APRIL_____________________________________________________________2006

Saturday, April 1st

<Araksi> Ruud worked in the engine room today, preparing it for the saildrives, while I took the day off reading most of the time.

Sunday, April 2nd

<Araksi> We had guests today. Annick and Michael, and an American couple, Ruth and Buddy on Annapurna. We all drove to the next bay called La Sagesse and had lunch there in a very pleasant restaurant.

Tuesday, April 4th

<Araksi> I had a very pleasant hike today with Isabela to the adjacent bays. Joseph, a local Grenadian who was actually born here on the beach, guided us around.

Wednesday, April 5th

<Araksi> We disassembled the entire anchor gear today, starting first with the anchor, then the 100 meter chain the windlass and finally the chain roller. Some parts have to be cleaned, others painted, and yet others greased.

While a team worked on gelcoat repairs, we chased after the spare parts. It is difficult to find out about their whereabouts. Volvo is known for its very bad after sales service.

In the evening we had a cold beer at the bar.

Thursday, April 6th

<Araksi> Among the lots of work that has to be done we always find the time to gather at the bar with many pleasant people and have some nice conversations.

Friday, April 7th

<Araksi> I had a very pleasant walk with Tiny to La Sagesse. In the hotel restaurant we had lunch and enjoyed the beach and had some interesting conversations. Back in the yard we went for a swim to get the heat and the sweat off us.

Sunday, April 9th

<Araksi> We had a real sunday today: no work, just having fun, enjoying the marvels of nature. Isabella and George were at our boat at nine. We were waiting for Joseph who had promised to take us together with his brother for fishing and snorkeling, and show us the underwater "hot spots". But he didn't show up, so we decided to do the whole adventure on our own. We dinghied to the next reef on George's tender and anchored it in the middle of the reef and the bay. Ruud and George were equipped each with a spear gun, Isabella and I were ready for snorkeling. It was hardly ten minutes past when George had already speared a big lobster. Wow, I didn't even dare to dream of catching a lobster here! At the end we had five of them. I on the other hand was wondering if we could eat the sea urchins which were laying around on the bottom of the sea in a quite big quantity. I grabbed four of them hoping to have found yet another flavor for our menus. When we were back on shore after a swim of almost two hours I immediately went on to find out about this spiny creatures. I asked Bones, one of the employees on the yard, to show me how to open them. That was easy, he just took a spoon hit a crack half way through the shell and broke it open shaking out the greenish digestional rests which gave way to three four strips of orange colored eggs. And that is what you are suppose to it. They are delicious and taste sweetish, a little like oysters.

We had planned to eat the catch of the day on Garabes; four of us and we were also expecting Tiny and Michel to join us when they were back from their excursion of the isle. I decided we needed more of those delicious urchins, so I mobilized Isabela with their dinghy and went back to the spot. She waited in the dinghy while I collected 32 urchins.

In the evening we had dinner on Garabes.

Monday, April 10th

<Araksi> Early in the morning, before the sun rises over the mountain and sends its hot rays, I started preparing the small patches that have to be painted on the cross beam. I first sanded them then applied a grounding.

Other than the small bits of work we are trying to follow up the spare parts. We are starting to get nervous for friends will be arriving on the 25th and we certainly want to be in the water by then.

In the evening we had dinner with Tiny and Michel on Soleil.

Tuesday, April 11th

<Araksi> We took a break from the yard today to discover the Grenadian rainforest. Annick and Michael were waiting for us at the bus stop in St. George's. The drive through the narrow and serpentine like roads that wind up the mountains was magnificent. We stepped out the bus in the middle of no where which was the beginning of a track that leads through the rainforest and to the water falls. The scenery was first of a lush green vegetation, then of a narrow path that winded its way through a dense bamboo growth then giving way to a stony path in the mountains. The enormous destruction power of the hurricane Ivan that hit the island two years ago is obvious here. The huge trees that once covered the hills were lying around, some whipped off all together with their roots, others raging into the air bare, deprived of their lash green foliage. Witnessing the enormous power of nature we reluctantly thought of the approaching hurricane season and hoped that it won't be that destructive as the previous one.

