Cariacou to Grenada

We got up early in the morning and left the anchorage of Hillsborough at 7 o’clock. Julia and Carlos were still deep asleep when we sailed past Sandy Island and made our way to Grenada. The wind was really good and so we set sail as soon as we were passed the landmass of Carriacou. We had a really pleasant trip and arrived in Grenada, Prickley Bay at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Luckily we had cooked some nice lemon pie the evening before, which we enjoyed for lunch today. What a treat and a delight to indulge into something so yummy on high sea. When we arrive in Prickley Bay we recognize lots of yachts that we have seen or met on our way down the island and of course our friends from the Catamaran Calabra are here too. We do have a sundowner on the beach, what else could you wish for to end such peaceful beautiful day.

Sailing to Cariacou

There has been a depression we have been watching over the last few days and this morning it has changed to 80 % of becoming a Storm, so instead of making friends this morning we have decided to sail to Grenada. Since we have made this decision we have got two very disappointded little beings on the boat. The plan had been to go to Karate and Tennis with their new friend Luana. Well there is always another time, they might come to Grenada tomorrow, they want to wait another day.
Due to the depression that has already a chance of 70% to become a storm we have decided to sail to Grenada today. Julia and Carlos were most then upset, because they had been looking forward to play with Luana and to join her for her karate and tennis lesson. By midday we had checked out, the boat ready and organized to leave beautiful Bequia. The wind was in our favour and we had a very pleasant passage. We passed beautiful Islands like, Mustique, Canouan,Mayreau,and the Tobago Cays. Shame that we have this depression coming upon us, because I was hoping that we were able to visit each little island and indulge in there beautiful beaches and crystal clear water. Never mind I am hoping that we will come back up these island when we do our chartering and have the chance to visit then. When we passed Union Island, the last Island of the Grenadines we were enchanted by its serene long white beach. We were thinking of stopping here for the night, but decided to make our night stop at Carriacou. Probably 15 minutes later our engine stopped. Ups….we looked at each other and started to realize what the problem might be. We could have kicked ourselves more than once. We had run out of fuel! Oh my god…how stupid can one be??? Sven went down below to check but only to find out that we do not have a single drop of diesel left in our tanks. Luckily the wind was good enough to keep us going and we did a briefing of how to get into the bay of Hillsborough without engine and how to set the anchor and then we were praying and hoping that we would get some fuel to top up our JUCA. Why easy when we can do it the hard way. When we approached the anchorage there was a lot of shouting heard and sweat running down the forehead, but luckily our Captain knew what he was doing, which his crew certainly did not and we managed to go into the bay and let the anchor down where we wanted it to be. Carriacou does not belong to the Grenadines anymore and is part of Grenada, so we had to check in, but unfortunately we had a few things against us, it was Saturday, after usual business hours as well as Regatta weekend. No chance to check in, however we needed to go on land to get fuel. We found a yacht that borrowed us some jerry tanks, so off we went. We had five 20 liter tanks and luckily we the petrol station was not too far to walk. Darkness was approaching; we were tense, hungry and tired…the best conditions to do this trip twice. 200 liter of diesel later I managed to make us some dinner, something simple of course, Spaghetti Bolognese. I don’t know how I managed to bake some lemon pudding and some lemon cookies, but I suppose I had promised and pinky never breaks a promise. I was glad when I was lying in bed and trying to let go of some of the step that lead us into the chaos. Looking back it is amazing to trace back the steps and decisions that bring you into an alley where you don’t want to be. However it does not help to look back and beat ourselves up about that…this is one of the stepping stones that we learn from and next time round we would fuel up in Bequia where the fuel was cheaper and brought to your yacht! It certainly has brought our family closer together once more; Carlos, Julia and I gained more knowledge of how to sail. I am very proud of Sven and always admired his knowledge about sailing and engines. I am very proud and in love with my family and my husband.

