Launch!

We had a very, very long day traveling from Switzerland to Grenada.  We spent the night in a hotel near the airport in Zürich, and set the alarm for 5:00 am to catch a 7:00 am flight.  Three flights later, we arrived at our hotel in Grenada at 10:00 pm.  With the time zone change, that adds up to 22 hours.  But great to be here!

We spent two days buying provisions, unpacking, and generally cleaning up the boat.  Lots and lots of stuff to put away.  Then, on Wednesday, we launched.

We have been at anchor since then, continuing boat chores and provisioning.  We are waiting for some replacement parts for our instruments, so we will be in the area for at least another week and a half.  We are hoping to participate in an event sponsored by the "Hash House Harrier" which is kind of a goofy walk/run/drink event.  You can find out more at http://www.grenadahash.com/home.  Hopefully, we'll soon have some time for relaxing.

Nearly Time

As the darkness of winter descends in Switzerland, we are counting the days before our transition to the Caribbean.  We had a lovely day today, with a bit of sun in the afternoon, and a beautiful snow-covered landscape in all directions.  But the sun is up late and down early, and the forecast is for clouds, fog, sleet and snow.

We have been working on our to-do lists for launching the boat, our provisioning plans, and our (very preliminary) itinerary for the season.  This is fun --- helps us focus on the sunshine to come and not on the "hochnebel" (fog) of today.  We are also starting to feel a bit sad about leaving our Swiss friends for such a long time.  And looking forward to seeing our Caribbean friends again.

Getting Excited

As the days in Switzerland get darker and foggier, we are starting to think more and more about the start of the cruising season.  We have about a month to go, and have already started putting together to-do lists.  We have been in touch with some of our cruising friends, and have very tentative ideas about meeting up with them.  We have been inviting family and friends to visit us during the season, but so far no takers.

Lazy Days of Summer

We spend our summers in Switzerland, and also enjoy sailing here.  It's a very different experience than sailing in the Caribbean, though.

We have a small keelboat, a Beneteau 21.7s, that we sail on the Lake of Lucerne.  The "Baby Beneteau," named "Little Dipper," is 21 feet long and has a keel that can swing up in shallow water.  She has a small cabin where you could take a nap if you wanted, but not really very much in the way of accommodations.

Sailing here is usually a very relaxing affair.  The scenery around the lake is absolutely beautiful:

Which is a good thing, because the sailing isn't very exciting.  It's very common for the wind to blow at only 3-4 knots, and then get lighter still in the middle of the afternoon.  It's a pleasant surprise when the boat moves faster than 3 knots, and not uncommon to be moving at less than 1 knot.   Like I said, relaxing.

But the scenery makes it all worthwhile, and we really do enjoy being out on the water, in the sunshine, enjoying the feeling of being propelled, almost silently, solely by the wind.

Back in Switzerland

We had a very smooth flight from Grenada to London, and spent several hours with Gretchen's nephew, Griffin.  He has been interning at the House of Commons for the past several months, and he have us an insider's tour of Westminster Palace and the Parliament offices.  We particularly enjoyed the small Chapel of St. Mary Undercroft, which is located beneath Westminster Hall.  It is beautifully decorated, and we feel privileged that we were able to see it.

After a night in a hotel near Gatwick, we took the bus to Heathrow, and finally returned to our apartment in Meggen.

End of the Season

Well, we all know that time goes by very quickly.  Suddenly we find ourselves at the end of the  2012 sailing season.

We have been in Grenada for 10 days, anchored in Prickly Bay.  This time was mostly devoted to boat chores, all the big and small tasks that need to be completed before we can leave the boat.  Mostly putting away and cleaning.  Yesterday Callisto was lifted out of the water by a big crane, and transported to the spot where she will remain until next winter.  It is amazing the very large and very specialized machines that are used to transport vessels weighing many tons.

We have a few more days of chores, things that are best done when the boat is out of the water.  Again, mostly putting away and cleaning.  The we fly to London for a night, where we will visit our nephew who is at the Parliament.  He has offered to give an insider's tour of the Parliament building, which we are very excited about.  Then another flight to Zürich and a train home.

We made a total of 42 passages this year, ranging from 1-11 hours.  This was a total of 1,109 nautical miles and we averaged 5.6 knots.  We did quite a bit more sailing this year than last, and found that we really enjoyed the time on the water.  We also did more hiking this year, and really enjoyed the walks, but also enjoyed meeting and interacting with the guides.  Among the highlights of the season, though, were meeting up with friends and family on Antigua and St. Martin, and interacting with cruising friends in the islands.

