With SD scheduled for her hurricane season haul-out this week, we are preparing her for storage and looking back at our seven wonderful weeks on the island of Grenada.
Departing Carriacou on a sunny morning, we had a perfectly glorious 30-mile passage to Grenada, beam-reaching in 10-15 knots of wind under full sail – Sand Dollar at her best!
We picked up a mooring for one night in tiny Dragon Bay, on Grenada’s west coast, near a famous underwater sculpture park at Moliniere Point. The next morning, an eager young Grenadian appeared alongside SD in his kayak, offering to guide us to the sculptures for $10 USD each. We balked at first, figuring that we could swim there ourselves for free. (We’re pretty cheap.) But our guide looked so disappointed that in the spirit of supporting free enterprise and boosting the local economy, we paid our $20, donned our snorkel gear, and swam obediently after him as he paddled toward the site. As it turned out, it was a good thing we had a guide, as we’d have had a devil of a time finding the sculptures on our own. They were spread over a fairly large area of sea-bed and were monochromatic in color, and the water itself was a tad murky.
But the sculptures were nonetheless quite impressive, and more than a little eerie. A variety of works came into view as we snorkeled around, following our guide. Among them were a cemetery with scattered sarcophagi, a reclining mermaid, and a famous piece entitled “Vicissitudes”, which featured a circle of children holding hands, all wearing hauntingly spooky facial expressions.
When we’d finished our art appreciation tour, we weighed anchor and motored three miles to St. George’s anchorage, just outside the city’s harbor. The centuries-old town of St. George’s is situated on a ridge, with the sea on one side and the protected harbor on the other. Old brick buildings with tile roofs still line incredibly steep streets, and original cobblestones pave some alleys and sidewalks. A walk through these streets, among structures hundreds of years old, inspires the imagination to picture the city as it looked long ago. Tall wooden sailing ships would arrive and off-load their ballast of bricks, and then sail for home with holds full of rum, spices, cocoa, and fruit.
St. George’s harbor; the area circling the water is called the Carenage
On June first we moved SD to a berth in pretty Port Louis Marina, a short distance from town. It was to be our home for the month, and a deluxe home it was, with lush and lovely landscaping, a swimming pool, WiFi, laundry, showers, ice, bar, and restaurant. Accustomed as we are to a shoe-string lifestyle, this was all pretty decadent! But we managed to put on a stiff upper lip and suffer through it somehow.
Port Louis Marina on the right; town of St. George’s is out of photo, on the left
A short dinghy ride away was St. George’s itself, as well as two supermarkets and a well-stocked chandlery. It was on the route for the cheap (less than $1 USD) buses that served the whole island, and was actually within walking distance of the town. We took a bus trip one day across the interior of the island to visit Belmont Estate, a large property, family-owned for several generations, where cocoa beans are grown and processed before being sent up the road to the Grenada Chocolate Factory. There’s also lush, sprawling botanical gardens, and a goat dairy that produces wonderful goat cheese (we took some home). We enjoyed a terrific lunch at their airy pavilion-style restaurant.
Ken’s son, Matthew, and daughter, Tameron, both in their twenties, arrived in mid-June for a week-long visit. We’d been awaiting their arrival to do some sight-seeing, and we did the tourist thing at old Fort George and at the Grenada National Museum, which a few centuries ago had been a women’s prison. A visit to the local Saturday market in the town square had become a regular event for us, so we herded Matt and Tam over to share the experience. The old square, once the site of slave auctions and public hangings, comes alive on Saturdays, crammed with tiny stalls manned by very determined ladies (and a few men) hawking spices, crafts, and fresh produce.
These local vendors do not take “No thank you, not today” for an answer, so we came away with bananas, limes, nutmegs, cinnamon, and sea moss. This last item, sold in its dried state, bears a distinctly unappetizing resemblance to a loofah. But the locals boil it briefly to soften it, then put it in a blender with cold milk, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and it comes out tasting like a rich, creamy, eggnog smoothie.
We devoted an entire day to an island tour, with our driver/guide, Cutty, chauffeuring 15 of us around in his spotless air-con van. A wealth of local knowledge and island trivia, he made frequent stops to educate us on island flora, plucking fragrant ylang-ylang, lemongrass, bay leaves, and cinnamon bark for us to sniff. We disembarked at a pretty waterfall, where a young man tried to hustle our group for $5 USD (each!) to photograph him as he jumped from the top of the falls into a pool at the base. We support creative entrepreneurial endeavors, but no way were we paying actual money for a shot of some guy jumping into the water.
From the waterfall we continued on to an interesting tour of an old-fashioned-looking nutmeg processing plant, and then to a small chocolate-making company, where we were given a “from (cocoa) bean to (chocolate) bar” tour, with free samples at the end!
Both photos above: nutmeg processing plant
Lunch at the River Antoine Run Distillery was followed by a tour of the distillery, with its still-operative huge 200-year-old water wheel. Unlimited (!) free samples of the product were offered at tour’s end, but this stuff was so high-octane that one shot was plenty!
The ride home was through the rain forest, cool and green, and thickly wooded with nutmeg trees, huge stands of bamboo, cascades of ferns, and a virtual explosion of tropical flora. As our route joined the main road, Cutty stopped and coaxed a monkey out of a tree with small bananas. When a banana was held over the head of anyone brave enough to participate, the monkey would leap onto the head or shoulder of the individual, and face the camera for the obligatory photo-op.
We didn’t wear Tam and Matt out with sightseeing, however, but had plenty of time for relaxation, which included lots of swimming pool time, hanging out, and several games of our newest addiction, “Grenadian train dominoes”. We spent a wonderful afternoon on the beautiful white-sand of nearby Grand Anse beach, swimming and lounging under the shade of an almond tree and a coconut palm. But our favorite day was the day we all took SD out for a lively day-sail, with conditions ranging from a zippy downwind sail to a hard-on-the-wind bash that sent sheets of sea-water flying aft to drench the kids, who were perched on the coach-house roof. No worries, though – a kick-ass squall provided a copious fresh-water rinse as we approached the harbor on our return.
With Tam and Matt’s departure, our marina time was soon over, and we moved back out to St. George’s anchorage for a couple of days before sailing six miles around to Prickly Bay, on Grenada’s south coast. We spent ten days in Prickly, and then weighed anchor for our final leg, to St. David’s Bay, six miles further east. This, our last sail of 2015, was a wet and bumpy motor-sail, hard on the wind for most of the passage, requiring that we do several tacks, sailing eight miles to “make good” six.
But the reward is an anchorage here in the bay that is simply exquisite. We are the only yacht anchored, and the low hills surrounding us are lush and green, covered with palms, mangroves and other local trees. In the evenings, unseen birds calling deep in the foliage give the place a Jurassic Park-like feeling. A small beach fronts the bar/restaurant of Grenada Marine ( www.grenadamarine.com ), where the ambience is totally un-touristy island-casual, the beer is cold, and the food is cheap, generous, and delicious. The boatyard itself is huge and very efficiently run, and even though we are considered to be outside the “hurricane box”, the boats on the hard are carefully secured against heavy weather. We are happy and comfortable with our decision to park our girl here for six months, and we look forward to our return to Grenada and our ship in the first week in January. See you all then!
Cheers and beers! Katie and Ken
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