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| Scots Klerk clock & bell tower, St George, remarkably bang on time |
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| Prickly Bay Marina |
We had a wonderful night catching up with Karen and Graham,
then next day completed the very easy clearing in with customs and immigration,
both in the same room of the building at the top of the dinghy dock, which we followed with the obligatory local beers at the Prickly Bay Marina and those pizza’s we
were so looking forward to. The marina is a simple arrangement of a ”Tikki Bar”,
tables and chairs and benches under umbrellas or cover, charging stations are
provided above some of the tables and the restaurant provides good, simple, what
seemed like rather costly food but we were to discover that the general cost of
living in Grenada is fairly high, especially compared to South Africa and
Brazil.
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| Prickly Bay Marina restaurant |
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| Prickly Bay dinghy dock |
The currency here is Eastern Caribbean Dollar or US Dollar and the
exchange rate is EC$5 – R1. In the same Marina complex was a mini mart shop which
stocked basic supplies and a laundry – average cost for laundry seems to be
R150 per 8kg load, thank goodness for our little Japanese twin tub washing
machine which currently works hard and saves us a fortune. Also there is a
French butcher who sells the most amazing cheese, good quality meat, homemade
sausages and cold meats and what we could only assume is really good wine as at
around R200 per bottle, we decided not to partake.
Also the marina disposes of
rubbish for you, for a fee – R25 per bag, other marina’s are more selective and
charge R15 for a small bag, R25 for a medium and R40 for a large bag, we will
see if this is common throughout the Caribbean but it certainly forces us to
continue making our refuse footprint really small.
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| Michelle & co-winners boogying it up @ bingo |
Entertainment at Prickly Bay Marina is aimed at cruisers and
locals alike, they show 2 movies every Sunday night, interesting selection the
first night we were there – Jane Eyre and The Hobbit, an unexpected journey. Tuesday
nights is Trivia and Wednesday Bingo, we attended the bingo, its not just a
game it’s a full evening’s entertainment with a local DJ playing very loud
local music to which the lucky bingo winners were required to dance on stage
before being given their prize, Michelle ended up jigging away in the fine company
of 4 or 5 co-winners, she didn’t get much but most of the prize money was
generous. We retired to the serenity of our cockpit before the evening was
done, hopefully the people that got our cards won something. After this we
chickened out of the trivia evening….
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| We found a sushi restaurant next to Spiceland Mall |
Monday to Saturday on VHF radio channel 66 is the Cruisers
net that provides incredibly helpful information to all cruisers in radio range,
they cover weather, social events, “Treasures of the bilge” ie. Buying or
selling things, businesses and specials, introduction of arriving and departing
yachts, kids net on Saturday mornings and shopping bus schedules for the bays further
away from the main shopping centre of St George. There are two main supermarket
chains on Grenada, IGA (one store at Spiceland Mall), this was the closest
proper store to us in Prickly Bay, a 5km walk away and Foodland (three stores,
one in St George Town, one at the Carenage in St George and one close to the IGA).
These stores are fairly well stocked, depending on the day of the week but they’re
not huge so don’t carry a big variety of products, but we found pretty much
what we needed between them. Other than these, there are a number of small stores
that stock basics dotted all over the Island.
Transport around Grenada is great, there are taxi’s and
busses, all the same HiAce vehicles, the difference being busses display a
number in their windscreen, taxi’s do not and there’s usually someone hanging
out the window of the bus shouting that there’s more space inside. They are
numbered 1 – 12 depending which route they cover and are quite a bit cheaper
than a taxi at EC$2.50 per trip versus EC$10 for the same trip in a taxi, that
said, the difference is fairly obvious. Any deviation from the bus routes adds
to the cost and it pays to fix the price before embarking on the journey, many
times we found ourselves humming the Chris de Berg song “Don’t pay the Ferryman”.
These busses play pretty loud local music and are always full and take longer
because they stop all the time trying to convince pedestrians that being
crammed into that hot, crowded, mobile boom box that hurtles its way down the streets,
admirably avoiding pedestrians and other vehicles, is better than sweating it
out on the pavement – tough call.
