Re-cap pt2

We had just arrived in Grenada after sailing down through the chain of Islands from the Iles de Saintes, sailing to Dominica, where our dear friend Fiona joined us, we got to watch the first day of the first cricket test match between the West Indies and Australia before sailing to Fort de France on Martinique, here we had another dear friend Susie and her son Isaac join us to sail down to St Lucia. St Lucia is the Island where all our guests left us. Bequeia was our next stop in St Vincent and the Grenadines. We stopped at the Tobago Cays, Mayreau Island, Union Island and cleared into Grenada at Carriacou Island before we made landfall on our finale destination for the up-coming hurricane season.

We did not stay long in St Georges Anchorage before we made our way down and around the southern end of Grenada to drop our anchor in Hartman Bay, just outside Secret Harbour as this location is very well protected by a maze of coral reefs. Just sailing into the anchorage was quite a task, the navigation marks were put in place by the hit and miss brothers, the were more miss than they were hit but that is another story in this part of the world.

It turned out that Hartman Bay and Secret Harbour was a very social place to be for the hurricane season. Every day there was something happening, you could go to a yoga session or a water aerobics session almost every morning, there were jam sessions for the cruising muso’s and they were really good, there was beach volley ball, dinghy drifts on the odd occasion, a weekly hash-house-harriers where you could either walk a short course or run the longer course, a weekly bingo night, quiz and pizza nights held in Prickly Bay which was just a short walk for us from Hartman Bay. There were shopping busses that would take us to most of the markets on the south end of the Island, we had everything one could wish for, all within easy reach. It was here in Prickly Bay that we caught up with Rosemary and Tony off English Rose, they were on the same land and Indian River tour we took part in on Dominica.

Carnival time, this would be our second carnival in the Caribbean. There was a suggestion from some of the other cruisers that during carnival there was a greater chance of having our yacht broken into, a greater chance of being robbed as a lot of boats would be left un-attended and the temptation for some of the less desirable people would be too much so we sailed back around the southern end of the Island to take a berth in the very secure Port Louis Marina, in St Georges while the carnival was on. It was here in the marina swimming pool we met Miles, Ian and Wendy for the first time. I’m sure that some of you reading this would have had the experience of meeting someone for the first time having an instant rapport, the feeling that you have known each other forever, well this was one of those moments for us on Annecam. We had dinner on each other’s boats, shared memories and stories, we even went to one of the island orphanages with Wendy where the beautiful children braided Annie’s hair and wore me out kicking the soccer ball with them.

Back to the carnival, this was by far the best carnival we managed to attend in the year that we spent sailing up and down the Caribbean, there was loads of colour, loud music coming from trucks equipped with generators and massive speaker banks. We witnessed some of the best dancing by very talented people and we came to the conclusion that these people were borne to dance. There was gyrating scantily clad bodies everywhere, most covered with dyed ostridge feathers and not much else. The procession went on for hours and the bonus is we got to share the experience with friends. A couple of the cruisers we sailed with took part, Venessa and her daughter Marina dressed in the feathers and mixed it with the locals.

As soon as carnival was over we sailed back around to Hartman Bay to anchor in almost exactly the same spot we had before. Our time here seemed to fly as there was always something going on. We kept a close eye on the weather as the storms started rolling off the African coast and headed in our direction. Some of these storms came our direction as tropical waves producing a lot of rain and quite a bit of wind, some would build to become full on hurricanes but luckily for us they all veered north and left us alone down in Grenada, it was not so lucky for Islands further north like Dominica where there was a lot of destruction and loss of life caused by hurricanes like the one called Danny. The cruising community came to the fore, collecting donations of food, clothing, tarps and drinking water to be donated to the ones in need, it’s amazing to be part of that cruising community.