All in all, a great season!  But we have lots waiting for us in Switzerland.  Gretchen has already signed up for a golf tournament, and David will perform in a one-act play as part of a theater festival in Antwerp, Belgium, at the end of the month.  And, of course, lots of Swiss friends to see again.

Carriacou Maroon and String Band Music Festival

Sorry about the long interval between posts.  We've been very busy, and have not always had good internet connectivity.

After hiking on Dominica, we really enjoyed a long and strenuous hike in the rainforest on St. Lucia.  One key difference:  on St. Lucia there is a lot of commercial (illegal) marijuana being grown.  Very important to have a guide, so that you don't accidentally stumble on a ganja plot, and make a Rasta very angry.  The trail was beautiful, and we took a side trip down a ravine to visit the en bas Saut waterfall.  This whole area was greatly affected by Hurricane Tomas in 2010.  The effects of numerous mudslides and severe flooding were still very much visible.


One of the highlights of our season was the Carriacou Maroon and String Band Festival.  This is the third year they have run it, and it is attended by an interesting mix of locals and tourists.


Maroons were runaway slaves who formed independent settlements together.  On Carriacou, the word is also used to refer to an event that commemorates the Maroon culture and heritage.  The Grenadian tourist board has combined this celebration with a music festival that focuses on string bands:  guitars, banjos, mandolins, etc.  We had not known that string band music was a big thing in the West Indies, but once we saw a lavender violin played with a baby-blue bow, we were convinced.

The first night of the festival was the Maroon event.  This took place in the village of Belmont, on the southeast part of Carriacou.  It was basically a big community meal.  Traditional foods were served in huge quantities to all comers -- and no one would take our money.  Lots of people having a good time and enjoying each others company.

The second day featured a series of String Bands playing along the main street in Hillsborough, the largest town on Carriacou.  Great music, but played at a typical Caribbean volume level (loud!)  In the evening, everyone moved to a park in Belair, north of Hillsborough.  There we saw many different groups from around the Caribbean demonstrating traditional dances and traditional music.

The evening continued with more String Bands, but it was after midnight and past our bedtime.

The final day saw more String Bands playing on the fabulous Paradise Beach.  Good beer and lots of souvenirs to invest in.

All in all, a great event to mark the closing of our 2012 season.

We are now in Prickly Bay, Grenada, preparing the boat to come out of the water in a few days.  Lots of chores, mostly cleaning, and we are very much hampered by an unusual period of rainy days.  A bit wistful about leaving the wonderful islands, but excited to be returning to friends and activities in Switzerland.

Hiking on Dominica

Dominica is one of our favorite islands.  In addition to very friendly people, it offers breathtaking natural beauty.

We took three guided hikes this visit.  Two were on segments of the national trail system, the Waitukubuli Trail.  First we hiked in the rainforest, at Morne Diablotin.  Lots of water (and mud), the trails were covered with wet leaves that made walking tricky.  The highlight of this segment was the chance to see numerous parrots.  These birds are unique to Dominica, endangered, and a source of immense pride for the Dominicans.  They are very shy, so we mostly saw them flying away from us.  We also saw numerous land crabs.

The second segment goes through the forest between the villages of Capuchin and Penville.  This trail was much dryer, and it reminded us of hikes in Switzerland, since there was a lot of up-and-down terrain.  The views were spectacular, wooded valleys in one direction, the islands of Guadeloupe in the other.

Our third hike this trip was to visit Victoria Falls.  This was a very challenging journey, since it requires clambering over boulders that range in size from a basketball to a car.  Many of the boulders are slippery, and we had to ford the river three times.  But it was worth it:

A truly spectacular falls.  Its hard to tell from the video, but this is well over a hundred feet high,

At the end of the hike, we had another treat:  a meal at the "Rastaraunt" run by Moses at the trail head.  Moses has a farm here, with all kinds of fruits and vegetables.  He made us a soup with greens, yams, plantains, beans and who knows what else.  The broth contained lots of coconut milk.  Very delicious and filling.

Marie Galante

The nation of Guadeloupe consists of two large islands, and several smaller ones.  All are considered a Department of France.

