Another 4 months has gone by ( and nothing much has changed!).

Another 4 months on and we’re still here in gorgeous Grenada. We’ve been without charters for 7 months now so are having to watch our pennies and are really hoping that this doesn’t further delay us starting our “round the world” trip. Despite all that, we are totally spoiled being “stuck” here with friends around us whose company we thoroughly enjoy.

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Having been COVID free here for a few months, Grenada has had several new cases that were bought in on International flights that have recently resumed. Today, there are 5 active cases giving a total of 32 cases since March, with no fatalities. Whilst the islands need to start welcoming visitors to their shores again to bring in the much needed cash, they are understandably being very cautious, enforcing entry protocols and several days quarantine, whilst also trying to encourage holiday makers to come to The Spice Isle and sister islands. The Ministry of Health and their teams are doing a great job at screening and keeping potential spread under control and thankfully, the cases that we have now, have been detected before the end of the mandatory quarantine time. However, humans being humans, some will always break the rules and 3 people so far have ignored the protocols and have gone out visiting friends/family/parties and restaurants before getting their positive results back. This has highlighted the importance of good hygiene, mask wearing, social distancing and record keeping for track and trace purposes. Fingers crossed, there is no community spread due to the foolishness of the latest cases – a retired doctor and his wife from the US with a house here who, in 2 days, ate out not just once, but 4 times at 4 different establishments! 38 people are now in quarantine because of their selfishness and are awaiting results of preliminary tests.

Just as we thought 2020 couldn’t get any more worrying, this years hurricane season has set the record as busiest Atlantic hurricane season since records began – and it’s not quite over yet. There have been 29 Tropical Storms ( so many that the Greek alphabet had to be used to name them for just the second time) with 12 of these reaching Hurricane strength ( 5 of them category 3 or above). This is only the second time we have been in the region for the whole of the hurricane season and we have obviously been watching the weather sites very closely and luckily, we have mostly been out of harms way down here. However, in July ( just after out last blog entry) Tropical Storm Gonzalo formed and was coming in low. We watched and waited as it drew closer to the Caribbean – with every update the predicted direction seemed to change…..was it going to come South, or suddenly veer North as is the norm ( mostly ) as systems approach? We were at that time in the very full anchorage of Tyrell Bay, Carriacou which has Mangroves to the North of the bay. The mangroves are part of a Marine Park with no boats other than dinghies allowed to enter. However, if a storm/hurricane is due to hit, yachts are permitted to go in and tie up to the trees in the protected waters. We went in on the dinghy a couple of times to check out first of all if we could get right in as it is very shallow in places, but also to find a good spot to tie up. We were going to leave it a little longer before heading in there with Imagination as it became more likely that we were going to feel the effects of Gonzalo, but the mangroves were already filling up with other cautious crews moving their yachts, those under guardianship being moved early to allow plenty of time to move numerous boats and fishing boats from outside the area arriving. We decided the time was right to go in as we didn’t want to lose our chosen tie up spot and we also wanted to be near friends on another catamaran. So together on that Thursday afternoon, we picked up our anchors and we followed JK and Nelia on WindKat. As they had been into the mangroves to tie up previously, they knew the best route to avoid the shallowest areas to enable us to get right into the heart of the mangroves and away from the vast majority of boats that were all tying up side by side in the first lagoon.

We went in slowly following a route we had plotted into our GPS after testing the depth with a pole on one of our dinghy excursions…however, there were so many yachts tied stern to in the mangroves around the shallowest bend which meant we couldn’t go out as far as the plotted route ….we touched bottom, a couple of times, but with the bottom being very soft silt, we glided through and made it across into the deeper area. We reached our spot and tied up bow first to the mangroves to reduce the risk of damage to our rudders and to allow air flow into our saloon area – WindKat was tied up just 100 metres away. There were a few other boats in our area but we were very happy and comfortable with our spot and we were nice and secure with 2 bow lines, 2 spring lines and 2 anchors out. It was all an adventure as it was something we had never had to do before. There were another couple of days before Gonzalo would hit, so we spent some of the time on the beach or pottering on board. We had decided to spend Saturday morning tying the sails etc down and bringing things in that might fly away in strong winds, but Gonzalo had other ideas. In the early hours of Saturday, the winds started to blow increasingly strongly with associated thunder, lightning and heavy rain. We got out of bed at 05.50 having laid awake listening to the crescendo for a few hours. We secured the sails whilst being battered by wind and rain and then made coffee and sat, watched and waited as the weather blew through. We had 30+knots (35mph) of constant wind with gusts up to 45/50 Knots ( 52 – 58mph) – it was very, very noisy! By lunchtime, it was all over – the rain stopped, the clouds parted and the sun came out! We were a little cautious initially, wondering if we were in the eye with more weather to come, but it soon became clear that Gonzalo had passed well to the South of us ( Trinidad) 12 hours earlier than predicted. With another system following on, and large swells coming into Tyrell Bay, we stayed in the Mangroves for a further 5 days before going back on anchor in the bay.

Since our last blog entry, we have continued with maintenance (at a very slow rate), spent many afternoons on the beach having BBQ’s and drinks, watched movies on rainy days , fished off the back on anchor and sailed to Grenada and back several times. Ally had to undergo treatment for a medical issue that she was hoping to have done in UK, but with flights being cancelled etc, we felt it best to sort it out whilst here. The medical services here are very different from the UK, but on the whole, the experience was a good one. We have also done several “day trips” out with friends to some of the closer islands. It was at Jack A Dan (where we had never visited before!), that we discovered an awesome snorkelling spot and had a very close encounter with a Manta Ray – we went back a couple more times after that and saw the Manta again and managed to get some ( very grainy) pictures of it. We’re guessing he was there to feed on the plankton bloom that was making the waters murky.

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Another planned visit home in October was scuppered yet again by COVID restrictions which has been very frustrating and upsetting. We currently have no firm dates to try to get home again. We’re just going to bide our time and wait and see how things go and probably decide very last minute to go for it.

We hope you are all keeping positive and safe – surely this all has to end soon, doesn’t it? At least there is a light at the end of the tunnel with vaccines being made available towards the end of the year.

Next month will be December so we want to take this opportunity to say – Wherever you are, and whoever you are with, we wish you all a wonderful ( if not different than usual) Festive Season filled with peace, love, joy…..and food……and drinky poos! Cheers 🙂