We arrived to Grenada at dusk after having left Trinidad at 5 in the morning. We were fortunate to meet wonderful friends from the US, Barbara & Jim Wallace (boat Contrails), who are also headed our way all the way to Cartagena, Colombia. We had a great sail with Contrails, with good winds helping us get to St. George's, the Capital of Grenada, in 13.5 hours. The trip, however, was not without incident. A pirogue with 4-6 big man suddenly intercepted Kikuyu's bow about 50 miles north of Trinidad (approximate latitude 11 deg 24 Min North, longitude 61 deg 37.6 Min West). Kim, who was at the cockpit at the time, swiftly took the helm and steered Kikuyu West to avoid this pirogue which speeded south past our starboard side while the men seemed to be checking us out. They disappeared after a few minutes as the waves (3-6 feet high at this time) made it impossible to see them. We kept a close watch on the horizon as we have heard that a strategy pirates take is to approach a boat, "size" it and its crew and later re-appear to attack. Thank goodness our friends from Contrails were just about 300 yards away from us and we think this help deter them - we never saw this pirogue again! Though we are not sure they were pirates their behavior was unusual as they were not fishing and there was not land to go to nearby.

When we arrived to Grenada we anchored between the channel entrance to the lagoon off St. George's and Ross Point which is a very open bay (St. Martin's Bay) and a good place to spend the night prior to entering the lagoon. The next morning we came into the lagoon, a calm body of water right off St. George's, and spent the next hour trying to anchor on soft mud which is what is at its bottom. Our friends from Contrails who had come in earlier were still trying to find a spot which gave us an indication of the difficulty of getting one's anchor to set. Once we got it to set, however, the holding has been pretty good though we have been vigilant since Contrails dragged on the first day and boats around it were squirming to get out of its way until two sailors got on it and dropped a second anchor. As we've said before, there is always something exciting going on when sailing so much so that we now understand why this lifestyle never gets boring!

During our trip from Trinidad when a large wave hit our boat Daniel saw something fly off the stern of our boat - our outboard engine had jumped off its cradle and fallen into the ocean! Though we were going to replace it soon, losing it this way reminded us of how easily we can lose things from Kikuyu during sailing. We had to put things back on Kikuyu the night before, including the outboard engine, after all the work had been completed in Trinidad a day later than anticipated and, most likely, our motor was not as well attached as it has been in the past. Therefore, in the lagoon we have been practicing the art of rowing and Daniel is getting pretty good at it.