One of the smaller islands is Marie Galante.  This is a quite unusual island for the Caribbean.  From the sea, it looks flat as a pancake.  Quite a contrast from the typical steep slopes and mountainous terrain we usually see.

Because it is so flat, Marie Galante has historically been an agricultural center.  There is still a lot of sugar cane grown there.

We like the island because it is a great place to go hiking.  The government has established several trails across the island.  We have learned the hard way that the maintenance of the trail markings has been small to none, but the island is small and it is hard to get too far off the track.

As we were hiking this visit, we noticed that there seemed to be an unusually large number of cattle, and especially bulls.  This seemed odd, because how many bulls does such a small island really need?  Then it struck us:  these weren't bulls after all -- they were oxen.  The residents still use oxen to haul sugar cane from the fields to the mill.

Some sailors think that Marie Galante isn't a good place to visit, because the anchorage is quite wide open.  Our experience has been that the anchorage is quite pleasant.  There is protection from big seas from the main part of Guadeloupe.  It would probably be quite rolly after a prolonged period of strong winds from the northeast, but that is quite unlikely this late in the year.

We had one unexpected adventure on Marie Galante.  We had decided to visit the village of Capesterre on the windward side of the island.  It has a reputation for having a great beach, protected by nearby reefs.  We had planned to take a taxi, but none were to be found when we arrived on the island.  The tourist office suggested a local bus.  That sounded like fun, and a way to save money, too.  It took two buses:  one to the town of Grand Bourg, and then a second to Capesterre.  The beach was wonderful, and we had an excellent lunch in Le Galette, a restaurant right on the beach.  After lunch a bit more time in the water, and then time to go home.  We walked back to the village, only to discover that the buses stop running at 1:00 pm on Wednesdays (guess what day of the week it was).  What to do?  More than 20km back to the boat, no taxis, and no bus.  Well, we walked back to Le Galette and begged for help.  They tried calling a taxi for us, but no answer.  Finally, one of the people there volunteered that her friend needed to head in that direction, and she called him and asked him to give us a lift.

Herve runs the Sa Ka Plonje dive center on Marie Galante.  We were extremely grateful that he was willing to help us out. He has excellent English, and was just generally a nice person.  During the trip to Saint Louis, we talked about dive schools.  We learned a lot about the advantages of smaller operations.  We will certainly think hard about arranging a course when we visit Marie Galante next year.

Montserrat

One of the more interesting islands, though we've never set foot on it, is Montserrat.

A fairly large island (10 miles by 7 miles), Montserrat is the one Caribbean island with an active volcano.  In the early 90's, the island had a population of more than 11,000 people.  A volcanic eruption in 1995 destroyed the main town of Plymouth, burying it in 40 feet of mud. Following the destruction of Plymouth, more than half of the population left the island due to the economic disruption and lack of housing.  We understand that all were offered the chance to move to the UK, and many people did.  The remaining population is there by choice, and we hear that they consider it better than a London tenement.  There have been further eruptions since then, including a partial collapse of the lava dome in 2010.

Plymouth was the only really good anchorage on Montserrat, and yachts are forbidden to go there due to the potential for further volcanic activity.  The remaining anchorages are subject to significant waves and swell, making for a very rolly night.  That's why we have never stopped.  Reports are that the northern part of the island is extremely lush and beautiful.

This trip, though, on our voyage from Nevis to Guadeloupe, we passed just outside the two-mile exclusion zone, and had a glorious view of the island from that distance.  On the south side of the island, one can see two large areas of volcanic ash flowing down the mountainside into the sea.  It was interesting to see this, and compare it to the ash fields we saw on Mt. Etna when we visited Sicily last fall.

Internet & Mail, Nevis & Guadeloupe

The internet is very important to us when we are cruising.  It is our main source of news, the way we manage our finances,  our connection to family and friends via e-mail, and our access to our postal mail.  When we have a good connection, we can also use the internet to make phone calls over Skype.

Access to the internet is highly variable.  We have a high-powered WiFi adapter (a couple, actually), and that means that we can sometimes get WiFi from our boat.  But the quality of the connection can be good or it can be terrible.  Often the connection between the shoreside WiFi system and the internet is slow, and it is shared by many boats at a time.  Think back to the days of slow dial-up connections.

