Petite Martinique is 2½ miles away from Carriacou, and also a part of Grenada. With its 586 acres and population of 900 life here is the way I would have imagined the West Indian life would have been 50 years ago. The people here live by boat-building, fishing and seafaring. The village had a feeling of peaceful tranquility about it that is rare in our modern, hectic world.

The main draw for cruisers is the cheap diesel, gas and water prices. We had traveled from Carriacou in the company of Gary and Marie on s/v Mai Tai and Colin and Izzi on s/v Endorphin. It was a short one-hour sail to Petite Martinique. Once we arrived madness ensued! Apparently we weren't the only boats there to fill up our tanks. We spent the next two hours jockeying for position and then keeping our position in the line (or queue as they say here) not an easy feat in a boat is constantly being pushed around by the wind and the currents!



Mai Tai was the first to get onto the dock and set about filling both of their diesel tanks, all of their water tanks and getting gas for their generator and outboard motor. They were about half way done when we got our place on the dock across from them - Endorphin was still maintaining their position offshore. It turns out that the water pressure was really low and it was taking a really long time to fill up the water tanks. We can hold 167 gallons of water, at a rate of about two gallons per hour we would have been there a long time. Fortunately for us we had been making water and were not completely empty - we were just topping off.

As we were just finishing up with water, diesel and Barry was taking the gas cans to get filled, Endorphin was taking their place at the end of the dock. About ten minutes later, Barry returned with empty gas cans as myself, the crew of Mai Tai and Endorphin were trying to figure out how to get the water turned on so they could start filling up - they were nearly out of water. Also returning with Barry was the dock attendant with the news that power had gone out on the island and therefore none of the pumps were working, leaving Endorphin with no water, diesel or gas!



Have you ever wondered what good friends do in a situation like that? Share your own water, diesel, and gas? Well no. We left them there at the dock, us and Mai Tai, and sailed on to Petite St. Vincent for the night! What a rotten thing to do huh? Well it would be if we were at sea and we would never leave another boat in distress like that. But in this case, Petite St. Vincent was just under a mile away - just across the channel. It didn't take long for the power to come back on and before we knew it Endorphin was anchored just behind us.