St. Georges, Grenada
12.02.630N
61.44.898W

About 9 this morning, the two crews of Orpailleur and Gypsy Palace dinked over to the dock in front of the supermarket and began our search of the aisles to re-provision. I found just about everything I had on my list and Nicky put a pretty good dent in hers. Although she did have to make a second trip a couple of hours later for those items she forgot to pick up.

We spent the morning putting everything away, hauling the trash to shore, then finally securing the boat for the overnight passage. About 3pm, we hoisted our anchor and made our way back out to the anchorage in front of the lagoon. We dropped it again in deep sand and it immediately grabbed a firm hold on the bottom.

Orpailleur stopped at the marina dock to fill up with water and pick up some gas for their dinghy and then came outside. Gerry wanted to hoist the main sail that they had put back on yesterday to make sure that everything was as it should be before taking off. Apparently it was, as they soon joined us in dropping their anchor in the sand. Scott Free came out last and took a position slightly behind us. We all tried to take naps, but of course, when you’re trying to take a nap, it won’t happen. So let’s just say we tried to rest for the remainder of the day.

About 7pm. Dale started getting fidgety. He checked to make sure our running lights were working, then started carting our passage making safety gear topside. He checked and rechecked various hatches and switches. He reread the cruising guide regarding the suggested route. At a quarter to 8, Gerry radioed to go over the same last minute details. I was wondering which one of them would give in first. Scott Free joined in the discussion and at 8pm, on the dot, we unfurled our main sail and lifted our anchor.

We eased out of the anchorage and made our way around the southern coast of Grenada. We unfurled our jib to the first reefing point and turned off the engine. There was hardly any difference. We were still making progress at about 6 kts. After we passed the tip of Grenada and were more exposed to the trade winds and the northwesterly current, we scooted along with speeds that reached above the 9kts range. This was pretty cool, except that at one point it was so dark, we couldn’t tell if an approaching light was an airplane on final approach to the airport or a boat trying to make landfall after dark. It was an airplane. About this time, I noticed we were darker than usual; our running light had failed. This has occurred before and usually one of us makes our way to the bow and wiggles the connection a little and its good for the rest of the night. Tonight when Dale made his way forward and tried to wiggle the connection, he ended up with a broken bulb in his hand. Oops! Good thing we had a few spares. A couple of more trips back and forth and we were back in business.

It was a great sail. It was even better when the ¾ moon rose later and we could see more of our surroundings. We’re not positive, we need to check with the Coopers to make sure, but we thought we saw the Southern Cross quite late. We know that it can be seen about this time of year from this latitude but since we’re not as familiar with that constellation as we are with the ones in the northern hemisphere, we’ll ask someone who should know. Tomorrow.

Photo from the camera of Orpailleur.

St. Georges, Grenada
12.02.630N
61.44.898W

Dear Family and Friends, I've gone back and added some pictures to the posts dated 3/25/2007 to date. Enjoy!

What a great sail!!

The wind was blowing too strongly to put Gerry & Nicky’s main sail back on so they elected to just use the jib and motorsail the few hours to Grenada. It was the first time in a long while that the Palace flew in first. We saw 9kts when we were surfing at one point and several times we were traveling at our hull speed of 8.5 kts.

When we crossed Kick ‘em Jenny, the underwater volcano, we tossed in some shredded medical records Dale still gets from time to time. Its our favorite place to dump confidential trash, figuring that 2000-3000’ deep and miles from shore is the best place to do it.

Of course, we ran into the 30-32kts coming around and off the mountains as we neared the island and then about half way down the leeward side, we had to turn on the engine as we had lost all wind. Still, we made it in by 1pm, sailed around the Queen Mary II, and anchored on the outside the lagoon in deep sand.

We hailed Scott Free, who were anchored inside the lagoon to let them know that we had made it and were surprised that they were staying an extra day to complete some final repairs to their prop shaft and would be leaving tomorrow night when we planned to. They told us that although the supermarkets were closed today, they were scheduled to be open tomorrow morning. Great news! We’d stick to our original plans.

Orpailleur approached not too long after that and radioed to let us know that they needed to take on water and would be going into the lagoon with the hopes that they could put their main sail on in the more protected area. So we joined the crowd. Well, sort of.

When we entered the lagoon, we chose a spot between Scott Free and Orpailleur to drop the hook. When we settled back, we had great spacing among all of the boats around us. But when we backed down, nothing was holding us. So, up it came. We moved forward a bit more and although this time it appeared to have grabbed, we settled into a swing that took us too close to another boat and moved again.

Our next attempt found us on the far side of Orpailleur and next to a 65’ boat. This time, Heather on Scott Free radioed us and said that the bottom was soft mud and to let it sink in for a while before trying to back down on it. This we did and seemed to settle with good spacing. So Dale dropped the dinghy and went over to help Gerry & Nicky reattach their main sail. As they were doing this, the wind shifted and the 65’ boat swung in front of us with only a few feet to spare. Too close!

Dale had only stepped into the dinghy to return when I had the Palace up and running. He was exasperated with having to move constantly but didn’t like the arrangement any more than I did. We saw two more places that we could try before throwing in the towel and heading back out. One was to the back of the pack that had plenty of room. Thank heavens this one worked. We dropped the hook and plenty of chain, then sat the rest of the afternoon letting it sink in. When the wind picked up, we didn’t move. Finally!

Later, we all gathered on Scott Free before heading over to the marina for dinner and discussion of our transit plans. We’d all received the same information from various cruisers that we could “Q” flag it through the northern, outer most islands of Venezuela without having to take a detour to the southern island of Margarita. This was more to our liking as we didn’t want to get that close to the mainland.

So after our provisioning tomorrow morning and uploading pictures to our past posts, we’ll move back outside to make a evening departure.