8 January 2012 Prickly Bay, Grenada
I was aching all over from the exercising yesterday, so I gave it a miss today. It’s Sunday so we declared today a rest day. I caught up on our email and sorted out some posts for our website.
My brother, Andy and his family are coming out to see us in Antigua in the middle of February, so I spent some time buying a few things on the Internet that they can bring out with them.
When we lived on Glencora, our previous boat, Glenys had started to write a cookbook. After being asked by Tash and Brett for some recipes, she’s decided that she wants to publish a cookbook on our web site, so I spent three hours sorting out the layout of her web pages and she spent a couple of hours getting started. Watch this space...
9 January 2012 Prickly Bay, Grenada
I was very cold last night with only a single, light sheet to cover me. The temperature in the morning was 26°C, which is very warm in UK terms, so I think that I must be getting old. Glenys has dug out a duvet cover which is heavier and double thickness for me, so I hope that I’ll be warmer tonight.
I checked up on the progress of "Toots" across the Atlantic and found that Graeme won't be here for another five days. We need to get up to Antigua to meet Andy so we’ve decided that we can’t wait and will leave in two days’ time. It’s a shame that we won’t see Graeme and Chris, but our paths may cross again in the future.
We’ve decided to do three consecutive day sails and head straight to St Lucia only stopping overnight in a couple of places. We’ll rest in Rodney Bay for a couple of days and then sail to Martinique to stock up on food and booze. For the remaining three weeks, we’ll be able to take our time and see the islands that we’ve not seen this time around.
We went to Spiceland Mall to do some shopping, picked up our cooking gas bottle and retired onto Alba for lunch. In the afternoon, I changed the filters on the watermaker and caught up on some administration while we still have an Internet connection.
10 January 2012 Prickly Bay to Hog Island, Grenada
I was much more comfortable last night wrapped up in my duvet cover. Goodness knows what I’m going to be like when we get up to the more temperate climate of the east coast of the USA later this year.
From eight o’clock, I watched the customs building with binoculars until I could see some activity. They’re supposed to be open at eight o’clock, but it wasn’t until quarter to nine that I ventured in. The older customs guy was there, but when I said that I wanted to clear out, he shook his head sadly and told me that the immigration guy was somewhere else and he didn’t know when he would turn up. Perhaps I could come back this afternoon?
Seething, I returned to the boat to wait. I did some mindless stuff and wrote an article for our web site about a hike in Mayreau. At eleven o’clock, I risked going in and found there were now two immigration officers – they obviously go around in packs. I cleared us out to go to Martinique.
We motored around to Mount Hartman Bay and went into the marina to get fuel. The marina staff were excited about the pending arrival of “Hemisphere”, which is apparently the largest catamaran in the world. We decided to have lunch alongside the fuel dock and watch the fun and games when this huge vessel came alongside. Twenty minutes later, I was bored of waiting, so we cast off and started to motor around to Hog Island. On the way, we met “Hemisphere”, who wisely decided to wait for us to come through the narrow channel between two reefs before continuing. Fame at last! I pissed off the skipper of the largest catamaran in the world.
Hog Island was pleasant; we had an early night in preparation for four days of bashing to windward.
11 January 2012 Prickly Bay to Tyrell Bay, Carriacou
The alarm went off at half past six. Funny how an alarm clock affects me – I normally get up at seven o’clock, so you wouldn’t think that waking up 30 minutes earlier would be such a hardship. I groaned and turned over, allowing Glenys to get up first.
As we went past Prickly Bay, I realised that this is the real start of our circumnavigation of the world. If we’re lucky enough to finish our planned voyage, we’ll be back here in five or six years’ time. It’s all about karma – “what will be, will be”. Prickly Bay was our landfall after crossing the Atlantic in 1993; Prickly Bay is where we bought Alba, and we’re now heading for pastures new. I wonder whether we’ll be back here?
There was very little wind, so we motored along the south coast and up the windward side of Grenada. At the north end of the island, we started to sail on a roughly north tack, but the current was pushing us west and the 6-9 foot waves from the north were stopping us dead in the water. I didn’t handle it very well and couldn’t decide how much sail to have out. After an hour of slowly sailing in the wrong direction, I gave up and we motor sailed for the next four hours, finally motoring dead upwind into Tyrell Bay.
We sailed 40 miles today, but we were hoping to get another ten miles further to Chatham Bay, so I’ve decided that I’m rubbish at sailing upwind and need to sort out Alba’s sail plan better. I’ve warned Glenys that I’m going to experiment tomorrow, so she should be prepared to have some exciting moments…
It looks like we’ll stop in Bequia tomorrow night, which is another 40 mile bash to windward. We had another early night.
12 January 2012 Tyrell Bay to Admiralty Bay, Bequia
Another half past six alarm and off at quarter past seven. We motored around the corner past Hillsborough and then sailed over to Union, motoring the last few miles because it‘s dead upwind and current. Then we sailed past Mayreau and on towards Bequia.
I played around with the sails and experimented with the amount of reef and found that I can get over six knots going upwind, but the boat is heeled over quite drastically (30-40°) with the downwind toe rail in the water some of the time. I can slow down to five knots by reefing the main and the jib and the amount of heel is more pleasant, but we’re then more easily stopped when we crash into steep waves.
We spent most of the trip beating along at six knots, which would be very wearing for more than a few hours. Glenys made a sandwich for lunch and said that it would be almost impossible to cook when we’re bashing to windward at that speed, so we’d have to heave-to for dinner if we were unfortunate enough to have to do this on a long passage. I feel much better about sailing upwind now.
We caught a nice barracuda a few miles outside Bequia. Fish for dinner again - I’m starting to crave minced beef. We anchored off Princess Margaret beach at four o'clock making it another eight hours of bashing to windward. Tomorrow should be easier because we’re only planning to go 15 miles to Cumberland Bay.