We were invited to go on a land tour by Rosemary and Tony off English Rose and we gratefully excepted. Rosemary and Tony had Tony’s Sister Joanne and her husband Mike staying with them at the time. The six of us headed off with our guide for a day out seeing the sights around Grenada, first stop was a beautiful waterfall, second stop we went to a nutmeg processing factory, a cocoa producer, a wicked rum distillery that was still using the original water wheel and cane crush as well as the vats that the English had established in 1785 and that would make it just over 230 years it has been distilling fine rum. From the rum distillery we drove up to the highest lookout on the Island, from there one could almost see the entire Island. The girls thought that the last stop was by far the best and the Grenada Chocolate factory was the place. We had a tour to see the whole process from the cocoa beans to the finished chocolate, we stocked up on that much chocolate we were still eating it as we crossed the Pacific Ocean, a fantastic day was had by all.

Our first dinghy concert, this is an event where most of the cruisers and quite a few locals head to a small sheltered bay on the south end of Grenada where they had a tug boat rafted up between two barges. It’s amazing to see so many dinghies rafted up to each other and all the cruisers having a great time listening to music played by local musicians. Just looking around you will see cruisers dancing in their dinghies. I did not know but was soon to find out that each year at least one of the cruisers will be pulled out of their dinghy for a dunking in the sea by Jeff off Izzy R, the victim as I quickly found out was to be me, Jeff tried several times to pull me over the side without success, it only when Miles our water aerobics instructor from the Port Louis Marina and Alex off Banyan all worked together. It took three of them to pull me overboard, I ended up getting dunked and it was a good dunking as it seemed like ages before I managed to find the surface for a breath of much needed fresh air. We all had a good laugh and once again, a great day was had by all.

So far we had spent over two months in Grenada dodging the nasty weather systems and it was time to start getting ready for what was going to be our biggest year by far, we would be sailing up through the Caribbean Islands again to Puerto Rico, crossing the Caribbean Sea to Panama, transiting the canal and crossing the Pacific Ocean to our home land Australia but first we had to have Annecam lifted out of the water to apply new anti-foul paint, have our standing rigging replaced as our original rig was about ten years old and our insurance company demanded that our rig had to be less than ten years old. We also required new sails as our old ones were starting to show their age. We hauled out in Clarkes Court Boat Yard and Marina. We met more Australian cruisers in the boatyard, Glenda and Jay on Black Butterfly, Annika and Ian on Ocean Crusader plus Lloyd on his catamaran Déjà vu, we also caught up with Marty, Lisa and their dog Lilly in the boatyard, we first met them further up the Island chain earlier in the year. As this was a brand-new boatyard they offered us a very good rate, it was that good we left Annecam up on the hard stand and flew back to Australia for just over a month to visit our children and grandchildren. The flights took us from Grenada to Orlando Florida, to Los Angeles and due to American Airlines, we were late arriving in LA we flew to Sydney then to Melbourne.

The reverse journey was a lot better and there were no hassles. Thirty-four days after we left, we were back on board Annecam. It did not take us long to come to the conclusion that the mosquitos would eat us soft juicy white people alive, we were burning mosquito coils, smothering ourselves in repellent to no avail, we put up with them for almost a week when we bumped into friends Judy and Ray off Jacobs Ladder who also were working on their yacht in the same boatyard, they told us that they had an air-conditioned apartment just up the road from the boatyard and they would be vacating it once their yacht was back in the water. We quickly saw the management and booked ourselves in for a month to do everything that had to be done.

Every day was hard work as we sanded off all the years of anti-foul paint all the way back to the barrier coat, we were changing from a soft ablative paint to a hard racing paint, so all the old paint had to go. It was times like these we wished we had a smaller boat, something about half the size would have been good. Day in and day out we sanded a scraped every little bit of the old paint off, if we weren’t sanding and scraping we were at the chandlers purchasing more sanding discs to do the job. We were almost ready for the new paint when we found out that the chandler had not even ordered it in for us, we had placed the order just over two months earlier before we flew out to Australia and they had not even placed the order with their suppliers, days turned into weeks and we still did not have the paint, every time we went into their shop the manager would duck for cover and the staff would blatantly lie to us saying things like it must have been delivered to their other shop or it is on the ship and will be delivered tomorrow. I refuse to name and shame on here so if you are heading to the same Island to do the same things I suggest that you make sure they have what you are after before starting the work.

