We arrived at the town of St. Georges on the island of Grenada on Christmas Day 2018, fulfilling our goal of “Christmas in the Caribbean” – that Jimmy Buffett song had been running through our heads for months!

After Dave did the formal check-in to the country we said goodbye to our crew members Kevin and Jeanne Walker, with rum punch! (of course).

An hour later we rendezvoused with our Alaska friends Dana, Mike and Piper who came down to visit with us and spend the holidays. The 5 of us explored the island of Grenada for 2 weeks and found it to be a beautiful and friendly place. One of our adventures was visiting Grand Etang National Reserve. Grand Etang translates from French as “Big Pond”. It is a volcanic crater lake and is the largest body of fresh water on the island, about ¾ the size of Jewel Lake in anchorage. There we went hiking and saw a few mono monkeys in the trees.

 

On the way back we took a short hike to Annandale Falls for a cool swim.

Other highlights included a tour of Belmont Estates which is primarily a full cycle chocolate factory where they grow their own cacao trees, harvest and ferment the beans, dry them in big bins in the sun (the ladies got to walk on them to help the drying process), then create lots of different chocolate goodies for sale, several of which we had to sample of course.  They also have a goat dairy where we saw goats being milked, big tortoises and a talking parrot, and groves of various fruit trees and a new small test field of vanilla.

Later we drove to the nearby River Antoine rum distillery that has been in operation since the 1800s and still uses its original equipment including a water wheel (built in the 1800s) that brings in water from the adjacent river. Their process uses the dried waste sugar cane stalks as fuel for heating the cane juice. This quite thoroughly permeates the rum. It is also 150 proof. We bought a couple bottles but back on the boat we realized it’s so strong and burned tasting it’s pretty much undrinkable.  We ended up using it to kill ants and it is quite effective!

The St. Georges fish market gave us some good local flavor.  We were told to get there early in the morning before they sell out, so we got there at 7:30, but there wasn’t much left.  A lady told us to walk down to the dock and wait a few minutes, a boat was coming in with a load of jacks.  Not knowing what jacks were, we waited, and when the boat appeared it was full to the gunwales with fish. After struggling through the crowd unaware of the protocol for buying fish a local guy offered to help.  He said give me $20 EC (Eastern Caribbean dollar, about $6 US) and I’ll get you some fish.  So, we took the risk that he wouldn’t take the money and run and gave it to him.  He pushed to the front of the crowd and came back with a bag of 13 fish!  We offered to give him some for his trouble but he declined.  We cooked them up that night and found that they had a nice flavor but also have so many tiny bones we spent most of the time picking bones out of our teeth.  After the 2^nd meal – no more jacks for us.

By New Years Eve we had moved to the south side of Grenada and went snorkeling and paddle boarding in a few different places.  Later we went back up the west coast and anchored near Halifax Harbor at a place we dubbed “Jake’s Beach” because Jake, a local fisherman, rowed up to our boat with fresh lobster and puffer fish for sale.  Jake said the puffer fish wasn’t the poisonous kind, and he offered to skin and clean one for us so he did, and we bought the puffer and 2 lobsters.  We had the lobsters for dinner that night, but after doing some research and realizing the consequences of eating what we didn’t actually know was not a poisonous type of puffer, we chickened out and threw it back to the sea.

The next day we hiked to Concord Falls, a hot uphill hike of about 3 miles where we all swam in the delightfully cool water.

On January 7 it was back to St. Georges for our guests to fly home.  We loved having them but were also happy to have some time to ourselves after having crew and/or guests with us every day for the last 2 months! Over the next few days we decompressed and got some provisioning and other chores done, including rinsing out salty gear from our crossing.  We are enjoying a new tradition of watching the sunset from the stern steps and Sundowners.  One of the many things we love about the Caribbean!

Next we sailed north to explore Carriacou, one of the 3 larger islands owned by Grenada.  As we started the anchoring process in Tyrrel Bay we discovered we couldn’t shift the port engine into reverse – the shifter cable on the port engine was broken. Engine off, finish anchoring with only one. Once again our tendency to avoid tight mooring fields and choosing to anchor on the fringes pays off. Dave was able to rig a way to shift manually from the engine compartment as a temporary solution until we could find a new cable (bailing wire and a boat hook- no bubble gum needed this time).  It’s good to have 2 engines!

By January 15 we were back at St. Georges, Grenada, to pick up our Alaska friends Amy and Cal who visited for a week.  While waiting for their arrival we went to the local chandlery, Island Water World (sounds like a theme park but it’s a marine hardware store).  There we were able to find the exact shifter cable we need for the port engine – amazing! However, since it looked like a huge undertaking we held off on the replacement job since the temp fix was easy to use with extra crew. With Amy and Cal on board we moved back to Jake’s Beach and the next morning we all hiked up to Concord Falls again but this time continued on to the upper falls which is more remote; we were the only ones there.  After a refreshing swim we hiked back down and bought a big needlefish and a lobster from Jake.  So nice to have fresh fish delivered right to our boat!

