Our third cruising season began with our friends on Miclo III - two gorgeous days: 1) a long, hot 14-hour motorboat ride from Trini to Grenada, lost a little mahi, and completed a harrowing anchoring in the very dark dark in an unfamiliar place (just outside the main harbor at St George, Grenada); 2) up early to motor again 6 hours from Grenada to Carriacou and reap the rewards of our efforts - clear, turquoise water, white sandy beaches, a very strong rum punch, and lunch in a beach bar with great wifi and fabulous food! THIS is what it’s all about!!!

We are very much enjoying lovely Carriacou. We have found the island to be interesting, quiet, friendly, and beautiful. Restful. Approximately 7000 people live here, including around 1000 ex-pats – mostly British. There are nice cafes, a couple of excellent restaurants, and small kiosks selling produce. “Downtown” Hillsborough is charming.

We have bounced back and forth between Sandy Island – a marine park, and Tyrrel Bay – a more populated area. More isolated Sandy Island is where we prefer to be, and is very protected from the rolling swell and the wind-driven waves. And it has a great beach and very nice snorkeling. Tyrrel Bay is a little roly although well protected, has the cafes, wifi, easy “bus” (a van, really) service to Hillsborough, laundry and small grocery shops. Tyrrel is where most check in with immigration, so is full of cruisers and charter boats. At Sandy we have been with 5 or fewer boats.

Thanksgiving was an interesting experience… We had an “American” Thanksgiving dinner at The Roundhouse up in Bogles. The building looks like a hobbit house – with stone walls, round windows made from farming wheels and big gears, and a curved fairy-tale roof held up by a central tree. The elegant table settings had so much silverware we needed Emily Post! Roxanne, the chef - a delightful young woman - was once chef on the Onassis yacht, so you can imagine our dinner was exquisite! If you can find a copy of the February 2009 Gourmet magazine, there is an article about her, and a Caribbean recipe.

We have been wonderfully lazy here. Perhaps we have finally figured out that we are retired, and don’t HAVE to DO anything! We walk some, read some, nap some, snorkel almost every day – right off the boat, make pilgrimages into town, complete small little boat chores, and meet some very nice people. Bob and Debbie on Chimayo have started a kids’ sailing program here and have managed to fund boats and equipment through donations. Every Saturday at Paradise Beach, about 14 local kids go sailing. We have also had fun talking with the owners of three little cafes we like very much, and shared lunch with some friends from Trinidad.

One morning at 9:30 we were picked up at Celilo by Deefer Diving. We rode out with them on their dive catamaran and were dropped off at White Island to snorkel while the rest went drift diving. Then we all took their dive cat over to a sea pinnacle and swam around that. We were in the water for two and a half hours, and saw some fun stuff: flounder, an octopus wrapped around a little conch, a funny porcupine fish, goldspotted and sharptail eels, trumpetfish, rock beauties, and much, much more. Came back to the boat, ate lunch at 2:30, and conked out! BUT… had so much fun we decided to do a “Discover Diving” outing with them.

WOW!!! An apprehensive Roberta learned she could clear her ears, and her mask didn’t fill with water… a buoyant Michael learned to get down… and we were HOOKED!!! So, Merry Christmas to ourselves, we signed up for the full PADI Certification course. Spent three days watching videos, reading text, doing little “confined water” dives to learn skills (scary stuff for R like taking OFF the mask underwater and putting it back on and clearing it!) and taking quizzes – and we passed the final! So now we get to go for dive classes underwater – and go diving! We love it! And Deefer Diving in Carriacou is an excellent Dive Center – Alex a wonderful instructor.

We chose to be in Tyrrel for the duration of the classes because it is a long dinghy ride across open water to Hillsborough from Sandy Island (especially if it is windy or getting late and dark) so we have been busing back and forth to Hillsborough. THAT has been an experience! Some days it is an exercise to see how many large people can fit in a 12 passenger van (16). Some days we have a Michael Schumacher wannabe for a driver. Other days it is a school bus, depending on time. Or transportation of produce from from to market. Or a scenic tour while the driver goes up a remote road to pick someone up. Every day has taken a widely varying length of time to reach our destination. All our rides have been a fun, interesting view into the local community of very friendly people. But the best day was one on which mostly women and children got on the bus. At each stop tiny, gorgeous children would be handed up, and would sit on any woman's lap - even after the Mama got on the bus. It was such a beautiful example of community and people helping one another.

We are still hoping to do an island tour and more before heading to Bequia for Christmas and a few more weeks. We'd like to see Windward, the boatbuilding part of Carriacou.

So we are having fun in the sun… missing northern friends and family this holiday season. We hope your holidays are lovely - stay warm up there!