Other times, we cannot get WiFi on the boat, and must go ashore.  Some restaurants and bars provide WiFi, if you buy a meal or drinks there.  There are internet cafes that will get you online for a fee.  So we make do as best we can, and sometimes go for days without a connection. 

Handling our postal mail while sailing is a bit complicated.  We pay a fee to the Swiss Post Office to forward all our mail to a mail service in Florida.  They scan the envelopes automatically, and we can see the scans online.  If we ask, they will also scan the contents and make .pdf files available on-line for a fee.  So basically, we can read all our mail while traveling.  But it’s a week or more late.  And the fees add up.  And this all requires an internet connection.  The service will also forward items to any address we specify.  If we are having guests, we sometimes use them as mail carriers.  Rarely, we will have letters sent to us at an address in the Caribbean.  This is rare because a) we have to be in one place for several days, and b) getting quick delivery involves air services, which are very expensive.

We had a very good visit on Nevis, went hiking in the rainforest with a local guide.  We saw a wild monkey, many new plants, and fantastic views of the extinct volcano and of the sea.  Then came the longest daytime sail of our lives.  It is more than 70 miles from Nevis to Guadeloupe, and the whole trip is beating to windward.  Luckily, we didn't have to tack.  We left before 6:00 am, and the trip took 11 hours.  Fortunately, the sea was fairly calm, and the ride comfortable.

Guadeloupe is another French island.  It is very picturesque, and the sight of pastel-colored houses on the hillsides wonderful.  The stores are full of French wine and cheeses.  We are currently at Isles des Saintes, a part of Guadeloupe that is filled with wonderful restaurants.

St. Martin

We had an unusual stay-over on St. Martin.  First, we stayed more than two weeks.  There have been few islands where we've lingered so long.  Second, we had visitors for both weeks.  We have never had visitors back-to-back before.

Our daughter, Esther, and her friend, James, met us in Marigot Bay.  St. Martin is a divided island.  The northern part is French, and administered by France.  The official currency is the Euro, though US Dollar is  widely accepted.  Locals speak French, though we found that nearly everyone has good English. The southern part is Dutch, and administered by the Netherlands.  Their official currency is the US Dollar, and English is the main language spoken.

We really like the French part of the island.  Restaurants are extremely good, there is lots of excellent cheese and wine in the grocery stores, the people are friendly and helpful.

The week that Esther and James were with us started very windy, and that limited our activities a bit.  Gretchen and they visited a wonderful beach (Friar's Beach) one day while David waited on Callisto for the watermaker repairman.  We had a quite strenuous sail from Marigot Bay to Grand Case.  We also took a daysail from Grand Case to the small island of Tintamarre for some more beach time.  There was a running Pinochle tournament (David lost).   All in all, a very pleasant visit.

The day before Esther and James left us, Gretchen's mother, Lois, and her mother's friend, Pat, arrived on St. Martin.  Lois isn't much for clambering into and out of dinghies and so they stayed in a hotel near Orient Bay.  The weather had improved, and we enjoyed beach days in Grand Case and Orient Bay, and a tour of the main town on the island, Phillipsburg.  David was finally able to get a haircut in Phillipsburg, and has less hair on his head than he's had in many years.

It was a bit strange (and quite peaceful) to find ourselves alone together on the boat after all this activity.  We rested up for a day, and started our journey back south.  We need to be in Grenada by early May, to prepare for the hurricane season.  Our next stop is St. Barths.

More on Antigua

It was great spending a whole week on Antigua.  We were able to be in several different harbours and realized that there are lots of different cruising experiences available.  

Our first stop was Falmouth Harbour.  It was just a few days before the RORC 600, which is a sailing race of 600 miles around several of the Caribbean islands. Here is a link if you want to know more.   http://caribbean600.rorc.org/ It was very fun to see the raceboats and their crews while on shore and out practicing from our mooring.  Antigua also prides itself on its youth sailing program, so we were able to cheer the kids on in the late afternoons as they raced around the boats in the harbour.

On the RORC race day, we left for our next anchorage, right after the start of the race.  It was a bit rainy, but soon cleared up, and we were sailing right behind the classic yachts Adela and Windrose.  Absolutely gorgeous.  We suspect that Callisto was also in some of the pictures from the helicopter, but, of course, edited out...

