SERENITY NOW

  Like prizing a particularly stubborn barnacle from the hull... we’re finally wrenching ourselves away from the welcoming bosom of Grenada. Our departure for Trinidad, weather permitting, now planned for next Monday - 3 days away as I write this. With haul out and a UK trip to follow shortly after, I’ve started to embrace the ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ jobs which have been mounting up as we’ve happily lazed here in Woburn Bay. The first - and a good one to get your hands dirty - is the replacement of the hoses and fittings in the ‘Lady Head’. This job, taking priority after small (..and actually rather cute!) little crabs had begun to appear in the bowl and an accompanying smell of bad eggs had grown from just a hint to an overpowering stench. Happily, that job went swimmingly and needs no further explanation. Next on the list, clean the hull. I hadn’t scraped the boat’s bottom since the saga with the dropped Hydrovane rudder, now some weeks ago. This is long enough for whole complex e...

Still happily anchored in cruiser friendly Woburn Bay, Grenada.. our hop to Trinidad, for now, postponed. This delay is caused by a combination of concerning weather factors and really just loving where we are at the moment. More on the weather later no doubt. Well after a night of celebration (driving up and down and honking their horns) Grenada has a new prime minister: Dickon Mitchell. I was pleasantly surprised by his first order of business - nothing of the usual politicians waffle about inflation, crime, immigration etc. “Project number one” he said, “I want us to start planting the nutmeg plants, the cinnamon plants, because project number one is to replant all of the spices” He’ll no doubt be embroiled in scandals and corruption by next week, but a refreshing opening statement none the less. Having finished licking my wounds from last weeks poker losses and accompanying hangover, come Friday, I decide to give it another go. This time drinking orange juice all night and winning ...

  June 1st...Happy start of Hurricane season! Arrived at Prickly Bay, Grenada, a wide well populated anchorage, which hasn’t quite got the charm of the jungly North of the island - don’t get me wrong, it’s a far from ugly bay, but we’ll try elsewhere before the forecast blow comes up. Whilst there, we head off on a fairly long hike to the supermarket, this sweaty activity coincided with the local elections getting into full swing. We saw two groups of excited supporters - the red Tshirts and the green Tshirts. There’s lots of shouting, loud hailers and music and we passed one of the candidates - a confident looking Mr. Cox, doing a meet and greet. Back to the boat laden with shopping, upped anchor and headed the short 1hr ish journey around to another of the protected bays on the South of the island. After a wiggle through very visible reefs with their own little surf waves, we find a spot behind ‘Hog Island’ and drop. In the afternoon I take the tender for a Hog island explore - I...

  We arrived at our selected anchorage, the jungle rimmed bay at Chateubelair on the island of St. Vincent about an hour after dark. With no moon to help us we crawled our way in close to the few lights showing on the beach and dropped anchor. The engine wouldn’t allow us to reverse for some reason, so not an ideal anchor set, but good enough for the one forecast low wind night we plan to stay here for. I checked the propeller (all good), topped up the transmission fluid in the gearbox, and made sure it operated both forward and reverse - all seemed good. Both had an early night after the long day’s sail down from St. Lucia - it was a cracking sail that was really good for our confidence and enjoyed by both of us. I wake to the sound of coffee being made and a cheery ‘Happy Birthday’ from my lovely wife. I take my first look at the ‘town’ which we’d arrived in the previous night. It’s an overcast humid morning, and wafts of morning vapour are rising from the jungle that rises behin...

  The bay at Rodney Bay has had held us captive for almost a month now. We’ve been taking a rest, possibly not well earned, but needed regardless. Days have been lazy, an occasional trip to shore to check the wifi and messages, but generally laid back, reading, swimming, playing card games and when I feel very energetic, a dive below to attempt to keep on top of the long green beard growing on our hull. I managed to catch a couple of little snappers off the stern - too small to eat, but both very pretty fish to see. Entertainment in the evenings is provided by the DJs, hired singers, steel drum bands and karaoke that goes on at the resorts on shore - that’s maybe 400m away: close enough for us to hear clearly when we sit upstairs in the cockpit, but far enough away to not keep us awake later. Other than a few shopping trips and our wifi visits, we haven’t spent much time on land, one exception was to visit the ‘Friday night Fry up’. This weekly event sees the locals wheel out their...

The now daily ration of crusty baguette claimed its first victim last night: I broke a filling on one of my back teeth. My last dental visit was back in Greece some months (years??) ago, so I’m probably due another visit anyway. Just as an aside, Manolis, the great/kind/cheap dentist who we used to visit in Agios Nikoloas, was by no means a fluent English speaker, retaining his strong Greek accent. His two most used phrases as he happily jabbed around in your mouth were: “I’ma sorry I hurt you” and “You are very brave” both of which he repeated often. Carl, a fellow marina resident, whose fear of dentists was only conquered by the intense amount of pain he found himself in, made his first visit to the same dentist, Manolis. When we caught up with Carl at the next marina BBQ, he very proudly reported that the dentist had actually made a point to tell him how brave he was - we didn’t have the heart to tell him that we all were! We checked out from Sainte Anne, on Martinique a few days la...

The anchorage at Sainte Pierre would have to be one of the best we’ve stayed in. That holds true for a couple of reasons: firstly, the pure calm flat water, which translated into peaceful all night sleeps... uninterrupted all night sleeps on board are a rarity. Secondly the sheer beauty of the place; dominated by the volcano and the dense jungle behind, the ramshackle buildings present an unconventionally beautiful little town that nestles right on the shoreline. Possibly the only downside to staying there is the extremely slim, but most certainly real, possibility of being melted alive by molten lava at any moment. Well thankfully we were able to avoid that fate, and departed prior to Mont Pelee blowing its active top once again. We continued South, passing, along the way the town of Carbet, once home to the artist Gauguin, and where Christopher Columbus had first set foot on the island. Passing down alongside the green hills and mountains of the West coast of Martinique, by afternoon...