Jules
21/04/2010, St. Vincent and the Grenadines

As I type this we're in Chatham Bay, Union Island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Where we'll be when you read it is anyone's guess as there's no internet or phone connections here and we probably won't get them for a while.

Carriacou continued its initial feel-good atmosphere. We visited the main town of Hillsborough and took a bus up to Windward where they build traditional wooden boats on the beach. From there you could clearly see Petite Martinque and some of the Grenadine islands. The colour of the sea is hard to describe as it laps the white sand beaches ... and even harder to do justice to when you take photos.

Julian and Johan carried on with the hull cleaning and found a whole Buzzard-bottom eco-system going on down there. In amongst the not insubstantial layer of barnacles were various species of crabs, shrimps, small fish and even tiny langoustines. So far they've completed just over half but already there's been a noticeably positive difference to our speed and fuel consumption.

Last Friday we went out on Pete and Pat's yacht Tiempo over to White Island. Quite a few of their local friends joined us and rafted alongside. A good day was had by all ... especially in the evening when everyone congregated at the Lambi Queen for the pan-band special.

On Sunday we returned the hospitality and everyone came over to the Buzzard. It was a good afternoon and culminated with Mike organizing a 'boys-own' expedition to pick up our latest project. This is a 20ft Scandanavian lifeboat that was rotting on a trailer just across from the beach. It was owned by Jerry who no longer wanted it and was happy to see it go.

We got it back, the boys cleaned it out (tree frogs and all), and the next day it was put to use transporting 100 chairs and various other charity donations to the schools people.

Unfortunately at the weekend our laptop gave out and we had to reboot it from scratch. Means we've lost quite a few programmes and documents; notably the ocens.net software that allows me to send blogs via satellite, and most of the photos we took in Grenada and the passage to Carriacou. Fortunately, Pete, who took the underwater pictures of Toby has copied across a few of his so hopefully you'll get some at some point. (We do, however, have a photo of the big fish Johan caught off the boat the other night; think it might be a rainbow runner but not too sure.)

Monday night we had a visit from Ken and Pat (and a bottle of wine) on their way back up to Grenada; it was good to see Pat getting into the sailing life-style. And Tuesday morning we went back to Hillsborough to check out (cost 1EC$, and that was for Julian), and do a bit of provisioning. Shopping in down-town Carriacou is obviously a social event and slow, slow, slow. We were back by midday though and weighed anchor for Union Island at around 12.30.

It's only a 12 mile trip and we were dropping anchor in Clifton by 3.00pm. Union Island is the southern most island of St. Vincent and the Grenadines with a population of less than 2000. The main industry is tourism; catering to people coming out to visit the Tobago Cays, Palm Island and Petite St. Vincent. Clifton has the feel of a toy-town with brightly coloured buildings and market stalls but, from what we can see, very little else.

There are a few yachts around but the main tourist season is over already. The local boats were all over us the moment we anchored, asking what we needed: fish, fruit, local women even. Checking in was relatively painless and the boys didn't need visas, total cost was 211EC$. It's strange though, because although so close to Grenada you can definitely tell you're in a different country. The accents are harder to understand and the attitude has an almost wary edge to it.

We anchored just outside the channel but dragged a bit during the night and left by 7.30 a.m. the next day to go round to Chatham Bay. Here there are no houses, a few wooden shack-bars and an American catamaran charter business and touristy thatched bar, which looks deserted at present. There are four other boats in the bay, not including the five US cats. that are anchored up.

We've just had a visit from the customs boat who didn't even want to see our papers just know we were ok ... good sign. We also had a visit from one of the local shack-bars inviting us to come over for happy hour between 3 and 6 pm, apparently they only sell rum punch though ... not such a good sign!

Tomorrow we're planning to go across to Tobago Cays (all of about 10 miles) and anchor there for a day or so. It's supposed to be the most beautiful reef in the Caribbean; we'll let you know.

Lots of love to everyone ...

Comments [3]

Jules
15/04/2010, Tyrell Bay

So here we are in Carriacou. We left Grenada on Monday, for once the day we actually said we would, and had a very pleasant six hour journey up to Tyrell Bay. It was calm and sunny and we saw dolphins and flying fish, going further out of the water than I've ever seen. We had the lines out and managed to catch a booby bird with an amazing blue beak, but no fish unfortunately.

We anchored around 2 p.m.; in among the big boys at the tug end of the bay. There are a couple of large barges which are based here and take aggregate from anywhere between Suriname and Puerto Rico for building, and three or four tugs ... we're the largest and the oldest but of course also the prettiest (can you have pretty tugs?).

Carriacou is only small, with a population of around 6,000, mainly fishermen and farmers and relatively poor but unspoilt with very little in the way of a tourist industry (which suits us fine). Hillsborough is the capital and boasts two supermarkets and no high-rises. From what we've seen so far it's friendly and covered with rum bars ... of which we're steering clear, unless we go to the Lambi (conch to you and I) Queen on Friday night which is supposed to be good.

We've already met quite a few locals and, at last, have been able to make contact about our aid supplies. After our frustrating attempts in Trinidad and Venezuela we did manage to give some football equipment away to a local charity in Grenada the night before we left, but the Rotary Club didn't follow up on our offer and we never heard back from the Catholic school that was interested (we do keep trying you know).

Anyway on Tuesday we went over to speak to the CCEF (Carriacou Children's Educational Fund) representative at the yacht club and he said with the amount we had it would be best speaking to the Minister for Schools. After a couple of phone calls we had a personal visit from two local government women. Not sure they were too keen on the dinghy ride out and they needed beer as soon as they arrived, but they're very happy to take all that we can spare, including 100 of the chairs, books, football kits, T-shirts, sunhats, pencils ...