It did take several weeks longer than what we had planned on but we finale finished and splashed with brand new sails, brand new rigging and nice hard racing anti-foul paint on the hull, Annecam was back where she belonged, we were away from the mosquitos, the dust and the noise in the boatyard, back to rocking at anchor in the beautiful Caribbean Sea.

It was now the end of the hurricane season and it was now time for us to start moving. We sailed up to Carriacou to quickly clear out through Customs and Immigration. As the weather window was good for us we sailed to Chatham Bay on Union Island only stopping for the one night as a ship in transit before we sailed to Bequeia to clear in to St Vincent and the Grenadines. We had arrived just before Christmas and the New Year, we had only been anchored for a day when a New Zealand flagged yacht called Nora J came in to anchor nearby with Jane and Paul on board and as this part of the bay had some serious weed patches, I suggested they drop their anchor in a small patch of sand right alongside of us on Annecam, they did and got a good solid set straight away. Jane and Paul came over later and thanked us for directing them to the patch of sand, there were several charter yacht skippers that tried to anchor in the large vacant area created by the weed patch and they all dragged, there was one a French skipper on a large catamaran that tried to anchor and he dragged, not just the once but three times and when I tried to help him by telling him that he was dropping right in the middle of the weed he just arrogantly waived me off and proceeded to try for a fourth time and you guessed it he dragged, this time dangerously close to Nora J, he got quite angry when we told him he had to move and when he finale did we gave him a standing ovation as we waived him off, we affectionately call this type of charter skipper a “credit card Captain” for all of the obvious reasons.

We were relaxing on board Annecam when two English flagged yachts came into the bay, Nautilus with Steph and Ian on board and Aztec Dream with Lynne and Steve on board, we last spent time with these cruisers in Almerimar Spain in 2014. We used to play a lot of pool with these people and we had a fun competition we jokingly called the ashes between England and Australia, all played over Spanish tapas and beer in a little harbourside restaurant called Mario’s. The search for a local pool table drew a blank except for one that almost had no felt left on the top, so the series was put on hold until we meet up again where we can find a suitable pool table. It was a busy time for us all with a planned land tour of the Island, purchasing provisions and catching up on a few small boat jobs. We all met up for a traditional English Christmas dinner in one of the cute harbourside restaurants. A lovely English couple Taryn and Mike, who happened to be friends with Steph and Ian got married on Christmas eve, they invited us up to share their wedding breakfast to their luxury accommodation overlooking the bay where Annecam, Aztec Dream and Nautilus were anchored. We all went up there again to watch the New Year come in a few of days later, our return trip in our dinghy just as the clock struck midnight was a slog as our outboard motor quit and we had to row. It was a very windy night and we had to line up our approach to Annecam from a long way off because if we missed our target we would have been blown out to sea and it’s a long way to Panama from Bequeia, it’s over one thousand nautical miles (1,820 kilometres).

Only three days into the New Year it was time for us to start moving again and as we were clearing out through Customs and Immigration we met another Australian couple Gus and Caroline, Lynne and Steve were also clearing out to sail with us to Rodney Bay St Lucia Aztec Dream. Gus and Caroline were sailing on almost exactly the same Jeanneau yacht as Aztec Dream, their boat was called Started With A Kiss. At the Customs office there was a challenge given by the two Jeanneau’s and excepted by us, they said that they would wait for the poor old Bavaria so we could keep up. We had the last laugh as this would be the first real sail that we had the chance to give our brand-new sails a stretching, along with our nice slick hard racing bottom paint we managed speeds up to and sometimes over 12.5 knots, we not only put the challengers to bed we were almost up to our third beer before the first of them arrived in Rodney Bay over an hour behind us. When Aztec Dream arrived and anchored Steve remarked “what a cracking sail” and we still use this very English line each time we have a good sail.

We moved Annecam onto the moorings inside the yacht basin to clear in through Customs and Immigration, it was while we were in here that we met Debbie and John on their yacht Oddity, we also caught up with Izzy and Jeff on Izzy R. When Izzy and Jeff found out that we had a problem with our outboard motor and there was none to be purchased on St Lucia they quickly offered us a spare they had, we gratefully accepted their generous offer and we buddy boated with them all the way to St Marten where we had purchased a new one to be picked up when we arrived there.