Although it was a very pleasant hike, we did not really have the impression of being deep in the wilderness. The reason: those humans, they are everywhere! The closer we got to the falls, the more we encountered examples of our species. When we sighted the group we immediately associated it with the two huge cruising ships that were berthed along the long key in St. George's. Thankfully the group was getting ready to leave by the time we got there though. We installed ourselves along one of the ponds or small lakes that is fed by a ten meter waterfall. This and the heat were enough to seduce us for a refreshing swim in the cool waters. Here we let the mighty shower of the falls pound on our heads and backs, we then had a picnic on the rocks on shore. After a while it was time to start with our return trip.

On our walk back to the main road a peasant introduced us to the cinnamon tree; a slim long tree with heart shaped leafs. He cut a piece of the bark then cleaned the coarse part and handed a light green flat peace of thin wood to Annick and one peace to me. By the time it gets dry it will change its color to a light brown and will be rolled up to the odorous baton of cinnamon that we know and use in the kitchen.

Back in St. George's I bought fruits at the market, we then went for a drink in a café at the waterside. It was then time to go back to Garabes. Annick and Michael are at anchor in a bay very close to ours.

In the evening we were in the bar having a drink with Tiny and Michel, who are ready to leave tomorrow.

Wednesday, April 12th

<Ruud> People go, and people come. Michel and Tiny wave goodbye in the morning and Alvaro, a Spanish fisherman from Galicia comes in. He only speaks his native tongue and as I am the only one around that does speak some Spanish, I am asked by Jason, the yard owner and also a fisherman, to do the translation in what he thinks can be a promising new business affair: the export of Sardines to Europe. And so we talk for hours about fish quota, weight, transport and storage of this delicious little creatures. A whole new world for me.

Thursday, April 13th

<Ruud> We invite Alvaro for dinner. He is a funny guy but also very knowledgeable. Araksi, who started with a Spanish course just recently, is defending herself quite well and so we chat about his native Galicia and the countries of Latin America we all like to visit.

Friday, April 14th

<Araksi> Jenny, who lives on this island for at least seven years, had organized a girls-only day for today. She was at the yard at 0830 with her dogs. But before we left we wanted to witness Raindancer being lifted into the water. This was the day for the beautiful 68 feet wooden schooner which had been on the hard for more then a year. John and Kevin were happy but also anxious, for they couldn't predict how she would fare once in the water; would the wooden planks swell enough to close the tiny little crevices in the hull? In 24 hours they would know if she could be let floating.

Then we left at 0930 for the beach. Four of us, Jenny, Isabela, an American student of the veterinarian faculty in Grenada, and myself, were at one of the most beautiful beaches on the island. We spent almost five hours there just swimming, reading, and chatting.

Saturday - Monday April 15th to 17th

<Araksi> On Saturday John and Kevin were organizing a party on Raindancer for the joyful event of having her back in water and that she survived the 24 hours floating test. Her pumps are constantly draining water out of the boat but the quantity is getting lesser and lesser. Anyway, this had to be celebrated, so, along Jenny and Isabella, I also offered my help for preparing some goodies for the evening in the roomy galley. This was more fun than work.

In the evening a quite interesting bunch of people were gathered on the beautiful schooner, all having real good time. Michael and Annick had arrived this afternoon in our bay, so they as well were welcomed to join the fun.

<Ruud> We finalize some small repairs on Garabes and I assist Alvaro in buying the things he needs from the Chandlery and the canvas shop. Then we check the batteries he installed the day before; they are charging way too much. After an hour of testing, I found the culprit: a wrong parameter in the setup of the battery charger.

Sunday, Jason had invited Alvaro and me to come to his house and discuss his fish dreams even further. He would pick us up in the afternoon, but - not really a surprise - he didn't even show up. Work ethics à la Grenada, we are getting used to it.

