05 Nov 2002

Overview	31 Aug 2003
1 Apr 2002	6 Apr 2004
15 July 2002	2 Dec 2004
5 Nov 2002	13 Jan 2005
5 Feb 2003	August 2005
5 Apr 2003	April 2006

Eight months. I really can't believe it's been that long, although we did spend four months in St. Martin, and then one month in Dominica. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

After St. Anne and Marin, we went up to Schoelcher, an anchorage just north of Fort de France. Emilie left, and we met another boat there, and enjoyed several evenings of their company, as well as going out on my parents' anniversary. They were going south for insurance, and we were going north, or we would have stayed longer with them. This was about two months ago, so everything might get a little choppy. Sorry.

So we headed up to Dominica, expecting that Sea Eagle would be there in a couple days, a week at the most. Boy, were we wrong. But we still had a nice month in Portsmouth waiting for them. But while we were there, we met a Danish boat, and they were selling a windsurfer, board, sail, and whole kitten caboodle, for 100 US$. So we got that, and have had many amusing afternoons trying to learn how to control the thing. It's hard.

Also while we were in Dominica, we met two people living on a boat, but not cruising. She actually worked at the medical school there, and needed someone to help her, and there I was. So I have actually made the most income of all of us. :D

We went down to Martinique with Sea Eagle when they got there, after taking several trips on Dominica. We anchored in Schoelcher again, and Anse Mitan, and took another trip on that island, and I was very happy to go to the Gorges de la Falaise again. :D

We went on to St. Lucia fairly soon after that, but Sea Eagle stayed to work on their refrigeration. We might have stayed with them, but we had more visitors coming down in Grenada, so we sort of had to move fast. I don't think they had even gotten to St. Lucia by the time we had to jump off for Bequia.

We spent a couple of days in Bequia, but didn't really do much ashore. A tropical wave was going over, and it was fairly rainy. uck. We did, however, meet up again with Fruity Fruits, whom we had met in Dominica. We introduced them to the sailing dinghy, but there wasn't enough room for the windsurfer.

After a couple days there, we went down to Tobago Cays. And let me tell you, if you ever need a description of paradise, look at the Tobago Cays. There are several really small islands, but the most interesting part of it is under water. There are two horseshoe-shaped reefs (yes, real coral reefs), and you can anchor inside the western one. The water is so shallow, we anchored in seven feet of water. Up near the reef, it gets as shallow as, well, there are some places where there's exposed reef at low tide (and the tides are about 18 inches).

But we only stayed there for a night; we really had to get down to Grenada. So the next day, we didn't even stop in Carriacou, we went all the way. We were going to go to Prickley Bay, but we stopped in St. George's since it had been such a long day and would have been even longer. We didn't go into the inner lagoon, but instead stayed in the outer anchorage, where the holding was consequently terrible.

We stayed out there for three nights, until John and Becky came. It was quite interesting there, as the night after we got there, a block of the city burned to the ground. I would go on and tell you about the really stupid things, like that the fire department didn't come for several hours after it initially started, and they're only about eight blocks away and on a perfect line of sight to the fire, but that would make this page a LITTLE too long, and I think Chris is going to be writing up about that.

But anyways, Becky and John came in the night before Mom's birthday, so we went out to dinner with them. We had planned to go on an island tour with them the next day or something, but the guide screwed us and didn't show up. So we made a deal with another guy for the next day, and this guy didn't screw us and DID show up.

So we went on the island tour, around to the spice factory, seven sisters falls, Grand E'tang, and other places that you can read about if you go to my excursions page.

With Becky and John, we went to: Carriacou, but only for a night, Tobago Cays, for about a week, they spent a night or two at Union Island, and then we went back down to Mayreau, Petit St. Vincent, and back to Carriacou. We didn't really want to go all the way back to Grenada to drop them off, because there was going to be a regatta in Carriacou that we didn't want to miss, so we simply went to Carriacou and let them take a ferry over to Grenada.

Sometime during that, Sea Eagle had caught up with us, so we were in Hillsborough with them. It got a little rolly, though, so we went around to Tyrell Bay, where we knew a boat with teens on was coming. As it turned out, it wasn't just the one boat. Tyrell bay ended up having about five other kids besides us. Correction, five other kids OUR AGE(S). We had a lot of fun there during the Regatta. Hanging out, going to little jump-up party things, going to town in the daytime, dinghy racing, hanging out on the Lasers (fun little sailing dinghies), having fun.

After the regatta, we headed down to Grenada for Carnival. On the way, we caught our second fish, another barracuda. We were definitely far-enough south for them to be safe, so we had a delicious new fish for dinner. :D

In Grenada, our first night was a Friday, and there was supposed to be a steel-drum band at the yacht club, but that didn't show, so they said there would be a dj-- at about 10:00. It was late, of course, and my parents were rudely awakened by the guy screaming into his mic. I, of course, slept through it all.

In town, the parades, costumes, bands, and music were really cool, although every other song seemed to be the same song that was played every other song in Carriacou. And the only lyrics any of us could understand was in the chorus. "No work, no food tonight" was what it sounded like. Oh, well. Everyone had fun, people participating in the parades, and people watching.

We picked up our next visitors, Casey and Kenny Quale, here, and did basically the same thing with them as we did with Becky and John: Carriacou, PSV, Tobago Cays, then Grenada. While they were here, we had miserable weather, but we caught an additional two barracudas. (yum)

We're staying here for at least another week, to put up the radar and do other boat work stuff, and then we're probably going to head off to Venezuela, although we might go to Tobago.

_____

We had been planning to update the site before we left Grenada, but didn't quite get it done. We're currently in Venezuela, but what we've been doing here will be on the next update.

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