Shaggy Dog story. (Prickly Bay, Grenada)

As you may know from previous entries, the outboard on the dinghy is a little less than reliable. Having been dropped in the sea at one stage by a previous owner and not exactly lovingly cared for since, it’s hardly surprising.

Our reliance on the dinghy and outboard forced us to drastic action: a visit to the local Mercury dealers workshop. This involves a slow tick over journey ashore, unbolting the outboard, tying it to a folding hand trolley at the floating dock and taking it the 2km walk along the grassy verge of a busy roadside to their workshop. Left it there to much umming and arring with a plan to return later in the day to hear the full diagnosis - and hopefully also the cure! Back at the dock in the restaurant overlooking the bay, I have an excellent breakfast of eggs Benedict - good enough to give any of the Sydney beachside cafes a run for their money. There’s free wifi there, so checking the emails, I get news from home: a hopefully delightful occurrence of a lodger (Oli) wanting to move out, and one of our previous lodgers (Canadian lumberjack, and Charlie’s mate, Matt) wants to move back in on the same day - this is great news, as remotely trying to find good tenants is a painful drag.

I’ll also note at this point that while we were online, Alistair Conway had commented “No doggies?” on a cat photo on my most recent Facebook post.

After a helpful tow home from another tender, we spent a few hours back on the boat until we make the return journey to the garage. During that time, the wind picked up and the rain came down, making the trip back ashore under oar-power an unpleasant prospect - oh well: that’s boat life. Conditions did improve a little before it was time to leave, but there’s still a brisk breeze and some chop. 2mins after leaving the boat, bending my back into it, Chez excitedly tells me: “There’s a dog!” - not overly interesting news, until I realise she’s talking about a dog in the water bravely struggling along in the middle of the bay. I divert us over to it and we manhandle (her) out of the water and into the tender - where wet smelly shakes and tail wagging ensues. Chez wraps her up - she’s a medium sized terrier/bitzer with a gorgeous smiley face and floppy ears. Shes content and inquisitive as I row the ten minutes or so to get us back to the dock - there she promptly jumps onto the dock and nose down hurriedly goes off a-sniffing. We had planned to get on the radio to try and track down the owners at that point, but as she ran away up the road, that plan went on the back burner. Leaving Chez at the dockside restaurant, I start making the walk up to the garage again. Around the first corner, the dog is waiting with a “what kept you?” expression, she then proceeded to scamper 10/20 meters in front of me all the way to the garage, occasionally looking back to make sure I was still there. As I’m sitting around waiting for the verdict from the mechanics, the dog comes over and curls up by my feet. The previously friendly garage cat then showed itself. At that point I made a little rope lead for the dog to avoid any unnecessary altercations, this she didn’t seem to mind too much.

After an hour of sitting around, the less than satisfactory verdict from the garage was - your petrol mix is a bit thin, it’s an old engine, the bearings are a bit worn, you need a whole new one… oh, by the way; we sell them here!

So, dog in one hand, old outboard strapped to trolley in the other, wallet $200 lighter, I head back. I rejoin Chez who’d been back at the restaurant unsuccessfully trying to track down the dogs owner. It’s then back into the tender, the garage tinkered outboard now won’t even start to my utter frustration, so I row the three of us against the wind back to Serenity Now. Along the way a friendly neighbour threw us a rope and towed us some of the way home. I offered him a dog as payment, but he wasn’t keen. Jumped onto channel 68 ( the local cruisers standby channel for any traffic ) and reported the dog situation and where we were. After a couple of hours and a second call out on the radio, with still no positive responses, the dogs ears prick up. Her initial “what’s that noise?” rapidly turns into unrestrained joy as she realises her mum has returned. A little tender with a dreadlocked hippy mum and two young kids pulls up to a boat within shouting distance away from our bow, ‘Margie’

After I give a couple of calls from our bow, the French hippy lady from Margie comes over in her dinghy. As she comes alongside, our furry visitor for the last few hours jumps ship without a second glance. Both the lady and dog are very happy to be re-united. As she heads off we ask the dogs name; It’s Tickla.

Hopefully with this tale of marine canine rescue and the associated pictures, Alistair should be well satisfied.