We are exploring Bequia today

Today we went on land and we took our classroom outside the boat. We considered to take a Car or a scooter, but for both you have to buy a driver license first to be able to drive and secondly is the island not that big, so we organized a taxi for transportation instead. We negotiated the price with the driver and then we hopped into the back of his vehicle and off we went. Our first destination was the old Hegg Turtle Sanctuary located in the rugged northeastern part of the island. The drive was beautiful and interesting and took us to a spot where a Bequian by the name of Orton G. Brother Kind has spend most of each day since august 1995 to look after the amazing and end

angered Hawksbill turtles. There we learned why the turtle are near extinction, what they do to protect them and a few other interesting things about the turtles and their habits and environment. Thereafter we went to the Firefly Plantation where we did a tour through their amazing orchard. We learned something about huge caterpillars that strip down the frangipani trees, and then we had a stroll through their orchard that included a vast variety of fruits. We were lucky enough to have a taste of fresh Coconuts from the tree, Mangoes, Guavas, Limes, we sucked on Sugar Cane and lots more. By the end of the tour our backpack was filled with limes, mangoes, fresh lemon grass, basil, fresh mint and thyme. What a wonderful experience and I bet it will be hard to find this taste again if we ever need to buy it in a normal supermarket again in Europe or even New Zealand. We also met a very nice family from Germany that lives in Puerto Rico. They boys were the same age and they zoomed around the orchard like there was no tomorrow. After that we went back to the boat and needed a rest, because we tried the Mohito in the restaurant with their fresh mint, but it made us a bit tipsy for the afternoon. Julia and Carlos went to play with their new friend Luana from the SV “Shaitan”…..just what we need a bit of rest! In the afternoon we joined Caroline and Urs from Switzerland for a sundowner on their boat SV “Petit Fleur”.

Beautiful Bequia

Bequia has been isolated enough to remain relatively unspoilt in comparison to the rest of the Caribbean Islands. Old and new traditions are embracing each other nicely and next to the internet Café you see Boats being built on the beach in the shade of palm trees. Bequians are proud people, descendants of settlers who came from Northern America on whaling boats, from farms in Scotland, from France as freebooters and from Africa. While Sven checked in this morning, we got organized with our school. After Sven successfully checked in we went all together on land to explore the little town of Port Elisabeth. It is a sleepy little town with a great walkway right on the water’s edge, very nice. We have lunch at the Fig Tree before heading back to the boat to get our swimming gear to explore the beach. The beach is amazing with the white clean beach; it also has got some caves and rocks where we do some climbing and jumping into the water….absolutely fantastic fun. Carlos and Julia meet a little girl with the name Luana, she is 9 and has been living on the boat all her live. She is fun to be around and good company for Julia and Carlos.

We are sailing to Bequia today

An hour later than planned we left St. Lucia at 6 o’clock in the morning. The weather was good and the wind was predicted at 10 to 12 knots easterly. Just as we passed Castries we saw this huge wall of rain and wind coming behind us. It came fast and furious! By the time we came out of the shelter of St. Lucia we had 40 knots from south east and heavy rain and squalls. The black front covered the full horizon with thunder and 35 knots plus winds and stayed with us for a bit over two hours. The kids and I had to be mainly down below and Sven was standing his ground at the helm. After a long 10 hours of fighting the weather, we were rewarded for our effort. Bequia greeted us with sunshine and an impressive sunset. Admiralty Bay where we are anchored now is picturesque and gives us a very peaceful impression at first sight. We are now anchored right in front of a white beach with a backdrop of palm trees, as seen in most pictures and movies. We were happy with our safe anchorage and settled down with a yummy homemade burger and a family movie for the night.
There is something else that I would like to share before closing my lines today. On our trip over Sven decided to wear a rain jacket to protect him from the rain and uncomfortable dampness. The air temperature had probably dropped to 28 degree. By that time even the kids decided to put on a jacket, so when we arrived in Bequia Carlos first question was if it was winter here. I thought that was really funny, what would they say if we would travel to Germany or going back home to New Zealand?