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| Getting into Shademan's luxury chariot |
We discovered “Shademan”, his name is Patrick, when, after marching
to CK’s for bulk stock and to the garage to fill 3 x 25litre drums of petrol we
luckily found him and his red bus and he transported us back to the marina where
our dinghy was tied. Patrick has cleverly
seen a business opportunity in the cruising community and he offers an almost
private bus cum taxi service to cruising yachties and tourists from the cruise
ships. He is connected to the Cruisers net via VHF and provides shopping bus
trips to the shops from the various marinas as well as transport to events such
as the Saturday hash. He charges the same rate as the local busses but his driving
and the overall state of his vehicle make this a much friendlier experience. We
did the shopping route with him from Whisper Harbour Marina, a round trip with
8 other cruisers to the hardware shop, the bank, CK’s (they sell in bulk at a
lower cost, great for booze and cooldrinks) and the Spiceland Mall. Eventually everyone’s
shopping had taken up the entire front seats and we were all jammed together in
the rest but it was still great fun and a really fast way to meet fellow
cruisers.
Hurricane season (June to November) is a hot topic in the
Caribbean and needs to be carefully noted when it comes to boat insurance, our insurance
company covers us if we spend hurricane season in either Grenada or Trinidad/Tobago,
with many conditions, etc. as these areas are considered below the hurricane
belt. Grenada has had two really notable hurricanes, Janet in 1955 caused
considerable damage, but Ivan in 2004 devastated much of the Island’s infrastructure
and they are still battling to recover. One of our aims was to check out what
type of safe mooring is available in Grenada in the event that we need to leave
Maxscene for any period of time over hurricane season and we scoured some of
the marina’s with interest. We spent 2 weeks in Prickly Bay, very popular as it
has a large, well stocked, pricey chandlery for boat parts and spares and is one
of only 3 marina’s on the Island where there is a yard where your boat can be
hauled out of the water and securely stored, but living aboard is an issue so
this would be an option only if we are going to be away. The marina is huge, the
water clear all the way to the sandy bottom 9m down and warm, swimming off the
back of the boat is a reality, we just have to be careful of tender boats
zooming around in between.
In the first week we found a local SIM that apparently works
through most of the Caribbean with a good rate for data – buy 3Gig get 6 free,
we are connected once more. We visited Fedex and managed to organise collection
and delivery of Kevin’s new British passport, he is now trying to develop a liking
for cucumber sandwiches and warm beer, ha ha, which prompted a mini celebration
at the yacht club overlooking the Carenage (the name is derived from the practice
of careening or beaching sailing vessels for maintenance) and St Georges Harbour.
Graeme and Michelle had decided to return to South Africa via Atlanta and as
there is only one flight per week, on a Saturday, to Atlanta from Grenada, they
had time to be tourists and we really enjoyed sampling the rum and chocolate they
brought back from their Island Tour.
A fun thing about cruising is meeting fellow cruisers again,
or sometimes just the yacht, as is the case with Irene, a catamaran that we
knew in Richardsbay that is now sailing to Australia with a new lovely young family
on board. We had heard of them as they were just ahead of us and had spent time
in St Helena, Ascension and Cabedelo with our other cruising friends so it was
great to wake up to find them anchored right next to us and to finally meet
them, lovely people.
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| Taster trays of craft beer & cider |
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| Farewell drinks |
A tremendous discovery was the West Indies beer company, a
craft beer brewery with around 12 different draught beers on offer and 5 draught
ciders, a short distance from Prickly Bay. Coupled with reasonably priced food it
was a good place for farewell festivities the night before Graeme and Michelle left.
Boat things then took preference, a good clean was required
but being on anchor fresh water is not in abundance, we make fresh water pretty
regularly but this requires clean water and the battery to be well charged which
requires solar power and we need water for showers, laundry and drinking too, luckily
our time in Cape Town with water restrictions paid off, we however felt for
Toyer who used to clean our boat and the hard work he had when the water was
cut off. We also put to rest a couple of issues we picked up on the way, we
count ourselves very fortunate that our preparations left us with very little
that could give us headaches. We ended up with the following issues :
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| It wasn't easy to seal from the outside! |
1.
A waterline portlight in the port rear cabin gave
new meaning to wet dreams – it has now been well and truly sealed closed until
we can source a new one to replace it
2.