On Monday we said goodbye to Alvaro; he is eager to leave the English speaking isles as soon as possible, and is heading to Venezuela.

Tuesday - Thursday, April 18th - 20th

<Ruud> Installation days are finally there, one after the other the two saildrives, the rope cutters and the propellers became new members of the Garabes family. The latter are looking impressive, I really hope they will give us the power we never had while motoring.

<Araksi> During the last couple of days we met even more people. First there were Val and Tim from Valkyrie, a Catana 58 that has been hauled out a few days ago for the hurricane season. They offered the content of their fridge to us, which was lots of meat and some vegetables. We had to process them quickly and share them with others, so Annick and Michael became common guests.

Then we met Ingo from Munich and Stephan from Stuttgart. Both are very interesting and pleasant two young men, who crossed the Atlantic together on Sawadi, a Hallberg Rassy, and cruised the Caribbean for five months.

Friday - Sunday, April 21th - 23th

<Ruud> Antifouling work was started by sanding the hull and putting on a primer and I already regretted to have given the work to the yard. If only the work wasn't that poisonous to do. The guys are just plain lazy or maybe still stoned from the marihuana almost every worker is smoking here.

Saturday the work continued, but all that was done in four hours was scratching off some barnacles; nobody seems to move here when the bosses are not in! Seeing my anger and disappointment, Michael pushed me to terminate the primer work myself in order not to loose even more time. So we painted the parts the guys had forgotten to ensure that the antifouling would stick well.

<Araksi> On Sunday I took Michael, Annick, Ingo and Stephan over the hills to La Sagesse. We had a swim there in the beautiful bay then walked back to the yard.

Monday, April 24th

<Ruud> The antifouling work was just a big disappointment; every time I had to stand next to the guys and telling them where to put an extra coating and pointing at patches they simply had forget to cover. Lazy bunch! At the end I had to run to Nicolas to complain, and only after he came to give them clean instructions, they - reluctantly - finished the job. Luckily, Bones, the guy in charge of the polishing, had a much more serious working mentality.

Tuesday, April 25th

<Araksi> The work on the polishing front is not finished so we will be on the hard yet another night. We mostly prepared the boat for the arrival of our friends today. Around 1600 the rental car company, Gabriel's, delivered the car and we were off towards St. Georges for provisioning. We were at the airport at 1900. The plane was on time. That moment of the first sight of arriving friends is somehow a magical instance; it was four years ago in Rome the last time we had seen Ed and Marcia. In one moment, you have feelings of joy, curiosity, hesitation, and in the other just a bond of togetherness, as if you were together all the time.

Once in Grenada Marina we stored the bags on Garabes and headed to the bar it was late around nine so they didn't have anything to eat but we nevertheless stayed there for couple of drinks. Nicki and Danny, the skippers of Madhatter were at the bar; were they having a discussion again or just talking while sipping on their drinks, I couldn't say. Anyway, we were not the only ones, and Norris, the barkeeper, was a friendly host telling us about the island and about the Caribbean way of life. We were all happy and enjoying the atmosphere.

Some small snacks and more tales on board concluded the day.

Wednesday, April 26th

<Araksi> Putting Garabes back in to her element was planned for the early afternoon. So we had enough time to discover the eastern coast of the island. After breakfast we drove along the southeastern coast up to Grenville, where we visited the market bought some vegetables and then threw a glance in the nutmeg factory. Each time I visit the markets in these islands that are blessed with fertile soil I am amazed at the scarcity of vegetables and fruits. Looking at the lash flora the stands should be bursting of these vitamin power plants but unfortunately the only things you see are some tired tomatoes, a pile of grayish different shaped roots, a hip of mangoes or bananas and that's it. The nutmeg factory didn't look much active either. The hurricane Ivan is the reason of the low output. Grenada, which was the second largest nutmeg producer after Indonesia, has lost 90 percent of its production capacity due to severe forestall damages during the hurricane two years ago. We were told that it takes five to nine years for a nutmeg tree to recover and bare fruits.

