Grenada January 2004

A fine passage

Our passage from Barbados to Grenada was one of the easiest overnight's we have yet made. The days are short in the Caribbean, with dawn around 6am and dusk twelve hours later. For anything over 50 miles it makes more sense to do a night passage so that you can arrive in daylight. I am never keen on entering new harbours at night, and with the coral reefs surrounding many of the Caribbean islands you do need to take care.

Once away from Barbados we saw no traffic and bowled along at 8 knots plus on a very broad reach all the way to Grenada. Sadly and strangely though, Leonie felt seasick. She'd been fine on almost all the Atlantic crossing, but perhaps having been around two weeks in harbour meant she had lost her 'sea legs' for a while.

Prickly Bay

We made our landfall in Grenada at the delightfully named Prickly Bay, which is a very sheltered and charming bay with a fringed by palm, mangrove and sand.  The customs officials took themselves very seriously and having done the papers with one he said "now you must go to the Immigration Department". "Where's that?" I asked. "It is the next desk". We also encountered the widespread practice of leaning on yachtsmen for "a contribution to the church". Some people get agitated about this but I just regard it as a little extra local tax, and in any case the money mostly does go to local churches some of whom do a lot of good work in the community for the sick, disadvantaged and elderly.

Hog Island

We spent a few days relaxing in Prickly Bay, then went round the corner and picked our way through the reefs to Hog island. This was our first experience of working in through a coral reef, and it was good to find that the charts on our chart plotter were completely accurate so we could have done it all with the boat steered via the GPS. That would have been unwise though, and in any case we have to learn to recognise the different colours of water that tell you which bits are shallow and which are deep.

Hog island is separated from the mainland by just a narrow channel and is totally unspoiled with not a building in sight. It's a popular anchorage and some boats look like they have been there for years, while some have obviously been laid up while the owners have gone home for a while.

St. George's

The capital of Grenada is St. George's on the West coast, and after enjoying Hog Island we moved to the Lagoon, in St. George's which is an almost circular little bay off the main harbour. It was not as peaceful as our other anchorages, but there is an excellent chandlery facing the waterside, as well as a good supermarket, a yacht club with a pleasant bar, and an agent who was able to get us some spares flown in as well as organising a hire car for us.

An island tour

Hiring a car turned out to be a great idea. Grenada is about 25 miles long so it is easy to get around, even though the roads are patchy. We drove up to the Concorde falls and then on to the Seven Falls. These take quite a bit of hiking to get to through rainforest and along slippery paths. We met dozens of people coming back and were afraid it would be crowded but as we arrived at the falls at lunchtime we had them completely to ourselves. It was lovely sitting in the middle of the forest surrounded by nutmeg, cocoa and mahogany trees listening to the roar of the falls. I could not resist stripping off and diving into the wonderful refreshing water of the pool below the cascade.

The next day we went up to the North of the island and had a lovely lunch at an old house called Helvallyn in company with an English couple we met as we arrived there. Helvallyn has lovely views out to sea to the North and makes a wonderful rum punch!

On  our way back we visited a rum factory where they have been making the stuff the same way for nearly 200 years, and then picked the 'back roads' through the rainforest. You could write a book about this place called "Driving Over Nutmegs" for the nutmeg trees are everywhere, as are wild bananas, cocoa and all kinds of exotic flowers.

Carriacou

Sitting in the Lagoon for a week or two the boat was beginning to get quite barnacled and once we had got all our supplies it was time to move on to Carriacou, Grenada's smaller sister island to the North. People had told us Carriacou is like Grenada used to be before it started to get developed, and we certainly found it to be a quiet relaxed and very pretty place. The anchorage is not great so we spent a couple of days anchored behind a little speck of an island which is just a sand spit really (and in some danger of getting washed away) but it was an idyllic spot in which to relax before moving on to St. Vincent and the Grenadines.