We sailed the 28 miles from Carriacou to the island of Grenada on Monday, April 27. We passed the exclusion zone over the underwater volcano, called "kick 'em Jenny" without incident, thankfully.

A small bay called Dragon Bay had some marine park mooring buoys and we spent our first night here. The next morning we snorkeled on the underwater sculptures made famous by the National Geographic photographs some years ago. There are about 9 sculptures scattered about on the sandy ocean floor. There are two large life-size circles of people holding hands. There is a man sitting at a desk using a typewriter (not a computer!) There is a mermaid, and scattered prone figures which we thought to be sunbathers, but a local told us it was supposed to represent a graveyard. It was an interesting snorkel site, and the coral reef and fish right under our boat's mooring were some of the best we had seen in the area.

From Dragon Bay, we sailed the few miles to the capital city of St George's, where we anchored in the bay, and the next day took a marina berth at the luxurious Port Louis Marina. Here we have enjoyed a daily swim in the pool and wonderful hot showers in clean modern bathrooms. Our 2 day stay turned into a week at the marina.

Touring around the island of Grenada was a bit like Carriacou on steroids - many local buses with the same low fares and eager drivers going a breakneck speeds around narrow windy roads, passing other cars helter skelter.

Grenada is known as the Spice Island and one can actually smell the nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon as we drove up in the rainforest and the fertile valleys. We saw how nutmegs grow on trees and bought a few for our boat's spice rack.

One of the most interesting visits was to Belmont Estate which was a plantation and is now a working cocoa bean processing facility. We learned what the cocoa bean pod looks like, how it is fermented, dried and processed before sending it to many other countries (including the US Hershey Co) to make chocolate.

We also saw an old Rum distillery with a bunch of 200+ year old equipment still in use. It had an old Water Wheel running through giant gears to crush sugar cane and it is still in use.

As we write this, we are preparing to go to the South of Grenada and anchor in several beautiful coves before we start our 400 mile passage west to the ABC islands.