Tyrrel Bay, Carriacou
12.27.355N
61.29.317W

Today was the big day! Orpailleur was being returned to the water. After we had done our morning chores, we dinghied in and found Gerry waiting on the dock with papers in hand ready to check out. He had arranged for a ride over to Hillsborough mid-morning. Dale handed him the trash that needed to be tossed and zipped back to the Palace for our papers. I joined Nicky in the air conditioned chalet and noodled with the idea of what it would take to bring the “yacht club” to being a viable business. When the guys returned from checking us out of customs, they joined me in toying with the idea, there is so much wasted potential here. When our stomachs started growling, we came back to reality and walked down the beach to the pizza café for lunch.

Dale and I returned to the Palace and a bit later, John (our Trini neighbor) came by to invite all of us over to their boat this evening.

At 3 pm, we headed back in and watched as Orpailleur was moved from where it had rested and been painted over the last few days to the area where Gerry could pressure clean the topsides. He figured that cleaning the boat with recycled water was better than leaving all of the blue dust in every crevice.

Orpailleur was lowered into the water and after checking that nothing was leaking, she was moved forward and secured to the slip. I grabbed their dink and towed it to them as Dale helped Gerry reattach the back stay. They moved their main sail (which Gerry and Dale had picked up from the sail loft on their way back from Hillsborough) from the dock to the boat, slipped her lines and cautiously crept back out into the harbor around the reefs that lie in front of the haul out entrance.

We had just enough time to prepare something to take over to Panacea (John & Patty’s boat), so I borrowed a couple of onions from Nicky and made an appetizer of brie with caramelized onions and dried cranberries.

We picked up Gerry & Nicky and joined John & Patty on Panacea and met Linda & Peter off Eclipse. Panacea is a 43’ Endeavor which had a huge cockpit perfect for entertaining. We talked about anything and everything but mostly about our Trini connection and places that we’ve seen or want to see.

At one point, we watched a 50’ foot boat come in long after dark and head straight for the reef in front of the haul out facility. I was all for alerting them and thank heavens, Patty tried to alert them on the radio by just announcing that the boat entering Tyrrel Bay was about to run aground. A few seconds later, they made an abrupt turn and turned away from it only to keep moving forward further and further into the anchorage. At one point, we saw them turn around and head back the way they had come and possibly run aground a few yards from where they had originally been warned about. They backed away and we ended up losing our attention on them. My impression was that they were trying to tie up to the haul out pier which is hard enough to navigate in the daylight. I have no idea where they ended up. Hopefully, somewhere safe.

By 7:30, Dale was moving us towards the dinghy, in spite of the fact that we kept coming up with more and more things we wanted to talk about. However, we and Orpailleur’s crew were back on our respective boats by 8pm so that we could run our gensets without fear of keeping the entire anchorage awake too late.

We promised to help Gerry & Nicky reattach their main sail in the morning about 7am, so that we can leave for Grenada by 8am. If we can provision tomorrow afternoon (doubtful considering its Easter weekend) we’ll make our move to Los Testigos tomorrow night. If we have to wait until Saturday to provision, we’ll transit Saturday night.

Although I’ll continue to write daily, the outer islands of Venezuela are remote and I’ve not heard that there is WiFi available. This means that we’ll not be able to post anything after Grenada, until we get to Bonaire, and I'm not sure what we'll find in Grenada as we‘re going somewhere new. Until the next time, wish us well.