Hopefully this will all be organised within the next few days which will be wonderful.

Since we've been here Julian and Johan have been busy cleaning the hull as it's starting to make a definite difference to our speed and fuel consumption. Johan's never done it before but keen to learn, Julian, thankfully, is a 'professional'. Anton and Tony, after finishing painting the gunnels are now starting on the decks which is, I so hope, the last of our big banging jobs; we're definitely disturbing the peace of this beautiful place ... probably just as well we're out with the industrial boats.

We've also been doing some fishing as there are quite large fish, including tuna, swimming around beneath the boat. The boys spend ages setting up down lights and catching bait ... we haven't caught anything big enough to cook yet though.

Carriacou is surrounded by reefs and the snorkelling and diving are supposed to be wonderful so we're hoping to have a go at that too, although at present the snorkels are being better used by the boys to scrub the hull ... priorities I guess. Like today we were going to go to Hillsborough and Windward (where they make traditional boats on the beach) but Mike spent all morning getting the boys organised and running support, I washed, cleaned and cooked lunch and we ended up going nowhere .... Sorry, am I moaning?? How could I in such a beautiful place with the aquamarine water glinting in the sunlight and the gentle breeze rippling the surface of the reflected palm trees ... shame on me!


It's now Thursday morning and I'm definitely not moaning. A bit of a slow start due to a visit from Pete (who we met in Grenada) for supper last night, but oh what a morning. We're anchored in about 6m and you can see the bottom clearly, there are just so many fish out there it's unbelievable; rainbow runners, cavarlie, tuna and hundreds of small bait fish. When the larger fish come up underneath the bait the patterns they make in the water are spectacular ... just like the wildlife programmes!

Pete dived to get the two scrapers the boys managed to drop yesterday, and Toby's been in there helping and trying to catch some breakfast at the same time. It really is a great thing to watch.

We're off into town today, definitely, and tonight Gus, a local tug man, is taking us fishing (he took Johan last night, had some good bites but didn't manage to land any. Apparently the trick is to hook the bait through the eyes so they don't swim back into the light when you cast them out ... not something that sounds very pleasant I have to say.). Tomorrow Pete and Pat are taking us on their yacht to snorkel off one of the nearby island reefs.

It sure is a wonderful world ....

Lots of love to everyone ....

Comments [7]

Jules
12/04/2010, St. Georges, Grenada

Apparently it's been over a week since the last blog and a few of our core fans are a little worried ...

The truth is we've had a bit of spacey week. After coming back to St. George's last weekend we had fully intended to be moving on by mid-week. Instead from Monday night onwards we've had a swell, not particularly high, but just at the wrong interval to have us rolling badly, especially at night. We've tried everything, including roping ourselves to a neighbouring yacht to stop us both moving so much (it worked better for him than us).

I guess, in hindsight, the best thing would have been to just buy what we had to and get out of here ... instead sleepless nights have lead to days of little action and we're still here.

However, some things have been done. Sunday, before the bad swells started, we went once more to the Hog Island Barefoot BBQ and again met interesting people. We came back with the crew from Signe (a beautiful 100ft sail boat that we'd last seen in Trinidad). Their captain, unfortunately, over did the hospitality, first on their boat and then ours when he brought us back. The main consequence for us was that we both ended up leaving our shoes on their boat (they've since disappeared). Unfortunately the consequences for them were much worse: they left early the next morning and ran up on a reef just off our anchorage. No-one was hurt but the rudder was damaged and they sailed all the way back to Trinidad using their bow-thruster for steering and are now having to be hauled out and repaired. DRINKING AND SAILING DO NOT MIX!!!!!

During the week we also met up with John and Ann from Honna Lee who we saw initially in Trinidad and more recently in Porlamar. They brought with them much needed electric fuses which our friend Paul had bought in Ireland for us last year and then lost on his boat!

We've now finally provisioned up. First we went to the local produce market with Johan which was a colourful, rowdy place in the centre of St. George's, selling not much food but lots of spices (Grenada is one of the only spice growing islands in the Caribbean and unfortunately most of their nutmeg trees were destroyed in the hurricane in 2004 ... not 2005 as I mentioned last time). Anyway, everything is sold in small quantities (1lb bags of potatoes don't really go far with our crew), and expensive (EC$15 for one medium sized cabbage). I think it was something of an eye-opener for Johan and he now has a bit more of an idea just how much we pay out for food and why it's frustrating when the more you buy the more they eat. The worrying thing is that prices just get higher the further north you go from here ... we'll just have to get catching those fish!

We now also have another crew member to feed. Julian has been in contact with us since we met up in Margarita and on Thursday we got an email saying that he'd really like to come and join us; he flew in on Friday. It's good to have him back on board and I'm sure all will be well.

For our trip over to Carriacou (on Monday .. honest!) we'll have two extra as Anna and Mike, crew from Signe that weren't on board for their trip to Trinidad, would like a lift up. So it looks like we'll have a full contingent for a day or so.

We've had quite a lot of much needed rain over the last week which has been something of a novelty for us not having seen any since Trinidad ... which apparently now is in drought mode and struggling with forest fires. In the two weeks we've been here you can see the hillsides starting to come alive and see green sprouting through the brown, dry underbrush. It has put a bit of a damper on our painting though ... Johan's just finished patching up all the cap-rails and the others have been de-rusting the gunnels.

OK ... not a very long or interesting blog but all you're going to get for now.


Unfortunately you didn't get that and it's now Sunday. The internet is not playing the game but hopefully you'll get it soon ...


Lots of love ....

PS We now have a new sim card which should work for us most of the way up the islands. The no., should anyone want to contact us, is Grenada (01473) 415 5329.

Comments [3]