With the arrival of Nora J and along with Aztec Dream, Izzy R, Oddity and us on Annecam we had quite a crew for sun downers and dinners off the boat, there were ten of us in total having a great time together, sharing stories on where we had been and where we planned to go.

After only a few days in Rodney Bay we cleared and sailed to St Anne on Martinique, buddy boating with Izzy R to complete the easiest clearance procedures. I have mentioned before that the French territories have the best clearance process one could wish for, it’s just a matter of locating the right internet café, sitting down at the computer and entering all the correct information and you are in, the most we payed was two Euro. I believe that the French have a great system by not having officials sitting behind a desk and having more officials out patrolling the waters to stop the illegal activity like drugs and people smuggling from taking place is a step in the right direction.

It was here on Martinique that we up-graded our dinghy from our old one that proved to be a very wet ride to a brand new rigid inflatable boat (RIB) with a lightweight aluminium hull that was bigger and lighter than our old one and thanks to Jeff, he found a buyer for our old one the same day we picked up the new one. The young Spanish/Italian guy, Luca was desperate for another dinghy as his had been destroyed when it ended up under a dock and the waves smashed the transom almost completely out, we caught up with Luca later in the year in Cartagena, Columbia and he was still happy with our old dinghy.
Our time was spent on Martinique hiking or I should say trying to keep up with Izzy and Jeff as they loved walking the trails, we stopped at Saint Pierre the location of the 1902 Mt Pelee volcanic eruption that killed over thirty thousand people leaving only two survivors it the path of the pyroclastic flow, one was a prisoner in a dungeon and the other was a young girl who rowed a small boat to a cave along the shoreline, she was found later drifting unconscious about one nautical mile offshore.

We cleared out of Martinique in Saint Pierre and sailed alongside Izzy R to Portsmouth Dominica stopping for just the one night as ships in transit, leaving early the next morning for the Isles de Saintes to clear into Guadeloupe. After just two nights we set sail for Pidgeon Island on the west side of Guadeloupe, once again we stopped for just the one night before sailing up to Deshaies to clear out of Guadeloupe before sailing up to Antigua.

This would-be Annie’s second time and my third time for anchoring in English Harbour on Antigua. We stayed on Antigua and Barbuda for a total of two weeks and in that time, we went up to Shirley Heights to watch the sun set and listen to a steel pan band, hired a car and drove across the Island to Stingray City to play with the very playful stingrays, we went on a land tour on Barbuda to see what was left of the Codrington Homestead, the Codrington’s were slavers using their captives to work the sugar cane fields. After the homestead we all hiked to a huge limestone sink hole in the middle of the bush, the location of the holding cell where they used to bring the slaves ashore and the last thing we did on that day was sit down to a lovely BBQ of crayfish and rum punch. We had two attempts to leave Barbuda with Izzy R, the first time we had to help Jeff and Izzy back to Barbuda after we had sailed a few miles towards St Barthelemy, Annecam did a great but slow job towing them back to safety. After spending the next day helping them we left again for St Barthelemy where we caught up with Christa and Craig who we first met in Dominica the year before. They took us on a tour of the Island and to watch the planes landing on one of the most dangerous airports in the world.

After a few short days anchored in a very exposed anchorage on St Barthelemy we sailed to St Marten to catch up with Izzy R and to return their outboard motor plus pick up our brand new one. It was here that we said see you later to Izzy and Jeff, we will always remember their generosity and we still keep in touch with these wonderful people to this day. We also met Vinson a lovely Canadian guy and an Australian by the name of Mark who used to be one of the actors in Home and Away. We all ended up watching carnival over on the French side of the Island together.

Next we sail back up to the British Virgin Islands, the American Virgin Islands, the Spanish Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, sail across the Caribbean Sea to Columbia, the San Blas Islands and to Panama to get ready to transit the Panama Canal. Stay tuned and watch this space for more.

The photo is a snapshot of Carnival in Grenada.

“In life, it is not the opinion of others that counts, not the ones who point out how you could have done it better. The credit belongs to you, as you are out there living the dream”.