March 23-30: Grenada to St. Lucia

March 23, 2012:

We arrived safely in St. George's, Grenada. We had gusty winds and some rain on our passage. Thank goodness for AIS for during the rain, an unlighted boat crossed our path. Without AIS we might have collided with it. We tried to hail the boat but got no reply. We arrived about 9a.m. We stayed several days in Port Louis Marina which is a beautiful marina with restaurants, but not a good wifi. Customs had moved from St. George Yacht Club to the marina which made it much easier to check in and out! Charlie was concerned with the quality of our fuel and we tried to find someone to clean it, but no one was available for a week. Charlie worked hard on several other small tasks, checking raw water filters, fuel filters, etc. Since we were tired from the overnight passage, we decided to stay another day. We took a "bus" ( a van showing #1) for 2.50EC ($1USD) up to the Grand Anse beach area in order to find an ATM to obtain EC (East Caribbean) money. We then walked down to the beach, walked along the water's edge to one of the restaurants along the beach where we had lunch. We caught a cab ($40EC) back to the marina.

Sunday , March 25, 2012

After waiting for the Immigrations officer to arrive ( He was 45 minutes late ), we had a nice sail to the island of Carricou, a part of Grenada. We just anchored for the night and did not go ashore.

Monday, March 26, 2012

We proceeded north through the Grenadine Islands and took a mooring at Young IS of St. Vincent. since we did not stop there on our way down, we decided to stay two days. We had Sam Taxi check us in and out on the same day allowing us 24 more hours to depart. We had a nice lunch ashore at Xcape and took a water taxi across to Young Island where there is a nice quiet small resort. We enjoyed a drink there before returning to the boat. A cruise ship was in Kingston so many of its passengers came to the small, grey beaches of Young IS area.

Wenesday, March 28, 2012

We were off the mooring at 0645 heading for St. Lucia. The guides warn of flukey winds at the north end of St. Vincent, but they were not too bad this day. We arrived in the southern part of St. Lucia at the Soufriere Bay near the two volcanos called the Pitons. We were helped onto a mooring and charged 25EC ($10) and a coke. Later, the park ranger came by to collect the mooring fee or $45EC. Several other boat vendors came by as well selling fruit and carved wooden objects. We had a peaceful night and could see the stars well.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

After a leisurely breakfast, we continued north to Rodney Bay near the northern tip of St. Lucia. It took us only 3 hours and by 1125 we were in a slip at the marina. We checked in at Customs and Immigration. That only cost us $40EC. Then we paid for our slip for 3 days and found a place for lunch....pizza at Elena's. We had dinner at the former H2O now called Ocean Club.

We launched our dinghy only to discover we could not get the outboard motor, previously serviced last July at Power Boats in Trinidad, did not work. We got a mechanic that afternoon who took it away and brought it back. We decided to wait until the next day to go over via dinghy to the shopping area where there are two big groceries. We ate on the boat but went on shore to try to use wifi, but the wifi server was slow and the restaurants were crowded.

Sat: We tried again to go off to the grocery but again the dinghy outboard would not work. We called the mechanic who came and recommended we get a new fuel hose from the gas tank. Off to the Water ISland chandlery for the parts. After replacing this, we went across the lagoon to the grocery. It is a great store so we were able to well provision the boat. We lunched on shore and this gave me this opportunity to use shoreside wifi to update the blog.

Tomorrow after getting fuel, we will depart Rodney Bay and St. Lucia. Tomorrow we will anchor in Fort de France in Martinique overnight. We will proceed northward each day until we reach Antiga on Thursday. We have gone a bit ahead of our proposed schedule to be able to check in before Good Friday, we hope. I will update the blog there. I hope to have some pictures to share then, too.

On a good note, Charlie's Mom is back in rehab and improving. This past week was touch and go, but the future seems calm now.

Departing Trinidad

March 22, 2012

We have been very busy checking all the systems, repairing windlass connections so the anchor will go both up and down, tightening rigging, having the engine checked out, repairing our leaky deck prism, putting on the jack lines, etc, etc. etc.

Charlie has plotted our course and we will depart this afternoon with the tide. Charlie has Commander's weather report and Predict Wind's forecast and feels it is time to depart. We will sail 85-90 nm overnight to St. George's on Grenada. The next day we will sail to Hillsborough BAy on Carricou IS which is a part of Granada. Due to time restraints, having stayed longer than expected in Trinidad, we will not stop in the Grenedines IS this time. We will spend a couple of days at Young IS/Blue Hole on St. Vincent which we had to skip on the way down. From there we will sail to Vieux Fort on St. Lucia and then sail on to Rodney Bay, St. Lucia the next day for several days of rest and to reprovision and refuel.

I will update the blog when time and access to wi-fi.

Back in Trinidad to retrieve our boat

March 14-18, 2012

We arrived back in Port of Spain airport and were transported to Chaguaramas to Power Boats where our boat was on the hard. We had a new barrier coat and bottom paint job done as well as the exterior brightwork (teak wood trim). We had an apartment rented until we put the boat back into the water. We worked hard to load our three duffle bags, computers, 2 overnight bags, etc onto the boat using the block and tackle from the Life Sling as the cockpit was some 10-12 feet up in the air. We also had the plastic cover tenting the boat taken off so we could put the canvas dodger and bimini back on. All of this was done between rain showers in high 80 degree weather.

The boat was put back into the water on March 16 about 10:30-1100. The engine started and we proceeded to a slip at the Crews Inn Marina. This area has a little bigger grocery store, a very good restaurant and a nice cafe for sandwiches and sweets. The Crews Inn also has a lovely swimming pool which we used the first afternoon! We are plugged into shore power so we can run our AC and refrigerator/freezer, though not at the same time. So far the freezer and refrig are doing OK, so we guess we had no loss of freon. One less thing to worry about.

Since then we have been stowing all our gear on board the boat, cleaning the storage places. We had an infestation of moths which liked grain products so much had to be thrown out as well as outdated can goods. We spent most of Saturday putting the lazy cradle, the main sail and the Yankee jib back on the boat. A rigger and his helper helped us. I was glad of that since it made it easier on Charlie's back. Unfortunately the rigger reversed the first and third reef lines so they had to be redone. Charlie kept telling all of us that we had it wrong and Charlie was correct! Sat. night Charlie checked out all the navigation lights on the boat to make sure they were all working. The refrigerator and freezer were started and I went grocery shopping. What was available was still short of all we should start out with on our journey north.

We got a shock this morning (Sunday) with an e-mail from Charlie's brother that his almost 97- year old Mom had taken a fall, cracked her pelvis, and had a small bleed in her brain. She is in ICU and seems to be doing well. We pray she continues to get better!

Today we put on the staysail, a much smaller and less complicated sail. Though the generator, which runs or refrigerator and freezer when we are not plugged into a dock, worked when tried, Charlie noticed debris in the fuel filter, so we need to solve that problem. The engine fuel filter was quite full as well, so all fuel filters will be changed before we proceed north. We may have to have the fuel polished.

The weather today and Sat was not rainy but was very hot (90). At night it has been cooling down which gives us some relief. Rain is expected again the next few days so we installed our cockpit surround in late afternoon. We had some difficulty with some "frozen" zippers, but we finally prevailed so we can stay relatively dry when the rains come again.

I will try to update our progress before we start for Grenada in a few days.