On 8/13/11 we weighed anchor and motored the roughly three miles east to the next bay, Mt. Hartman Bay. In late July of 2001 we arrived in Mt. Hartman Bay from Carriacou and, except for an eleven day haulout, stayed there until the end of October. We have mostly good memories of Mt. Hartman with the possible exception of September 11. Yes, we were here for 911 and it definately is something that we will remember for the rest of our lives. The most amazing thing to us, after 911, was the number of Grenadians that came up to us on the street expressing their condolences. Also, Grenada's two local TV stations went wall to wall in their transmission of US news stations reporting on the attack and its aftermath. Needless to say we will be a little wary when we wake up on September 11 this year.

Despite being anchored within 200 yards of where we were happily anchored in 2001, Pam and I woke up on 8/14 thinking that it seemed more rolly than we remember. So we weighed anchor and decided to cruise around the harbor and look for a better place. On the suggestion of a friend the previous day, we went towards the bay's northeast corner. Upon entering that area we were very unpolitely told that, "all the boats up here are on balls" by an OAR (well he would've been an OAR if his boat was on an anchor, but he was on a mooring). I say unpolitely because we hadn't even begun to drop our anchor, so this was obviously a pre-emptive attack by the OAR, akin to a male dog pissing on a bush to claim his territory. More importantly, we had no intention of anchoring in a mooring field based because based on our forty years of sailing experience we know that boats on moorings don't swing the same as those on anchors and are therefore incompatible. We were merely cruising thru his territory in our effort to turn around after having checked out the our friend's suggested spot nerarby. As we returned to an area near where we were originally anchored, I remember thinking "balls" they're all on "balls?" Oh I get it that's short for mooring balls or more properly moorings. Sailing is filled with proper terminology devised to limit or eliminate confusion and most of it is universally accepted internationally. Bow, stern, port, starboard, beating, running and reaching just to name a few. A mooring is made up of some form of anchor firmly attached to the bottom of a harbor that generally has with a line going to the surface where a float, sometimes a ball, is attached with a pendant for easy attchment to a boat. Thereby the user can attach the mooring pendant to his boat effectively anchoring his boat without actually having to drop his anchor. In forty years of sailing this guy was the first person (I won't catagorize him as a sailor) that I have ever heard call a mooring simply a ball. Words mean things and balls do not bring to my mind mooring. Baseball, football, soccer ball, golf ball beach ball perhaps, but not mooring. Now perhaps he meant to say mooring balls, but in his haste to chase us away he said the wrong thing. Who knows?

In any case, we re-anchored a little further east than our former spot which is slightly more protected. As for our preception that in 2001 Mt. Hartman Bay was less rolly, perhaps it was. We have to remember that in the interim Grenada was hit by hurricane Ivan, perhaps the reef across the mouth of the bay was reduced we don't know. In any case we are here for now and there have been rolly days and not so rolly days so here we'll stay. At least until Pam goes to the States to renew her driver's license in Florida and visit her mom and mine in Western NY. After that we might do something different than 2001, we might move around and try some of the other bays. We shall see.