Heading further north we saw the sign of the chocolate factory! It is really amazing how lost-thought-things can pop up in very unexpected moments. The factory was one of the sites I most wanted to see in Grenada ever since I had read about it months ago. But since our arrival here we were told that it had closed up putting the blame on Ivan the Terrible. We nevertheless wanted to give it a try and got off the main road. The "factory" was a house with a welcoming odor of chocolate. Oh! that was a good sign, this sense told us that the place was active. Yes, indeed it was. Matt, an American sailor, had the idea to build here an organic chocolate factory. The product is a 71 percent high-octane bar that has an intensely rich, creamy flavor. Matt and his Grenadian partner are running the place now. We saw the production process, where they use handmade and vintage machinery that are mostly solar-powered.

It was around 13:00 when we got back to the ship yard. The polishing team had finished its work and Garabes was shining ready to dance on the water. We had lunch in the bar. Ed and Marcia had the chance to meet most of the sailors we got to know during the last couple of weeks. We also met Uschi and her husband. Uschi is the anchor person of Trans Ocean, the German sailors association, on Grenada. She is a character; she calls herself a witch, collects herbs in the forests, teaches German, and never lets her husband to finish a sentence. After lunch I took Marcia and Ed to a walk to The Plantation, the adjacent bungalow hotel complex, while Garabes was being prepared for the lift. Around 1600 she was in the water, and she stayed in the slip for the night.

We were on board in the evening with John and Kevin from Raindancer joining the four of us for dinner.

Later while we were doing the dishes we heard someone complaining and swearing. It was Nicki, who had a little too much of Lucie's rum punch at the bar and now was searching for her dinghy at the dock while her co-skipper Danny was nowhere to find. She didn't really know if she should be angry or anxious about the disappearance of these two important aids in her sailing routine. Ruud launched our dinghy took her on board and out they were in the darkness searching for a dinghy, and what... a drunken skipper? After a while they found an unmanned dinghy washed on a beach east of the large bay. Nicky broke the search action, and was, though somehow worried, back on Mathatter, leaving the night to solve the problems, if there was any.

Thursday, April 27th

<Araksi> While having breakfast lost-thought Danny appeared, telling us his version of the story. He was invited by Uschi the witch, and was at their place during the night. Ruud offered him a lift to Mathatter You could see the worry in his face for what to come once he was on board alone with Nicki. We continued our breakfast while making plans with Ed and Marcia how to shape the holidays . Plan A was to sail around the south coast of Grenada, giving us sails of only couple of miles a day. Plan B was to sail to the Tobago Cays and back. This one was the more exciting and interesting sail but also the more demanding one for Marcia, in terms of her seasickness. The consensus was to go for a sail today and see how Marcia fares, with the medication she was taking against this unpleasant feeling of being sick at sea. But before leaving Graig had still to check one of our fridges, and Louis had to control the tension on our rigging.

We left after lunch. The weather was fine with winds of around 15 kts. The seas were a little choppy. We were enjoying the sail and even Marcia could see the fun side of it. After a sail of two hours we were back in the anchorage. While motoring we could see how much faster Garabes reacts to her new propellers. While maneuvering her onto the mooring buoy we had to give much less throttle then we did with the old props.

It was a pleasant day and at dinner we decided to go for plan B.

Ingo and Stephan from Sawadi came for a drink after dinner. We all enjoyed the evening.

Friday, April 28th

<Araksi> We left the anchorage at 0945 after having breakfast and saying goodbye to those with whom we had been sharing boating ups and downs for many weeks. We sailed along the eastern coast of Grenada all the way up to Carriacou. We dropped the hook in Terryl bay around 1530. The winds were from E, S/E at a speed of around 15kts. We all enjoyed the sail, had laughter all the way and Marcia was doing well. During the trip we had three squalls crossing our way. Two of those had considerable winds in their surprise package. Seeing them from afar we reefed in the genoa while the main had already one reef from the start. Ed was steering Garabes upto speeds of around 12 kts.