We sailed most of the way to Nonsuch Bay on the eastern side of Antigua.  This reminded us of the Tobago Cays, there is nothing between you and Senegal but the Atlantic Ocean..and the large reef, of course.  No restaurants, no vendors, just a few other boats, enjoying the sand and water, plus lots of kitesurfing.  A very different perspective from the bustle and big money in Falmouth...

Our final destination on the island was Jolly Harbour, at the western side of Antigua, to allow for a shopping day in the capital St. Johns, and a quick taxi ride to the airport for our friend’s return to the US.   We had a quick sail, but quite a bumpy ride, with large rolly waves.  Our friends definitely won the iron stomach award!  We stopped at Carlisle Bay, a smallish bay just north of Falmouth Harbour, and Callisto was the only boat in the harbor well until evening when we were joined by only two other boats.  Since we had been “roughing it” for a few days, we decided to have both lunch and dinner at the resort.  A very good decision, the food was excellent, and the service included a wine sommelier, all very civilized.  The snorkeling was also very good, David reported seeing many new types of coral and some large starfish. 

After a leisurely breakfast next morning, we headed to Jolly Harbour.  The marina and condo development there is quite large, with several more homes in the planning stages.  We anchored outside the marina, and “enjoyed” the wet dinghy rides into the marina.  From there, we went by taxi to St. Johns, the capital of Antigua, visited the local museum, and walked around the restored quay near the cruise ship dock.  We also took advantage of the local market, replenishing our fresh vegetable and fruit supply.  

Antigua turned out to be a great place to entertain guests, get in some great sailing, and enjoy several different aspects of Caribbean living. 

VIsitors

Another fun thing when cruising is having visitors.  We just finished spending a week with old friends, Ed and Ellen Antal, who flew down from New Jersey to be with us in Antigua.

Having guests sure breaks up the routine.  We love showing off our boat, our sailing skills, and the wonderful places that we get to experience.  This past week was filled with philosophical discussions, some card playing, lots of swimming and snorkeling, and plenty of bragging on our kids.

The boat does feel a bit smaller with four people on board, but it works very well for that number.  The main downside is that we have to eat meals in the Saloon, rather than in the cockpit.  Our cockpit table really can only handle two people.

Now we are in a bit of a hurry to get up to St. Martin, where we will meet our daughter, Esther, and her friend James for a week on the boat, and then visit with Gretchen's mother for another week.  The forecast is for strong winds and fairly big waves, so we should have some lively sailing the next few days.

Green Flash

One of the fun things about cruising in the tropics is the daily sundown ritual.  Every evening, as sundown nears, we relax in the cockpit (perhaps with beverage in hand), and watch the sun disappear behind the horizon.

An important part of this is watching for the elusive "Green Flash."  If conditions are just right, the very last bit of the sun on the horizon turns a brilliant green, for less than a second.  It requires a clear view of the sea on the horizon, and an absolutely clear sky.  This makes it quite rare.  Despite watching virtually every day, we never saw the green flash in 2011, and so far only once this year.  The rarity is part of the fun.

We have never heard a really good explanation for the physics behind this phenomenon.  There is an old joke about floating (green) beer bottles, but it probably has more to do with the sun shining through the sea water.

Still Sailing

We continue to sail nearly every day.  This is very different from our experience last year, when we often would sit at anchor for a week between passages.

And the sailing has been great!  Most days we have been able to sail at very comfortable angles to the wind, which means we sail fast and directly to our destination.  Winds have been very strong this year, nearly always more than 20 knots (40 kilometers/hour, Beaufort 6).  We have been sailing very fast -- which for our boat means speeds around 8.5 knots (16 km/hr) or even more.  We have also sailed almost every day with our sails reefed, to cope with the strong winds.

Blue skies, blue water, sun shining, and fast sailing.  It doesn't get any better than that!

We are now in Isles des Saintes, which are several small islands off the coast of Guadeloupe.  This is a fantastic, beautiful anchorage, with pastel-colored houses in the village.  Guadeloupe is a part of France, and the French influence is very strong, especially in the restaurants, wine selections, and general attitude.

We have only two more passages before arriving in Antigua.  We expect to be there on Wednesday.

Lots to Catch Up On

Since our last post there have been several adventures.  Here's a sampling:

Invasion  We have had absolutely no problem with mosquitoes this trip, and have become somewhat lax about screens.  One evening, David left the screen on the main entryway open when he went to bed.  Mistake.  A bird (or maybe more than one) came into the boat during the night, and apparently stayed for quite a while.  When we woke in the morning, there was bird poop everywhere.  Hard to deal with before you've even had a cup of coffee.

