Go West young(?) man

It's a three-day run to the ABC islands from Grenada, and embedded within those days is a birthday. All things being equal (I must say that, not to say it is like leaving the front door open), we'll get going this morning. The strong trades are breaking up and by the middle of next week we sailors will be crying out for wind. That's what Chris Parker, the Caribbean weatherman, says.

Saturday morning in St George's

Pigeon peas

Grenada has been our place of reckoning. We have made a rough plan, something we can work with. We've bought another (outdated) guide book for the Pacific, Warwick Clay's South Pacific Anchorages, and Alex has a new cockpit seat.  For him, that's like buying new runners - feel the bounce. The old seat had bottomed out. We don't want to be crossing the Pacific ocean on a bottomed-out seat, not with HIS skeletal shortcomings.

The Tiki bar at Prickly Bay marina - communications hub for a month

Thanks to Grenada, from the Italians whose ship caught fire in the harbour

When we were browsing the Clay book in the chandlery, trying to assess its usefulness, we compared what we remembered of the approach and anchorage in Port Vila with his notes.  Vanuatu is a bit of heaven in our memories, and our point of reference for things tropical.  It won't look the same now. The photos coming through of the damage caused by Pam's vicious winds are awful. The country was poor enough without being ripped apart by a cyclone.

An old island trader is loaded on the Carenage

Quite a few buildings have never been repaired after Ivan 

Hurricane Ivan which hit Grenada in 2004 destroyed 85% of the island's nutmeg trees, according to Cutty. Grenada was then the second largest producer in the world of nutmeg. Thousands of people lost their jobs when the nutmeg cooperatives closed. Trees re-planted after 2004 are only just starting to mature and bear fruit, and the jobs are coming back slowly. The cocoa crop was more resilient. I bought more bars of Grenada Chocolate Factory 82% dark chocolate yesterday. It's good stuff.

Blessed in Grenada

The  woman in the magenta turban and fringed white tee-shirt printed with Barack Obama’s face has tomatoes. We’re almost finished at the market, but we need tomatoes.  We always need tomatoes.

We get about by bus

The bus boy is the hustler of the Caribbean transport network

I’m not really focused on her, more on how ripe the tomatoes are, but out of habit I greet her: “Good morning. How are you?” In Grenada, this is what people say. Not hi, or even hello. Always good morning, or good afternoon. As a pleasantry it’s a little formal to our ears, but it’s interesting how, say, greeting other passengers as you clamber onto a crowded minivan-bus warms the space between people, softens their edges. Mostly people say good morning in reply and leave it at that.

Good morning on Young St - and other photo ops on St George's streets

But this market lady looks me straight in the eye, and answers my question. “I’m blessed.” She pauses. “How are you? Are you blessed?” I flinch. She’s found her target.  Am I blessed? I’m not feeling it. Actually, I’m quite distressed on this particular morning.  But yes, I tell her, I am blessed. I buy her tomatoes and some carrots as well, and as we walk away from the market, I can’t stop thinking about what she’s asked me.

Coming back to the Spice Island dinghy dock in Prickly Bay

The neighbourhood - Prickly Bay (and below)

It’s nearly three weeks since we arrived in Grenada, and in all this time we haven’t moved from Prickly Bay. The wind has been blowing hard most days from the north-east, which is unusual, but other boats have come and gone. We have stayed, trying to figure out what our next move should be.  It hasn’t been obvious. We’ve had to work harder at this problem than at almost anything else we’ve encountered in our life together.  We are on the point of making a decision.  Time is of the essence, but not just our time. There is no path forward for us without cost, or without risk, so whatever course we take needs to be one we are least likely to regret. If that makes sense. Again, I’m sorry if it doesn’t, but the problem is in the heart of the family, and the family is where our heart lies.

Cocoa as it grows on the tree

Cocoa beans spread out to dry at the Grenada Cocoa Cooperative

Bagged to go

The Grenada Chocolate Company - move over Lindt

Esmond is the guy who runs Grenada Chocolate Company now

In the mean time, my mother has turned 80, and the party in Auckland at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron on March 3 was, from all accounts, a wonderful one.  We wish we’d been there to fire off a 21-gun salute. 

The cannons at Fort George,  St George's

St George's waterfront - and the RC church

The St George's anchorage - with Grand Anse beach behind

St George's harbour, from Fort George

Maurice Bishop (see below) was executed in the Fort George courtyard in October 1983

Annandale waterfall - not so very high, but...

Every so often we’ve taken ourselves off the boat for the whole day and flushed our minds with the island’s colours and sights. Car hire on Grenada isn’t straightforward, nor is driving around the island. There are very few road signs. On the recommendation of our friends Charlotte and Serge on Kuaka, we did what we haven’t done before, and signed up for a day-long tour of the island with a man called Cutty.  No regrets. Cutty has our recommendation too.

The genial and well-informed Cutty

When in the Caribbean, tour a rum distillery...this one in the north of Grenada

Now here’s something to chuckle over. The first time we visited St George’s, we noticed a handmade-looking sign (normal in Grenada) for a restaurant called Schnitzel Haus on the Carenage, St George’s harbourfront. It’s hot in Grenada, and schnitzel is not the first thing you think of eating for lunch on a sticky 30 degrees C day. Alex was about to pull the plug, but I told him to “man up” and goaded him up the stairs to the first-floor Schnitzel Haus.

