Grenada Continued

Here it is Friday evening and we are entertaining the Perry children aboard Mystic Journey. Our last blog left us in Prickly Bay after a great sail up here. We did the clearance thing and then just hung out for the weekend, swimming, walking and catching up on Grenada happenings. There are some very rich houses up here so we walked in the ritzy neighbourhoods looking at how the other side lives. One in particular caught our eye - not necessarily in a good way. Along with the biley/mustard colour, it has a round part that looks like the standard rook in a chess set, with the same types of top on walls that surrounded other areas of the house. Can you spell ostentatious??

Sunday we walked to the airport to see how long it would take us from Prickly Bay so that we could decide whether to take a bus or walk when we met the Perrys. It took about 50 minutes so we decided that was doable. We also took a walk up to the apartment building that we stayed in while we were here before so that we could say hello to Wendy, our landlady. She was delighted to see us and even offered us a free nights lodgings, an offer we later took her up on. It was nice to be welcomed back so warmly.

Monday we had lots of running around to do - Island Water World on Lagoon Road to get a couple of very short cables made for our dinghy davits - then to Turbulence Sails to take in our rear cabin hatch rain cover so they could make it a bit bigger - Budget to look at various and sundry hardware and Ace Hardware to replace my favourite screwdriver that joined other things that have ended up in "Davy Jones Locker".

Tuesday was the day we put Mystic Journey up to get a few spots on the bottom scraped and sanded and repainted. I think we mentioned that pieces of cardboard had stuck to the bottom after our last antifouling job and although it was expected that the sea water would take it off, it didn't happen. They were really good though and we put the boat up at 2:30 and lauched it again at 8:00 the next morning. They also did some other touchup that we hadn't asked for and it was all free so that worked well. We spent Tuesday night at the apartment that had been offered to us after having our evening meal at the Dodgy Dock at True Blue Resort. We enjoyed a number of good meals there previously with our good friends Aleitha and Randy when they were sailing with us.

Wednesday seemed to take forever to happen since this was the day the Perrys came to Grenada. According to the airline schedule they were due at 5:40 so we got there at 5:20 only to find that the real arrival time was 5:17. However, the plane had been delayed until 6:00 PM and then eventually 6:15, which is when they actually arrived. Cutty, the pre-arranged taxi guy was there with customs papers that Graham had arranged to have waiting. Graham had been told these were needed in order to bring in the boat parts they were bringing but as it turned out, customs at the airport didn't ask for them. Graham said it was because he left the talking up to Julie. It was absolutely great to see them although it was a short visit at the airport since as soon as they came out, their stuff was loaded into the taxi and away they went to Westerhall, their new home for the next (hopefully) less than 2 months.

Thursday morning we took a taxi out to Westerhall to visit Julie, Graham, Alex and Amelia. I will leave it to them to describe their place except to say that it is airy, spacious, sunny and we really enjoyed it. We spent the day there during which we visited Artemo and saw her in her bare bones state, had lunch at the marina there and then came back by taxi. We had a slight problem coming back because the apartment is up a laneway very much hidden by vegetation and hard to see. When we left we caught a bus from the lane end but unfortunately no one took note of exactly what it looked like at the lane and so on the way back by bus, none of us knew where to tell the bus driver to stop. Of course we have said before that on Grenada the buses are actually 12 - 15 passenger vans that they load to the hilt with the aid of the "conductor". Anyway, we missed the lane and ended up getting off at the grocery store down the road about 3 kms. That was okay since we needed to buy stuff anyway but when we caught the bus on the way back, we ended up squeezing the 6 of us into a van that already had about 10 people in it. Quite the ride and thank goodness it was short.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention - on Thursday morning Graham and Julile realized that the bag that contained Grahams wallet, the boat papers and the laptop with all of their pictures on was missing. Cheryl had taken a short video at the airport but unfortunately the only thing is showed was Graham coming out the door and putting the bag down so we could all get hugs. Panic time!!

We phoned Cutty, who had arranged for the driver to take the Perrys to Westerhall on Wednesday night, and he said he would check with the other guy to see if the bag had been left in there. Of course he couldn't get in touch with the guy right away so there were a few uneasy hours. Cutty finally phoned later to say that the bag was safe and sound. Wow!!

What you are going to read now is a short note from both Millie and Alex to say hello and to add a few of their thoughts.

We will catch up later

Hey all it's Alex here.

Grampa Griff and Nana Cheryl are the same. We are stayin at Grampa Griffs boat tonight, its great be back on a boat. It's so hot and no fans so were a little sticky at night but its ok.

I will give it over to Amelia so she can write her note.

Miss you all Alex.

Last night we stayed on Grampa Griff and Nana Cheryl's boat. When I got on the boat I felt a bit sea sick because I haven't been on a boat for a month or two. For dinner we had macroni and cheese and we watched Ice Age the movie. We went for a swim and we went to the beach. When we were at the beach we went snorkelling and we saw a guy with Conch shells and he gave one to us. We went to bed. In the morning Cheryl made pancakes for breakfast and we went to Budget marine. When we got back we went swimming and we took two lines from the back of the boat and we swung on them. Then my parents came and had lunch and went to the beach again with us. Me and my Dad went snorkelling and we saw sea urchins and lots of fish. Well, I hope to see some of you soon. Bye Amelia

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.