Mustique Blues Festival  This is the seventeenth annual festival, and we sailed there in order to go to a couple of concerts.  Mustique is one of the Grenadines, a perfect tropical island.  It is privately owned, and the development company has made it a destination for the rich and famous.  Homeowners over the years have included Mick Jagger, Tommy Hilfiger, and Raquel Welch, among many other familiar names.  Apparently we missed Prince William and Kate by only a couple of days.  This wasn't all bad, because we heard that security made much of the island inaccessible to tourists.

The concerts were a lot of fun.  As usual, as "mature" adults, we ended up going to bed before the really good acts came on stage.  But we're used to that.

Sailing  Since we have a commitment to be on Antigua by the middle of February, we've been doing a lot more sailing this year than last.  It has been very enjoyable.  Yesterday, for example, we had some of the best sailing we've ever experienced in the Caribbean.  The winds were strong (20+ knots, Beaufort 6) and from a favorable direction, the waves big but well separated.  We sailed at 8.5 knots (even touching 9 knots a few times) much of the way, and arrived in St. Lucia 3-4 hours before we had planned.  This was a 55 nautical mile trip, and we made it in under 8 hours, including time for raising the anchor and setting/dousing the sails.  Exhilarating and magical.

Commissioning

When you first launch a sailboat, or relaunch one after a long period of storage, you have to go through a process known as “commissioning.”  This simply means going through the boat, system by system, to ensure everything is working properly, and fixing everything that is not (or at least every important thing).

Callisto had a particularly challenging commissioning period this year.  Even some things that were working at first failed before we could get the other problems fixed.  Here’s a partial list of the repairs

• Battery bank – this was a problem that we caused, but a big one.  We depend on these batteries for all of our electricity.  We checked the water level in our batteries when we first got on the boat.  As is normal, the water levels were down a bit, so it was necessary to add more.  The boatyard had been doing this on our behalf through the summer and fall.  On the galley counter was a big bottle labeled “Battery Water.”  Usually, you just use distilled water, but this is hard to find in the islands, so there are some commercial brands available in the chandleries.  Distilled water, naturally enough, is colorless.  This water, though, had a green tinge.  Hmmm.  I guess the manufacturer tinted it to make it “special” and worth the high price.  WRONG.  This was a 50:50 mixture of distilled water and engine coolant.  Putting it into the batteries was a BIG MISTAKE.  It ruined them.  Fix: Replace all four batteries.  These are big batteries, and expensive.

• Fresh water pump.  This provides pressure to all of our faucets.  It took longer than usual to prime, worked fine for a day, and then quit.  Fix:  Replacement.  Another significant expense.

• Dinghy Outboard Engine.  Wouldn’t start.  At all. This is a big problem, because your dinghy is your only way to get to shore.  We have oars, but rowing an inflatable boat against a strong wind is very slow and no fun.  At first we thought it was lack of spark to the spark plug.  No replacement parts for the ignition system could be found on the island, ordering them meant a two-week delivery time.  But we hired a guy to look at the engine, and he found that the problem was actually the float in the carburetor.  Fix:  Clean the carburetor.  Now we have spare ignition parts, in case we ever need them.

• No hot water.  We had had the engine coolant changed while we were gone.  We usually get our hot water from the engine cooling system (like you get heat your car by circulating the water from the radiator).  When the coolant was changed, we got an air bubble in the circulation system, and no flow to the hot water tank.  We needed help from the yard in diagnosing this, but it was an easy fix.

• Galley Faucet.  This broke right off, on day two after launching.  No idea why.  Fix:  Replace.  Fortunately, rather inexpensive.

We needed to stay very close to the boatyard, in Prickly Bay, until we had all of this taken care of, since we needed access to parts and advice.  So our plan to cruise the southern part of Grenada was abbreviated somewhat.   But Prickly Bay is very nice, and has lots of cruisers.

We did move over to Clark’s Court Bay for a few days.  This was a delightful spot.  We found a great little restaurant/bar at Whisper Cove Marina, and as a bonus they had their own little butcher shop with a great selection of high-quality and reasonably priced meats and sausages.

We finally left Grenada on January 26, finally got our sails up, and had a very boisterous sail to Carriacou.  We are currently in Clifton Harbor, on Union Island.