Carriacou
July 14th. We had a busy day today. We had a part of the night that was rolly again (during high tide) but the winds were down a bit so it was a little bit better. We decided to go through the south cut to get back to Clifton, Union Island to check out with customs and immigration. We sailed with the jib only. We have to check out from "St-Vincent & The Grenadines". We dropped the dinghy, some guy offered a water taxi but he was asking too much again. I guess they think us yachties will pay"...not! We went by Cavu. While George was checking out at the airport, I went to the little veggie/fruit market to get cucumbers, tomatoes and mangoes. I also got some bottled water and a little surprise for my Cap't: some warm bread pudding. Then we brought up the dinghy, and sailing with the jib only to Petite Martinique that is part of Grenada and not St Vincent. It was about one hour and guess what? No boat boys...yaaayyyy! We stopped there to get good clean diesel at a good price. (In St Vincent they bring in cheap Venezuelan gunk oil/diesel that's loaded with water and gunk and they try to sell for $8.00 a gallon! Another example of just trying real hard to make huge profits at our expense....no thanks). At Petit Martinique they have imperial gallons which are bigger than US gallons, it came down under 5$ per American gallon. So again, down with the dinghy and to the fuel dock, loaded the eight diesel jugs and went to the fuel dock. Cavu went to the dock but we preferred jugging it so we can filter it when we fill up our tank. This way we never have fuel contamination problems...ever. We've realized that with how our boat is set up it's easier for us to just anchor and drop the dinghy than to go alongside a dock having to pull all the fenders and lines out and then putting it all away again. Came back and up with the dinghy again. We never did it so often in one day. Now we sailed from Petite Martinique to Tyrrel Bay, Carriacou. I read my book and took a little nap after making a nice sandwich for my Cap't. It's a crowded bay. The town doesn't have much, it's rolly at moments and calm at others. Mark offered a ride to George to go check in. I stayed back doing my statistics and boat logs and reports. George hailed me on channel 16 to come join them as they stopped for a beer. Instead of bringing down the dinghy, I opted for a kayak ride to shore. They were at a little bar near the marina. Noelle and Mark wanted to explore town and the supermarket. It's a popular place for cruisers to go hang out for a while. The provisioning since Martinique wasn't so great in the protein department. So make sure you stock up in Martinique before you come down south. (Another note: the French islands have better food selection, except for the fresh produce in Dominica and Grenada that can't be beat anywhere!). Mark's outboard died just a few feet from the dinghy dock. There was a nice kid from Budget Marine that stopped by to help. There was a lot of cranking by George and Mark and adjusting choke and idle to make it work again. We pulled my kayak across the anchorage to get to the supermarket. We got a couple of things then went back to Picaro. George decided to fill up his tank with the diesel jugs, I didn't think he had energy left in his tank to do this project, but all went well. Nice dinner, looked at a nice moon rise.

July 15th. We got some rain overnight that cleaned the salt off the deck so we can collect rain water again. At about 5h30am, lightning started to crack around us so I got up to put some electronics in the oven as a precaution. We never know when that can happen. Unfortunately, good friends of ours, Jeff and Lynn from Endeavour, got hit by lightning during their vacation in the Abacos by tropical storm Arthur. So better be safe than sorry. I got the scuppers ready to catch the rain water. I read my book in the salon while my capt got some more eye shut. We had breakfast and I transferred water from stern to starboard tank. More rain was expected during the next couple days. The weather cleared for a while so we went with Noelle for a walk around the little town. We picked up some fresh veggies. It was a quiet day for the most part. The sunset had really pretty colors.