Bye Bye Grenada!

Okay we are back! For those of you addicted to our blog updates we apologise for the lack of service over the last 3 months but we needed a break and we thought that reports of sitting in Prickly Bay might be boring. Anyhow we will give you a summary of those 3 months so you won’t miss out on anything.

We are writing this from Saline Bay Mayreau on Friday 20th November so you now know we have left Grenada after almost 4 months.

So what has happened in the meantime I hear you junkies ask?

We left Port Louis Marina in St Georges immediately after Carnival, although there was still another (postponed) parade to come the following Saturday. Along with Alianna we headed south then east and pulled into Prickly Bay one of the bays on the south coast where cruisers hole up for hurricane season. As it turned out there were no hurricanes in the lower Eastern Caribbean and only a couple of tropical storms none of which came anywhere near Grenada so we had a very uneventful time in comparison to some previous years.

Prickly Bay was busy but we found a good spot close to the dock at the local watering hole, De Big Fish, which along with the local Budget Marine store and the Spice Island Marine boatyard are located at the head of the bay.

We spent Saturday at the rearranged final carnival parade which was in effect the best as they were all dressed up in feathers etc and it was a sunny day so it all went off well in the end. We then settled into a bit of a routine.

We had a big list of projects we wanted to tackle on the boat and we had some repairs (some still not done) and some maintenance that needed to be done also. We also had to get the boat hauled and surveyed for our insurance company or to get other insurance.

However after the mad ash down here we decide to take a break and the first month or so we spent watching the Tri Nations rugby where despite the results we made new friends from South Africa, Joe and Mercia, along with countless others. It would bore us all if we were to list all the new friends we have made over the last 3 months so we won’t but we spent many happy hours in the Fish with friends new and old watching rugby or listening to the regular live music at happy hour. Days were filled with shopping for food and boat parts and trudging into town to try to get Doon a nursing licence. It never happened as they seem less capable of running a health service in Grenada than the Bahamas!

The one thing Grenadians do very well is buses. They pick up and drop off on demand and even divert off the route to take us back to the dock at the Fish for a few extra Eastern Caribbean (EC) dollars. Often they would be waiting at the dock to look for customers having diverted off their route to wait for us as they see us coming in the dinghy. Naturally you have to be patient if the bus doesn’t go directly into town as it does the same for other passengers! And all this for a fixed fare regardless of the journey length of EC$2.50 pp each way or about $1.25NZD.

We joined a tour of 3 buses of cruisers one night to go to Goyave a fishing village up the west coast where they close of the streets on a Friday night and you wander around buying fishy delicacies form the local stores set up on the road. A filling night was had by all! We also joined Joe and Mercia and some of their SA friends for a day tour of the island where we went bush and visited a waterfall as well as a rum factory that hasn’t changed much since the mid 18th century.

The big event during our stay was Sim and Rosie’s wedding at the end of October. Despite best efforts from all involved the stag and hen nights went off with little drama apart from the groom disappearing for a while to flush some alcohol form his stomach! Their wedding day was fine and sunny and with family attending from the UK it went off without a hitch. They had taken the boat to the True Blue Marina and Resort where the ceremony and reception were held. All in all a great day!

Joe had dived the boat for us a few weeks earlier and got 3 months of sea life off the keel and since then we have been snorkeling under the boat every 5-6 days to clean her and when we hauled out on the 11th November for the insurance survey she was as clean as a whistle! We had also cleaned out the bilge and the engine room and changed all the oils and filters etc and cleaned it up so we were sparkling by haul out day.

We had arranged to hang in the travel lift sling over lunch time during the survey and we changed the anode, cleaned out the through hulls and repainted a couple of patches while the surveyor did his thing. It was a little tense as we hoped for a good survey and also because the week before the boatyard had dropped a boat when a pin had come loose and the boat was a write off! Despite this Roy had to point out to the manager that there was STILL a loose pin but we were never in any danger of falling.