The port manual bilge pump’s casing broke and it
was leaking back into the bilge causing the alarm to sound. Again a temporary
fix is in place until we can get a new one.
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| Manual bilge pump tied together with rope for now... |
3.
A number of the saloon table top’s mounting
screws have stripped, will need a redesign
4.
The self ignitor on the stove is now a selective
self-ignitor, only lighting one plate and the oven/grill, needs replacing when
we can find one, meantime we have gas lighters
5.
One or two port lights might drip and two through
deck mounts have leaks and need more sika
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| Nearly the departure of our tender |
6.
The clips at the end of the chains holding the tender
boat on broke open, this was almost a disaster, fortunately Michelle spotted
the issue before the tender boat went on its own journey.
And as with anything the list of
changes/modifications/improvements has grown to two pages again, to be done….
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| Tugs trying to pull her off the rocks |
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| The barge with the backactor |
The destructive power of nature and more especially the
ocean was made clear once more when a beautiful 58 foot Catana, a crewed charter
catamaran
broke its mooring and ended up on the rocks behind us. It was heartbreaking to
watch how quickly the pounding waves engulfed her making less of her visible
daily and despite late but valiant efforts by two small tugs to try to
dislodge
her, she was stuck fast and they merely succeeded in making the holes bigger,
hastening her demise.
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| You'd never know this was a beautiful catamarn |
Grenada has an interesting history – the Spanish named it
after the green hills in Grenada, Spain’s Andalusia. The English kept the name
and tried to colonise the Island, but the Caribs, many of whom were cannibals, ate some
of the invaders and threw the rest back into the sea. Then the French arrived,
they were better prepared and bargained for the island with trinkets and
alcohol. Once they got over their hangovers the Caribs realised they had been cheated
and fought back. The French hung on and eventually had the Caribs penned on the
edge of a high cliff on the North Coast and rather than surrender they jumped
into the sea. When I asked Cutty a tour guide about this he said, that’s the
French story, who knows, maybe they shot them all and threw them over – there doesn’t
seem to be much love lost for the French. With no more Caribs, the battle for
the Island was once more between the French and the English, with it
definitively becoming English in 1783, the only remains of the French are the
names of a few villages and headlands.
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| City centre St George |
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| View of St George & the Carenage from the top of the hill |
The Island is divided up into 6 Parishes, St George, St
David, St Andrew, St John, St Mark and St Patrick – they celebrate St Patrick’s
day with purpose. The English elevated local churches to Parish status and
renamed them and with the borders already having been well defined the people
simply took on the names of the churches.
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| Surrounded by chocolate and all things good |
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| Chocolate & coffee @ the Museum, nutmeg icecream is my new favourite |
St George is the Capital and most populated/commercial. We
explored the town finding the fish market which, while open daily, does the
majority of its sales on a Saturday, also the local produce market where the spicy
aromas of nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, cloves and others fill the air and all you
can think of is pancakes, reinforcing Grenada’s reputation as the Spice Island.
A trudge up a very long hill was rewarded with a breath-taking view of St
George and the Carenage and then coffee and cake at the Chocolate Museum.
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| St George University |
Just before leaving Prickly Bay we explored the little area
of True Blue Bay next door, home to St George’s University, a top centre of
International Education with students from 140 countries and of course with
students goes good cheap food and drink with “container park” a number of casual
dining restaurants in containers serving a mixture of fare from various countries,
including some not bad sushi.
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| Sushi @ container park |
On the other side of True Blue bay is the
beautiful True Blue Boutique resort and if the name conjures up $$$ you would
be right a beautiful setting but a one drink stop.
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| True Blue Resort |
From here we attended a wine tasting at a bowling alley,
never trust Google maps, we walked nearly 1 hour out of our way before finding
it, but the walk was most interesting as we ended up marching right through the
middle of the local residential area, how they must still be laughing at us red
faced, sweaty tourists.
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| Wine Tasting |
The wine tasting was special – the company imports
South African wines so we got to sample some really good export Van Loveren
wines and the promise of discount if we order some.
Next was some more adventuring so we weighed anchor and set
off for the next anchorage, Secret Harbour….
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| Sunset tender boat trip - Prickly Bay |