The next morning we sailed up to Carriacou and this time anchored off Sandy Island, known to be a good snorkeling spot.  And it was!  We tested out our GoPro underwater for the first time.  Beautiful spot with tons of fish.

 

Then we took a tour of the island by taxi.

During the week Cal took charge of fishing using a hand line off the stern and his fly rod, using some of the lures he created himself.  We ate well!

After we sadly said good bye to Amy and Cal we stayed at St. Georges for a few days so we could tour a boatyard where we are considering leaving Wally Walou this summer, and so we could replace the broken shifter cable, a project which morphed into replacing shifter and throttle cables on both engines. For context the “short” cables to the port engine are 22ft long and the starboard cables are a whopping 40ft!  Luckily it turned out to be a MUCH simpler operation than anticipated and we finished it in just a few hours.

On January 28 we sailed north to the third large-ish island owned by Grenada; Petite Martinique.  We anchored there and for the first time were directly exposed to the westerly trade winds at anchor.  We saw winds in the upper teens to upper twenties all night, which at the time we thought was excessive.  Since then we have learned that is the norm here in the Caribbean unless you are behind a high obstacle.  We are thankful over and over again that we have invested in good trustworthy anchoring gear! With the hook in solid and our long bridle, Wally sits quite happily at anchor in winds into the 30s.

The following day we sailed northwest a short distance to Union Island, the southernmost island owned by the country of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.  We anchored in an uncomfortably crowded anchorage surrounded by reefs, and it took 3 tries to anchor where we were far enough away from other boats to feel secure.  Dave checked us in to the country of St. Vincent and we watched numerous kite boarders flying around.  This south end of Union Island is protected by reefs which block the waves so the water is relatively flat but there is little (nothing!) to stop the wind, so it’s perfect kite boarding conditions.  We spent 2 nights there then sailed about 30 miles north to Blue Lagoon on the island of St. Vincent.  Waves were rough as we passed through an area our guide book says can have waves like “liquid mountains”.  But we arrived safe and the harbormaster led us through a very narrow entrance bordered by shallow reefs. Depth sounder was showing 1.6 meters (5’3”) through the passage. We draw about 4’7”… so kinda shallow!

On February 2 we took a taxi to the airport to pick up most awesome daughter Danielle and her husband Ivan.  We took an island tour which included the excellent Kingstown Botanical Gardens, and Wallilabou Bay where parts of “Pirates of the Caribbean” was filmed.

Then we sailed south to Tobago Cays.  We anchored just inside Horseshoe Reef, a spectacular spot!  A highlight was snorkeling in an area reserved for sea turtles.  We saw numerous turtles there.  With winds picking up we relocated to a more sheltered area and went to a beach barbecue dinner of lobster, plantains, and other local delicacies – yum! Then it was back to St. Vincent to say farewell to Danielle and Ivan.

On February 11 we sailed downwind to Admiralty Bay on the island of Bequia, a beautiful spot with a walkway along most of the bay (smaller liquid “hills” this time YAY!).  This was the calmest anchorage we had been to in a while so we pulled out our “kayaks” (seats clipped to our SUPs) and paddled around the bay.  It’s nice to have an optional way to use our SUP boards in windy weather or rough seas.

We stayed at Bequia 4 nights and did lots of snorkeling.  One evening we went out to dinner and were entertained by a young man playing the violin with his smitten fan on the dance floor.

On Valentine’s Day, also our 4-year wedding anniversary (!) we hiked to Friendship Bay on the other side of the island.  On the way back we missed a trail that circumvented a cliff and we ended up swimming around the cliff (50 yards) to the beach on the other side. We came out of the water about 50 ft from the end of the trail that we had missed 😉.  Good thing we have a waterproof backpack. We walked to the nearby Jack’s restaurant and had lunch in our soaking wet clothes (hooray for warm temperatures!).  Back at Wally Walou we grilled the lobster we had bought that morning – awesome celebration! We now know how to keep the lobsters alive with a mesh bag over the side.

The next day we sailed south to the island of Canouan and anchored in Rameau Bay just north of the main town of Charlestown.  A nice quiet anchorage with good snorkeling right from our boat.  Two days later 5 charter boats came in and anchored right next to us:  time to go!  We were planning on leaving anyway as we had reserved kite boarding lessons at Union Island.  So we left and anchored off the leeward side of Frigate Island on the south side of Union Island.  Four out of the next 5 days we took lessons with Happy Kite.  It’s a steep learning curve but by the end of day 4 we both thought we “got this”, just need lots more practice!  Next step kiting gear!