The survey went well and we were re-launched safely, returning to the same spot we had been in for the last two months plus. After a few final chores, the most important being replacing a faulty bilge pump we set about provisioning for the next month or so until we get to St Lucia. Having done all that we left Prickly Bay on Monday 16th November spending a night in a bay just north of St Georges before a fantastic day sail in brisk trade winds to Hillsborough Carriacou where we met up with Sim and Rosie for Dinner before checking out the next morning and then heading to Clifton on Union Island to check into St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Clifton Harbour is our least liked anchorage in the Caribbean so far and we repeated the multiple attempts to anchor as per our last visit. The middle of the harbour is strewn with coral rubble or reef and there is only a thin strip of sand between that and the outlying reef and you have to get into that strip along with every other visiting boat. We eventually got in next to Allianna – too close in fact - but as they had left before us that morning they had already checked in and were leaving. We did a quick internet email update and then checked and picked up a couple of loaves of bread. We left and headed to Palm Island but it was just to rough to stay there overnight so we had a gentle sail under jib to Saline Bay Mayreau where we had drinks with Sim and Rosie and Denise and Jean Pierre, French Canadians aboard Absaroque out of Montreal.

As we said Doon’s nursing licence never came through so she was unable to even apply for a job. It’s not that they rejected her its just that they never got around to processing it. Lovely people but couldn’t organize the proverbial piss up……………

During this time Roy had a few dizzy and wobbly spells some even whilst turning over in bed – not good! So the medical officer dragged him off to the doctor to confirm her diagnosis of high blood pressure and of course she was right.

The doc put him on medication and the dizzy spells disappeared along with a reduction in his blood pressure. What also disappeared was his waistline as the medical officer put him on a no food or beer diet (so he claimed).

As a result we have both changed our eating habits and the mostly rice and pasta dinners have been replaced with chicken and salad. If we have dips and drinks we don’t eat dinner but the most remarkable change has been to Roy’s drinking habits. After leaving the USA with 24 cartons of 2 dozen beer we left Grenada with 1 carton and he didn’t touch a beer for a week after we bough it. Beer has been replaced with either wine, rum and diet coke or vodka and diet cranberry and he has lost a good deal of weight sadly too late to win a case of Pinot Noir off Don – don’t worry mate I haven’t forgotten - yours is on the way – one day!

So that’s’ it, all up to date, almost.

We do regret one thing and that is having got this far south we should have planned better and made the time to go down to Trinidad and Tobago. Maybe next time, if there is a next time. Which is the other regret we have, and that is not making enough money before we left!

With our investments not performing over the last three years we have eaten into capital to keep going. Sadly we can’t keep doing that. With reduced capital comes less income and the need to use up more capital………..an ever decreasing circle to zero. The whole exercise has also been so much more costly than we had budgeted for and our expenses have continually been greater than our income and the time has finally come for us to say enough.

Of course if the share market doubles in the next 6 months we can go around again. Yeah right! Well I guess it’s possible after all the “depression” of the last 3 years was deliberately created by the world’s bankers to take advantage of cheap assets in the aftermath so maybe they will engineer a boom next?

Alan Bollard and all those other gnomes in NZ that continually moan about NZrs “obsession” with property need to talk to a few of us who got out of property and into shares over the last 3 years. We would be better off now had we simply left our money in the ASB on term deposit or rented the house out.

So we are heading back to the USA to either store or most likely sell the boat (it’s not likely we will be able to afford to insure and store her for the time we need to work for) and then probably return to NZ to get jobs. We will be dependant on NZ Super for income in our old age and to qualify for it you have to live in NZ for 20 years and 5 of those years has to be after the age of 50. Roy only needs three more but Doon needs 5 so we guess the next 5 years will be spent back working in NZ. After that……………….who knows.

But before then the big event coming up on our calendar that we are excited about is our friend Andrea is coming out from New Zealand to spend a month with us and we will be slowly making our way (via Bequia for Sim’s 50th Birthday bash) to St Lucia in time to pick her up there on 19th December. So we will have lots to report next time as we spend Xmas and New Year with Andrea in St Lucia and beyond!

We hope that that gives you a good fix to keep you going until we next report!

Ps photos will be updated in a couple of weeks when we get to Bequia and a better internet connection.