We finally left Woburn a week last Saturday (only a day late this time) and made it all the way (30 miles) to Carriacou, with a slight 40 miles detour out towards to Tobago.

Tony and Devon are on board and Jeff has come along for the ride. The first leg of the trip was fairly uneventful as the Christmas winds haven't kicked in yet and the weather has been relatively calm for the last month or so, and we caught a good sized tuna (the first one we've had for quite some time). Unfortunately I got a bit sea-sick which wasn't so good but I'm hoping that is was just because I haven't been to sea since we went to Trinidad which was over four months ago. We left Saturday afternoon around 4.30 and were at anchor by 10 am Sunday morning; in plenty of time to get to the Slipway for lunch and then back for a well deserved nap. I'd forgotten just how crystal clear the water is out here, without the run off from the rum factory that we get in Woburn.

Most of the week has been pretty hectic as we haven't been here for a while. We've had meetings with Andy the sail maker who made a cover for our steering rack and is going to make the awning for the top deck when our material eventually arrives. Andy has a virtual menagerie in his tiny sale loft: five red spotted tortoises, one that only has one foot and that he reckons would be really great on our boat, three cats, and a resident humming-bird that has built her nest in the rafters and has produced five sets of twins in the last eight months.

Tanya is in Hillsborough, the next bay to where we are, so we've made a couple of visits over there to help her with it her winch. The shaft seized-up and she burnt out the motor trying to raise her anchor; Mike had been trying to solve the problem over the phone without success but now him and Jeff have managed to get the shaft moving again and we're going to take the motor back to Grenada with us to get it re-wound.

Their little boy, Jesse, who is now 18 months is a delight, although how she copes with him on the boat I'm not too sure. As we were leaving I couldn't find my shoes which Jeff said he'd last seen Jesse carrying. The fear was that he'd decided to do a float test with them over the side, which he apparently has done with quite a few things. We looked all over the boat and in the end I left wearing a pair of Tanya's. The next day she phoned to say she'd found my shoes in their shoe closet so there may be hope for the future yet!!!

We've also been working on the boat, as usual. Mike and Jeff put new seals on the steering ram and tightened up the packing which seems to have worked well and got rid of the oil leak on the back deck. Tony and Devon worked banging and scraping the shelter deck and the grating over the steering. Devon's 'English' is all but indecipherable and we're having trouble understanding him, he's not proving to be the most able bodied seaman either. He almost caught his hand in our one of our mooring ropes while trying to tie it off, dropped a ladder on his finger and got a massive blood blister under his nail, which Mike had to puncture with a hot paper-clip, and then whacked his head coming out of the crews.

We went to the Friday night Lambi Queen pan night, met up with a few other people we haven't seen for a while, and actually managed to get home at a reasonable time which was good.

Last weekend we did two trips out to sea with our friends Mike and Audrey, and Tony from Ragin Cajun who was hauled out anti-fouling his bottom. On the Saturday we left around 5.30 pm and got back in at 2 am after meeting up with Troll, a tug we've met before. We went alongside them for a while and ended up feeling like a Senior Citizens Pirate Club; apart from Tony and Devon I was the youngest on board.

Sunday we went out at 1.30 pm and were supposedly going to be back by 7 pm. Going out was fine but as we were coming back in the fuel pump started playing up, and we got air in the main engine system. We limped back into the bay at around 11 pm and I was oh so pleased to hear the anchor go down. We started up the crane to lower the dinghy and our main generator died on us, completely. We ended up having to lower the dinghy over the side on ropes, which we probably should have done before we opened a bottle of Pussers to celebrate being back safely, then maybe someone would have checked that the plug was in before it got to the water.

As you can imagine the last few days have been busy. The main Yanmar generator needs a new exciter coil which we won't be able to get until we get back to Grenada, if then. Mike and Jeff have been working on the Onan trying to get that going so at least we have our own household power (at the moment we're running on a borrowed portable), then they have to get the old blue wind-up Isanthall going so that we can get 3-phase to pump up the air-bottles, run the crane and windlass, oh and the bilge pump too. And then we have to fix the main engine ... it never rains but it pours as they say.

In amongst all this I've been trying to organise Tony's ticket to go back to Indonesia for a few months. After the problems we had with Johan being returned from Barbados I decided to go through the travel agent we ended up using in Grenada. All was good and we booked a ticket leaving the 14th Dec and coming back on the 8th Feb. Only by the time the itinerary came through he was leaving on the 21st and the price had gone up nearly $500. I was not best pleased, and neither was Tony as he'd told his family when he would be back.

After lots of phone calls, emails and internetting I eventually found another flight leaving on the 19th for the same price and called up the agents who then booked it. Maybe I should become a travel agent.

I guess the next blog will be around Christmas. Not sure where we'll be for it. Last year was Bequia and the year before Venezuela, I think we'll probably be in Grenada for this one ... but then who knows!

Love to everyone ....