Grenada Again

Well, here we are again in Grenada and coming back we realize how much we enjoy this island. First though, how we got here. We checked out of CrewsInn Marina about 11:30 as we had hoped to. When we went through immigration we thought we had lucked in because the girl told us and in fact the form told us we were allowed 24 hours to clear Trinidad. Then when we got to customs, we really thought we had hit the jackpot because when I asked the guy helping us if I could mark down 16:00 as leaving time he said "no problem" - but then his boss saw the paperwork and put the big "No No" to that. He told us we had one hour to leave Trinidad, which is what we had expected in the first place.

The reason this is so important is that we wanted to arrive in Grenada in daylight. We usually use an average of 5 kts an hour as a rough guide for our speed, taking into account that the winds may or may not be favourable and things could (and usually do) change as we sail. So, with 80 nm to go, we hoped to leave Trinidad at 16:00 and get into Grenada around mid morning.

Since we had to check out of the marina by 11:00, we had hoped to check out of Customs and Immigration right then, since they are right at the marina, go to Scotland Bay and anchor and rest until 16:00 and then leave. We didn't want to have to come back to Immigration again so when they said we had an hour, we told them we would leave then.

Our last view of Chaguaramas Bay.

Then the murky, lurky Thomas thinking came into play - aha!!

Waters around Trinidad breed barnacles faster than the speed of light and of course barnacles can get on the hull, rudder and propellor and slow the boat down considerably. Since we had antifouling on our hull and rudder, we didn't expect many barnacles there but our propellor is a different matter. It doesn't hold antifouling at all well so we knew the propellor would be covered and that really messes up fuel consumption and multiplies how hard the engine has to work. What we decided to do was stop in Scotland Bay anyway and I would dive on the propellor and clean it. If customs showed up, which they have been known to do and usually in an extremely bad mood, we would tell them we had prop problems that I was in the process of fixing and then we would leave.

So off we go to Scotland Bay, taking the opportunity to linearize our wind indicator (I won't even try to explain that) and when we got to Scotland Bay I went down to clean the prop. Note to Self: never ever attempt to do that again without wearing very heavy gloves - the barnacles are sharp. After I cleaned off as many as I could, we had some lunch and decided to lay down in the cockpit, rest and read for a bit until either 16:00 or customs came around. About 14:30 I happened to glance up and notice that the scenery around the boat had changed considerably.

We had put the anchor down but had not put much rode (chain) out since we wouldn't be staying long. Obviously we hadn't put enough out because we were about 150 meters from where we had been and we were drifting for shore. Since it was later anyway (and just in case anyone was looking) we decided to make it look like this was intentional and we lifted anchor and slowly left
Scotland Bay!!!

The rest of the voyage was tremendous, other than the fact that we started out with the wind from WSW and it had been forecast from ENE. It was still a fairly good wind (10 kts) and we were able to sail almost immediately. We knew that the wind would eventually come around to ENE and were hoping it did so by changing direction behind us rather than in front but of course that didn't happen. By changing behind us I mean that it would move from a beam reach (directly from the side) to a broad reach (side and behind) to directly behind to broad reach on the other side to a beam reach on the other side. Instead it moved from beam forward to head on and then to beam other side. What this meant was we had about an hour of motor sailing but the good part was, the wind changed while it was still light so changing our sail configuration was done in light.

By 19:00 hours we had about 9-10 knots of wind directly on our beam. By then we had all three sails up, main, foresail and staysail and obviously Mystic Journey likes that kind of wind because incredibly, we were sailing nearly as fast as the wind that was driving us. At one point I noted that the true wind was 9.2 kts and we were sailing at 9 kts. As the wind grew stronger, our speed increased and for a while we were sailing at over 10 kts consistently. WOW

Of course there is a down side to this. Our GPS was set to show us our course to steer, time we had sailed, time left to sail and what time we would reach our destination. Because of our consistent quickness, we began to show earlier and earlier arrival time until, if we kept up our speed, we were slated to arrive at 12:30 - 30 minutes after midnight. It is never a good idea to arrive in the dark, even if you have some knowledge of the anchorage so boo hoo boo hoo, we first took down the stay sail. That slowed us a little bit but still not enough so down came the foresail. Better but we were still making about 6-7 kts and were due in at 4:00 AM so we had to really open out the mainsail, which means we eased the main sheet so that the mainsail moved farther forward and the wind was only hitting part of the sail. This slowed us down enough so that we ended up arriving in Grenada about 6:30. The seas during all this were running about5-7 ft directly on our beam which made for quite a bit of rock and roll but it was still a great voyage. Between the great winds, our super-great boat AND our new autopilot, a whole new sailing vista opened for us. You'll notice in the picture that I, Cheryl, took that Griff is adjusting the sails and there is an invisible person, Autopilot, at the helm.

So here we are in Prickly Bay, Grenada, eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Perrys and taking care of some business with the boat. Julie et al arrive Wednesday and that is going to be a real treat. In addition, our boat goes back up on a sling briefly while they re-do the areas on the hull where the cardboard that was under the supports when we had the bottom done before stuck to the hull. Did you get that?? Anyway, it will be free. Plus, we stopped in to see Wendy, our landlady from our previous stay here and she offered us a free night in an apartment so it looks like we will be using that Tuesday night so we won't have to stay on the boat while it is in the sling.

Further, we have made contact with some people who will be heading down to Venezuela. There are 2-3 other boats and although there is a possibility they will leave on Friday (not good for us - we want some visit time with Perrys), the one boat we have talked to says it is not decided yet for sure so we are gonig to a meeting on Wednesday to discuss possibilities. It will be so much more relaxing to travel to Los Tostigos, Venezuela and then on to Margarita in the company of other boats.

Anyway, now you know everything I do - and probably lots more - so until next time, take care of yourselves. You are loved.