We were sitting in the cockpit having an early cup of coffee 12/29/09 and John said “I think we are dragging”, “those dreaded words” that no sailor likes to hear. We had been anchored here off St. Georges Lagoon, Grenada, in the same spot for over 1 ½ months. It was getting a little roly-poly so we decided just to pull the anchor and head to Prickly Bay which is on the south coast. Earlier John had pulled up the weather on the internet and the seas were 7’ with a swell coming from the N.W. When we got out in the ocean we found it not to be that bad. It took us two hours to go from St. Georges to Prickly Bay. We found a spot to anchor where we had been before.
The next day we took the dinghy to the dinghy dock at the Big Fish Restaurant and walked up to the road to catch a bus to the Foodland Grocery Store on the Lagoon in St. Georges. We had taken our Cruising Permit and Boat Documentation papers with us because we were told they gave a 5% discount on groceries over $100 EC (Eastern Caribbean) dollars. It didn’t take us long to get over the $100 EC dollar amount. We bought a case of rum, five cases of boxed milk and several other miscellaneous items. We saved about $20 EC dollars and that’s about $7.45 US dollars. With all our groceries we couldn’t take the bus back so we grabbed a taxi and the cost was about what we had saved at the grocery store. New Years Eve came and we decided to stay on the boat. At 1200 AST (Atlantic Standard Time) we watched magnificent fireworks being shot off at four different places. What a view we had. I took some pictures and captured a few pretty good ones on my camera. The French 60+ foot Catamaran next to us was really celebrating. They had about four or five couples there and after the fireworks they all jumped in the water. Better them than us, for the water had to be a little cold, with a 80.2 degree temperature. I guess they didn’t mind with all the white lightning they were drinking. After getting back on board they started playing instruments and singing. I heard a guitar, drum and accordion. This went on until about 0300 in the morning and the Captain; (John) couldn’t get to sleep and was in a bad mood. Their partying continued each night and they again started playing instruments and singing late into the night. They kept waking up the Captain who wasn’t in too good of a mood. They sure were party animals but what the heck as far as I was concerned they sure weren’t bothering me (Carol). I was up anyway and I kind of enjoyed them. Every night though they would jump in the water and swim around the boat. We thought we had left the roly-poly seas back in St. Georges but we had to lock the head (bathroom) door because it would swing back & forth banging loudly. We had to redo some of our things so they didn’t fly off the shelves. “Brain Surgeon” devised a way to lift the dinghy (or so he thought) with our electric windless. He had a oops when the windless pulled out of the deck. This oops was really funny and I had all I could do not to laugh and get swatted by the Captain. Here John was trying to lift the dinghy; instead the windless was hanging in the air. It had rusted through on the bottom but the real problem was it was 20 years old.. Another salt air problem we have had on the boat. Since it was old, naturally the part that rusted off couldn’t be purchased anywhere, even on-line. John took it off the deck and patched the place where it had gone through the deck. The windless had provided us many years of use for kedging off when we went aground, especially coming back to our townhouse in Satellite Beach, Fl., where we had a few speed bumps and we used to provide the Sunday afternoon entertainment for the Condo’s when we came in and immediately went aground. Another day we needed water on the boat so the Captain tried to run the water maker but it was on the fritz again. “Brain Surgeon”, to work again, had to take it all apart and decided the problem was in the high pressure pump. He found ten chain link balls and when he showed them to me I right away recognized them coming from the chains attached to the covers of the deck fill plates to back flush the water maker pump. We put out a call the next morning on the cruisers net and nowhere on this island did they sell or work on these pumps. He found out that Echo Marine back in Trinidad sold and service these pumps. “Brain Surgeon” put this in his head for computing what to do next and it might take a few days to think of a solution. So now it was back to the old fashion way of carrying the water from the marinas and putting it in the tanks. It hadn’t rained much so we couldn’t collect it that way. “Brain Surgeon” thought about the problem and decided to go to Budget Marine and purchase a raw water strainer so that problem of getting something in the motor wouldn’t occur again.
After listening to the boat next to us partying every night, (quite loud) according to John and the roly-poly seas we decided to move the boat two bays over. We departed Prickly Bay at 1500 on January 8th and arrived in Clarks Court Bay, off Whisper Cove Marina at 1630. The seas were seven feet with an east swell of nine seconds. We put no sails up and motored over the whole way because we were going right into the wind. We saw some buoys which marked the channel coming in through the reefs but you had to keep a close eye out and be able to read the water to avoid the reefs and shoals that extend south of Hog Island. After we anchored John was happy because he could get a better and faster internet connection. He started surfing the net to find the best airline tickets back to Florida and found some bargains via Trinidad to Fort Lauderdale, Fl. The next day we checked out the Whisper Cove Marina and then went down to Lower Woburn and walked through their town. We saw the place where we were to go to get picked up by the bus to take us to down town St. Georges. A few days later we went back to Whisper Cove Marina for one of their flea markets. We actually went for the $5 EC dollar hamburgers ($1.86 US, $5 EC Dollar beers and $5 EC Dollar French fries. Boy what a bargain. We didn’t find anything at the flea market we couldn’t live without but we really enjoyed the food and spirits. The next day John called his doctors in Florida and made appointments for the week of January 26th. It will be the first time John has been back to Florida since we left a year and a half ago. After making the doctor appointments he booked his tickets for Liat Airlines from Grenada to Trinidad (Port of Spain, POS) and from there on Caribbean Airlines to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He booked a rental car from Alamo for $30 per day to get from Ft. Lauderdale to the Melbourne airport where he was to return his car. The next day we took the local bus to the Immigration office which was at the Government Center in St. Georges to see if we could extend Carol’s Visa. They said that I had to come back closer to the 29th which was two weeks away. Carol was going to have to go on her own to do this while John was away. The next day I (Carol) started practicing starting the outboard engine and running it around. It was the first time I had tried this in about twenty years. I really had to pull hard to get the engine started. I could just see all the muscles I would build up. The other thing I learned was how to tilt the engine up out of water which we did each evening. We should have been lifting the dinghy up each night because the barnacles and grass were getting disgusting on the bottom. The next day Wednesday January 20th we went over to the Phare Bleu Marina to check it out and get gas for the dinghy and generator. The gas figured out, after converting from EC dollars and Imperial Gallons to $4.03 US a gallon. They had there, parked at the dock, a lovely old Swedish Lightship over 100 years old. This housed the marina office and cruisers lounge & restaurant. You eat on the upper deck in an intimate nautical atmosphere. No one was around for us to visit the historic old engine room where the engines still run. We did check out the museum-like lounge while there.

Stay tuned for more adventures from John & Carol aboard the S/V Sweet Caroline