If we’re still here next week, I’ll take him back for a second helping of schnitzel followed by apple strudel. He was in seventh heaven. I would have thought this “restaurant-least-likely-to-last-the-distance” in the Caribbean where what goes down is crab meat and conch and pizzas and roti. But this is the sixth year of business for the Schnitzel Haus which is run by a German and his Austrian wife (who cooks), who ask nothing more of their adopted country than that they can work in 30 degrees on a winter’s day. If asked, they would probably say they are blessed. 

On the windward side of the island, the Atlantic is running a decent swell

Grenada at a push

You will have to read between the lines of this post. For those who can't, I apologise, but there are some things that don't go on the blog and because of that our plotting may seem obtuse. 

We have slid rather quickly down the arc of the Windward Islands. Forget the frog and the lily pads. What was I thinking? Enki is a racehorse. She loves to run at speed, and the Caribbean is such a great track. From St Pierre down to St Anne in the south of Martinique she blitzed the competition in a gruelling 15-mile tacking duel (well, only one other boat was involved but how many boats do you need to make a yacht race?). After the briefest of pauses in St Anne's vast turquoise anchorage, she shot straight through to Grenada on an unscheduled overnighter.

The dock at St Anne's anchorage, Martinique

Saturday afternoon wedding in downtown St Anne

The market is over

On the phone to Robyn

Emails and more emails....and more beers too

We put 160 miles under our belt, leaving St Anne at 0730 on Sunday and dropping anchor just inside the surf break off the eastern point of Prickly Bay at 1130 on Monday. The sailing was superb. The one thing you can say about the Caribbean is that the wind will always blow. We haven't taken on diesel since we left the Canaries.

Off the west coast of St Lucia (and below)

St Vincent obscured

We bypassed St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, because Grenada is generally considered to be outside the hurricane belt . Hurricane Ivan in 2004 put a giant hole in that theory, but still, Grenada along with Trinidad complies with most insurance company demands vis a vis hurricane season (July to November).  If I'd had to fly home immediately (which was on the cards), Alex could have organised to haul the boat at one of two acceptable marinas, one of them at the head of Prickly Bay and the other just a few bays further east on Grenada's south coast. Flights leave Grenada daily for the US mainland.

The luxuriance of Grenada's south coast (and below)

Enki is now at rest,  awaiting her next riding instructions. Over the past few days, the urgency to fly home has decreased though underlying anxiety hasn't, and we are considering our options, as people say. A tea leaf reader would help. That person not being available, we are very grateful for Grenada's superior 4G mobile communications. For the first time in many many weeks we are able to respond to emails from home in more or less real time, and to Skype.

Prickly Bay is somewhere I was curious about anyway. It's a popular place for people to stay living aboard their boats during the hurricane season. Afloat, that is.  Alex says he couldn't do that, sit at anchor, or on a mooring (there are a lot of moorings down here), watching the hurricanes spawn on the African west coast and waiting heart-in-mouth to see where they make landfall. Which island would cop the big one this year? Antigua seems to have more strikes than the average as does St Lucia, but people leave their boats in reputable marinas on both these islands, their keels sunk into the ground, hulls bolted down with steel cables, dis-masted, etc etc. This is all foreign to us but perfectly normal Caribbean practice.

The Pricky Bay marina bar - Carib beer is the local brew

In February, no-one is thinking hurricanes in Prickly Bay. They're thinking pizzas at the marina  restaurant (half price on Monday night), happy hour every night, live music and films in the sound shell and all day long an abundance of sun and wind so that power generation at anchor is the least of your worries. It's a very different kind of cruising here from the Mediterranean where yachts share harbours with fishing boats and the town/village is just off your stern. Places like Prickly Bay are not quite gated yachting communities, but a little that way. You lock yourself into the boat at night. You chain your dinghy to the boat. And the life of the island is elsewhere. Thus far we've found it a 30 minute bus ride away in St George's. There's more to come.

Every bus has a name - something catchy

On the waterfront (the Carenage) in St George's - and below

Looking down St George's steep slopes to the cruise ship dock

Friday morning market day (and below)

St George's is the hub. We'll be there often, I expect, because I can't live without fresh fruit and vegetables. The St George's market ladies are hustlers. Alban, he of the gold tooth and the sly smile, warned me about them.

Alban the charmer

He was set up on the footpath just opposite the bus stop. I told him I'd come back to buy his sweet potatoes, but he was dubious. "Those ladies in the market can be very persuasive," he said. He was right, but I did come back for his potatoes. And his mandarins. I'd already bought pigeon peas from Joan, who we met on the bus going into town. She was our first market lady though I didn't realise it at the time. She had me sized up. Good on her. She sold me a bag of peas, some tomatoes and a couple of christophenes from her basket,  produce the restaurant she was delivering to didn't want, she said. Once she'd sold them, she'd be on the bus back to Grenville, 45 minutes north on the east coast of the island. I guess she got home early.

The haul - washed and dried