Meeting friends in Castries

When we came home last night I found a message that our friends Kim and Kerry from Trellis Bay are in St. Lucia. What a super great surprise. We managed to get hold of them the next morning and we arranged to meet for an early lunch in Castries. We hadn't seem them since we had left Trellis Bay in May so we were really looking forward to seeing them again and to catch up on news from the Trellis Bay community. Kerry is a pilot and even though him and Kim have been on holiday in Anegada he got a job to fly some laywers to St. Lucia for a couple of days. What a great opportunity to combine job and pleasure together. We had lunch in our favourite little restaurant near the vegie market and then went for a little walk to the park and the church, before it was time for us to depart again. Kerry took home a case of Piton Beer as a souvenir and I gave Kim a cocoa stick. It was short but very sweet and we really enjoyed their company once more. The rest of the day we were busy with planning to sail further down south. Sven checked out while me and the children went shopping, you never know when the next opportunies for reasonable shopping will be.

Jazz night at Jambe De Bois

We are getting ready to leave St. Lucia. Things getting stored away and the boat gets a good clean. We made some new friends from the Catamaran “YUMYUM”, Valerie and Tor. Valerie is from Switzerland and Tor from Norway, a very attractive and interesting couple and I believe we will create a few nice memories with them. Today is Georges from SV “Rosanante” birthday and we all decided to meet for the Jazz night at Jambe de Bois to join him there for his birthday. It was a very great night, with great company, great music and a nice meal. Luckily it got not too late and we were home at a decent time.

The truth about the Tooth Fairy

After a very late night last night we took things very easy this morning. We baked some white chocolate chips cookies and our plan was to take the bus to Dennery to eat there at the local fish festival in the afternoon. Ryan came over and wanted to join us on the trip, but somehow we were really comfortable talking about all sorts of staff and the beer and the white chocolate cookies were so delicious that we did not feel the urgent need to drive over to Dennery and therefore stayed home and enjoyed our own company and Ryan taught Julia and Carlos a few new strategies in Chess. Carlos had lost his tooth a couple of days ago and every night he had put his tooth underneath the pillow hopeful that the toothfairy would come and leave a couple of dollars underneath his pillow and return his tooth back to the stars into the universe. Somehow the toothfairy did not make it the first night and even not the second night. He was very dissapointed and after I failed to find another excuse why she had not turned up the third night. He wanted to know the truth about the tooth fairy. He had already given up to believe in Santa Claus, but the toothfairy was until now still quite real. I looked into his eyes and decided to tell them that I have been the tooth fairy and that I have been collecting their teeth over the years and that I have kept all theirs teeth in a little wooden box. Their eyes widened with a big smile and they wanted to see the evidence to fully believe me. It was so funny to see their surprise when I came up with the evidence and how excited they were to see all their teeth that they have lost over the years. Julia has lost 18 and Carlos has lost 12.....so now Carlos next concern was that he won't be able to make any more money by loosing his teeth!!!!! He is so funny and smart....however I suggested that I could still give him a couple of dollars for each tooth that he looses and he had a big smile on his face. However it seems to me that my little kids are growing up and that there will be no more secrets and magic about Santa Claus and the tooth fairy...so now is the time to find other magic and things to wonder about.

Black sheeps are everywhere

So far we had a pretty good taste of St. Lucia, but today a bitter taste was added to it. Yesterday we saw a kayaks drifting past our JUCA, so we saved it and found out that it belonged to one of the local fishers. As it was pretty late we decided to return it the next day. Today Sven went to the beach and returned it to some locals that were swimming at the beach and they promised to return it to the owner. Half an hour later we saw a few kids coming towards our JUCA on that returned kayaka and we thought they just come to say thank you or just to have a noisy. We talked to them briefly and then went into the marina to do some shopping. In the meantime our friends from Sandy Dreams went pass our yacht and saw them on our JUCA. they quickly disappeared and when they were approached the declared that we had paid them to look after our Yacht while we are gone. Bullshit! When we got back from our shopping trip we got told what happened and went over to the beach and had a talk to the kids that this is an absolute no no! Unfortunately we had not checked if something went missing. When we got back to our Yacht we discovered that our snorkeling mask had gone walking as well as Julias Fin. Bastards!Sven went over there to retrieve our staff, but of course no one knew anything and even the police was not very helpful at all. We were really pissed off all evening and tried to let it go and not to let it get to us too much.....there are black sheeps everywhere that show no respect for other peoples property. This was our second time that we got boarded by strangers, but the first time that something got missing. We won't be worrying to much and will put it down as experience and our lesson to not leave anything lying around when we are not on the Yacht.