Carriacou

On Thursday morning we said good by to Jon G. and Betsy K. and raised anchor in Prickly Bay Grenada. Jon and Betsy had joined us almost a week earlier in St. Croix and had been great shipmates for that exciting passage. Further, never before has Heron had such fantastic meals. Jon and his brother Dan love to cook good food at home and on boats.  Jon cooked a few wow meals on a few Marion-to-Bermuda Races on Heron, but this week was over-the top. He showed up from the airport with entrees that he had partially prepared at home. We ate incredible crab cakes, chicken, turkey breasts, steak, and other meals that I can’t recall --all glutin free to cater to Emily's diet. We are still finding amazing stuff in the freezer.

So we started our return trip north. OK, so it was a mere 29 nm of the 600 left until we get back to St. John, but it was a start. We motor-sailed in light air up the west (leeward) coast, passing all the bays that we visited by taxi. Rain clouds sat over the mountainous island and occasionally we’d get a blast of wind. As Chip J., mentioned about his visit, you can get wind from opposite directions within a short distance when in the lee of these islands. The trades come over the tops, bend around the ends, and funnel down the valleys. So you read the water to see what’s coming.

To get to Tyrrel Bay, Carriacou, we had to cross the open passages north of Grenada. There is an exclusion zone around the active underwater volcano called Kick ‘Em Jenny, and we were trying to get to windward and up-current. So the cruise guide recommend beating east along the north coast before easing off to cross the passage. After seeing nasty conditions there on the way down from St. Croix, I was expecting double-reef conditions. Nope. The wind actually became lighter when we rounded the headland. I’m not complaining, but it reinforces what I’ve experienced so far –expect the unexpected.

Approaching The Sisters

We squeezed between “The Sisters” and Ronde Island, and hugged Diamond Rock before entering the second open passage to Carriacou. Frigate birds soared from the vertical cliffs and ocean swell crashed on the faces of these immense rocks. We sailed up into Tyrrel Bay and ate dinner on Freestyle -- fresh sushi and grilled skipjack tuna that they had caught only an hour earlier. You can’t get any fresher than that. I told you I was going to stick close to Don for some very good reasons!

The "boat boys" were great.  This was the first harbor where we encounter them.  "20 EC" is our standing joke.  Whatever you want.... 20 EC.  Ice, lobster, fish, limes, wine, bread.... Whatevuh you want mahn.  That is twenty Eastern Caribbean dollars, that exchange to 2.6 EC dollars per US dollar.  They take either dollar.
I counted boats from ten different countries within a short distance of us.  Most of the boats were from Europe.  A few were from Canada and the U.S..  It was very cool to see all the different styles--from a Brit single-handing a C&C29 to a Swedish family partying it up on their large Swan.  Only one boat out of a few dozen appeared to be a charter boat.

On Friday we took a taxi tour all over the small island. Carriacou is very different than Grenada. We were getting just a glimpse, but it seemed hotter, drier, less developed, more lazy, less tropical and less dramatic. There was less buzz and more people just seemed to be hanging out. The area called Windward was where they make traditional wooden sailing and motor craft on the beach. There was a power sander and a chain saw, but there was also an axe and an adze to fashion the beefy white oak ribs and keel. The fellow was working on his fifteenth hull (as I recall), building out the lines from five carefully measured ribs. He could finish the hull in as short as 1.5 months if gets the help of his buddies, working as a team. The process is the kernel of a very close seaside community and quite a lovely lifestyle.

The Carriacou car-nee-vahl was starting Friday night, and the steel band music from the beach went late into the night. It was ethereal to hear the surf on the reef and the wind-carried music under the star-filled night. The hatches stayed open all night –the very first night that we didn’t have a tropical downpour. But on Saturday morning, off we went. We checked out in Hillsborough and headed to Clifton Harbor, Union Island in the Grenadines. We were anxious to make tracks, so we opted not to stick around for the next event –the crowning of the island queen.