The heat here seems to be getting
worse as we near the end of the wet season.
We did a few last minute chores on boat, filled water tank and some last
minutes painting. Then we got put back
in the water on Oct 8. It felt great to
be floating again but as we went out in the anchorage we found it to be very
full and all the moorings were being used.
Tryed anchored a couple of time near outer edges but could not get
anchor to hold, This area is known for
bad holding, as it has been dredged.
Finally we decided to motor over to Scotland bay 2 miles away. We spent
a nice night there though there is lots of 30 second wind gusts that come down
on anchorage every few minutes.
Early next morning we motored
back to Chagaramus to clear customs and do a last load of laundry and get a
couple of grocery items, and say some goodbyes to friends. Again we had trouble anchoring but then the
Mojombos found a buoy that had just emtyed and Gary held it for us with his
dinghy will we got our anchor up and motored over to it. That is better as we could now both go
ashore.
We decided we would leave about
4pm in afternoon to do the 80 miles to Grenada as an overnight sail. Yesterday we heard another story of a robbery by some
Venezualan pirates in a small pirogue that stopped a yacht on there way
to Bonaire. This was apparently just
last week, the yacht went 40 miles North and then started to turn west and
I believe this is went they were stopped
by armed men in a small boat. So we
plotted a course that took us a bit further East of normal route to Granada and
several miles to the East of the Hibiscus oil rig.
We left right on schedule and
had the current with us as we motored out of the pass and leaving Trinidad
behind. There was no wind and we motored
for a bit more than a hour and then the wind started, a few minutes later
we shut off the engine and were sailing along nicely. the wind picked up a bit more
and we but 2 reefs in main and then had then rolled the genoa half way in. Then we never touched the sails again all
the way to Granada, perfect.
After dark we saw unusually bright
phosphorescence in the sea. The white caps
were brilliant in the darkness and
helped make for a beautiful night. The
sky was clear and a quarter moon out and
we were sailing along briskly in a
somewhat rough sea with the wind just a tad forward of beam. The course was a bit better as we turned a
couple of degrees after passing the Hibiscus oil field rig. There was a number of fish boats and ships
visible on the radar. We kept our
lights off until we were about 15 miles from Granada, which means you have to
keep a better watch. We scanned with the
radar every 20 minutes or so and we lucked out that we never had to adjust
course to avoid a boat, they just seemed
to all be a mile or 2 either side of our course. The passage turned into the best passage we
have had in the Caribbean.
The wind died when we were about
3 or 4 miles from Granada and came around to on the nose. The sun was also just coming up and we motored
the last few miles into St Georges harbor on the SE cornor of Granada. We dropped anchor just before 8am in about 22
ft of water and the it was so clear we could see the anchor on the bottom.
We put our new dinghy in the
water to goto customs and immigration.
Just before we left Trinidad our new dinghy had arrived.
I was fed up with deflatables so bought a porta- bote which is made of
some kind of thick hi teck plastic and folds up so that it is about the size of
a surfboard. The new dinghy works great,
it is a bit faster that our old inflatable with the 5hp engine. Its 10ft long
and very roomy.
Info
-Scotland bay 2 miles from Chagaramas,
Trinidad anchored in 51 ft at 10 42.03N
61 39.88W. This is not the best
spot but the inner bay was full of boats.
-See old blog posts for previous visit to Grenada
earlier this year. Now anchored in 21 ft
at 12 02.55N 61 45.46W
water nice and clear
