I hate going through customs, not just in Grenada, but anywhere. They make me feel guilty even though I know I have nothing to hide. In Grenada, you must declare all boat parts and pay up to 26% import tax on them. We knew this, that is why we will wait to get our boat parts in St. Martin, which is a duty free island. But what about material? Does it matter what it is going to be used for (covering boat cushions or making dinghy chaps)? So when asked by the customs agent on the way out of the airport what I had in the bags, I could not lie. I said, clothes, new pillows, new bedding, and my “sewing stuff”, even though my “sewing stuff” included enough material and hardware to build us a new stack pack for the mainsail and to cover all the cushions in the main saloon. This was good enough for him, and he let us through without any additional payment. Phew….

Even though we arrived late, a big thank you goes out to Kerry, who waited for us at the airport. It was sure nice to see him standing there. He loaded all of our luggage and took us to our booked accommodations, but there is a story about that too.

Two days before we left Canada, we received a call from Greg, one of our buddy boaters on Lagniappe. As a wonderful friend might, he had gone over to get the key for the apartment we were to be staying in, to put some nice cold beer in the fridge for when we arrived. When he spoke with the manager, she said that she had us down for the 19th not the 28th (even though we had confirmed with her twice prior to leaving) and thought we were a no show. There were no apartments available at this time. Thanks to Greg’s tenacity and insistence that we needed somewhere to lay our heads for the next two weeks, as our boat was not an option, he succeeded to getting us a room in the house of the owner of the apartment building.

We were not very comfortable with this idea, but we had little choice, so we moved in with Sydney. Apparently, this is quite common place here in Grenada. We met a family in the boat yard, who were staying with friends of the manager of the apartment building. It made me feel better. We did enjoy Sydney’s company; he was full of stories about his youth in Northern Grenada. Luckily three days later, we moved into a studio apartment that became available. We will be here for another two weeks (hopefully) while we complete (or get close to completing) the boat projects list.