cheap but the drink is not, beer is about the same
about a £1 a bottle, a bottle of wine (the stuff you’d pay £5 in Tesco) is
about £8-£10, although I did get a box of South African Shiraz today for £10 so
that was a bargain. We had an e-mail from friends who have arrived in
Margarita (just off the coast of Venezuela) and beer there is $0.20 in happy
hour and $0.80 all other times, so about 10p and 40p respectively, sounds like
a dangerous place to me……
Well, off now to meet with a canvass man who will
give us a quote. Will write again when we’ve done something interesting
other than clean the boat.
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