In Terryl bay Marcia and I went into town. Well, into a two street town. Everything looked quite locked up, except the small supermarket. All we needed was bread and water, and that they had.

Saturday, April 29th

<Araksi> I am usually the first one to get up in the morning; I listen to the weather forecast at 0630 on the SSB radio at freq. 3855.0 LSB. This is a very detailed forecast transmitted by Eric, an radio amateur.

Ed gets up a little before 0700. After doing his exercises we have a nice swim while Marcia and Ruud start coming out of their bunks.

Before leaving the anchorage we had a nice breakfast and planed the sailing for today. Our destination would be Petite Martinique, which was 12 miles away. So around 1100 we hoisted the sails and were sailing again with light winds making good speed in the lee of Carriacou. There was the usual fishing ritual going on on board of Garabes; Ruud mounts his fishing gear then chooses the lure and glides it, with a prayer, into the blue waters. Will he be our "King of Fishers" today? We had sailed eight mils but no fish had snapped and Marcia was starting to tease Ruud, requesting the catch of the day. This was starting to get serious. Ruud needed help; the Gods could come to rescue or he could just divert the responsibility on Ed. So he spelled out the words: Ed, do something its your turn now! Two minutes later we had a fantastic tuna on board, just big enough for four big portions. You could see the smile on Ed's face; it was broader than the beam of Garabes, and it said: I claim the title!

We dropped the anchor in Petite Martinique a quarter of an hour later. While sailing in I knew we wouldn't stay here for the night; the anchorage at Petite St. Vincent, that is only half a mile away, had cast a spell over me. It looked so pretty with golden beaches lining the small island and with the translucent greenish colored sea surrounding it, that was being reflected on the white hulls of the boats anchored there. So after doing some shopping (drinks,especially beer, is quite cheap here) we left the anchorage and dropped the hook half a mile away in the clear waters of Petit St. Vincent (012° 32'N; 061° 23'W).

There was a little drawback though: the current was to strong to have a nice extended swim. Nevertheless it was paradise. For dinner we had the barbeque on for the tuna we had caught a couple of hours ago. It was a beautiful evening with a lot of fun.

Sunday, April 30th

<Araksi> The night was windy, and I was quite restless during the night. Around 0400 I saw - through the hatch - a motor boat darting by. I got up and saw it driving away, but five minute later I heard it again, now a slower throttle which indicated a slowing down close to our boat. This didn't sound good. There was not a single reason I could think of why a fisher boat should approach us so early in the morning other then some motives that only could harm us. I woke up Ruud and turned on the deck lights signaling the guy that we were awake and ready to take protective action. But by then the guy had already entered our boat trying to either hide behind the steering wheel or steel the contents of the bag that are mounted on the rail close the steps. I knocked on the cockpit door to chase him away but he did not react, by then Ruud was in rage and had grabbed the stick which he had constructed for such an occasion and run out to the guy hitting him and yelling: Get of the boat, I will kill you! Then we heard the intruder saying: I am a cop, I am a cop, while he fell in to the water. Ruud's blow had thrown him off balance, and he was swimming to his boat. After having some difficulties in starting the outboarder he disappeared in the night, leaving us four in the cockpit looking at each other with astonished, shocked, amazed and bewildered looks. This was strange, and it was funny and we had much to laugh afterwards. Many other sailors who had such experiences were not as lucky as we were!

After breakfast we lifted anchor and headed to the Tobago Cays, that were eight miles away from here. We had a very nice short sail. The approach to the reef that protects the Cays was not that difficult. The light was good for eyeball navigation, the weather was not rough and the channel was not that narrow as the guides suggested it to be. Once in the lagoon it was like magic. This is the scene of what all those Caribbean dreams are made of.

Ruud went to the reefs to swim between the fish and corals, while we enjoyed the sea and the entire dreamlike setting.