PART 5 -- MAYREAU, PETIT ST. VINCENT AND BACK TO GRENADA
It's now Thursday morning, and Rick is planning a dive today. He will be picked up at the Cays and returned to us at Saltwhistle Bay. Rick and I are the first ones awake, and it pours rain a few times before Rick goes off on his dive just after 10 a.m. After the morning rains, however, the rest of the day is bright and clear, as has been every day of our trip. Walter swings by with the requested bread and ice. Another Moorings boat's batteries have died, so they come to Saga Boy to call for help (no batteries means no radio).
Once Rick meets his dive boat, we are off to Saltwhistle Bay on Mayreau, which is the kind of Caribbean beach I dream about. A creamy golden crescent of sand, embracing a sandy-bottomed turquoise sea, bordered by palms. (To double the pleasure, Saline Bay is on the backside, a breezier mirror image). Already, the anchorage is full, but Mick finds a spot and nudges in close to the beach, touching bottom, knowing that the wind and current will push him back. I jump off the back and swim to shore, and walk towards the dinghy dock, where my parents land and quickly make the acquaintance of a young Polish couple in the third (!!) week of their catamaran charter from Martinique.
I strolled back down the beach and sit in the sun a while, but the no-see-ums seem to think that I am their lunch buffet, so I swim back to the boat and get some sun on the foredeck. The troops soon reconvene, and as we dine on chicken fajitas, we watched in amusement as the Italian crew of a catamaran struggled to lift anchor (in fairness, we were right over their anchor, but were only staying for a few hours, which they could have found out if they'd only asked). Once they cleared away from us, it seemed like they were jockeying for a position closer to the beach, and they were doing it none-too-successfully, judging from their gestures and animated speaking.
By mid-afternoon, we were off to Petit St. Vincent, passing Union, Palm, and the tiny
This was our night out, giving the crew a respite. Our water taxi, driven by Christopher (who was also our waiter) took us over to Petit Martinique, where we had dinner reservations at Palm Beach. Because the sun had long-ago set, we couldn't make much out in the darkness, but knew that dinner was under a thatched roof on the beach. The food was good, and the price good as well. Rick had mahi mahi and I had curried lambie (conch), and we both started with the required callaloo soup. By 9 p.m. we were done and tired. As Christopher drove us back, I discovered at the expense of my formerly dry shorts that his boat had a leak just below the gunwales in the rear.
We went to bed shortly afterwards, and I unfortunately had one of my "intruder"
nightmares and woke up screaming (I am a light sleeper, and sometimes in a semi-awake state, I see "intruders" in the shadows. When I'm in my own bedroom, it's usually not a problem because the shadows are familiar. When I'm somewhere less familiar, and can't convert the shadows into familiar things, I become alarmed and scream). We knew my screams had awoken Mick and Charlotte, because the light in their cabin flicked on. And when Rick stuck his head out of our hatch to tell Charlotte all was fine, he scared her witless. Luckily, it was only 10 p.m. when this all came to pass, so no one really lost too much sleep. Actually, the wind kept me awake much more than my racing heart.
On Friday morning, we wake early because we need an early start, as we are going into Hillsborough to clear back into Grenada, and then sailing all the way back to the south coast of Grenada. We had a rollicking downwind sail from Carriacou, pass Ile de Ronde and Kick 'em Jenny, and down to Grenada, surfing down waves as high as 10 feet (and achieving a maximum speed of 10.8 knots, at least 2 knots more than hull speed). The guys were really enjoying it, but I was finding it a bit boring, so I read a bit and took a nap in our cabin. Charlotte served a lunch of pita burgers while we were underway. Near Pt. Salines, the water turned from dark blue to blue-green, and once we rounded the point, we motored into True Blue, one of the southern bays and just west of Prickly Bay.
True Blue turned out to be a nice, calm anchorage which reminded me of some of the Chesapeake gunkholes Rick and I frequent on our sailboat. It's a small bay with a dark sand bottom, has a handful of residences and a small hotel/restaurant/sailing charter operation (its buildings painted periwinkle, yellow and orange). Rick and I took the dink around the corner to a small grey/black beach (not really swimmable because of the coral), and from here took a hike around the area near the Chinese ambassador's residence, getting spectacular hilltop views of both True Blue and Prickly Bay, in which the J-boat Valsheeda was moored. We'd heard, during our van tour of the island, that a lot of the spectacular homes in this area are rented by students of St. George's medical school, and sure enough, a group of twenty-something girls wearing scrubs emerged from one of these homes, hefting book bags (made me question my own choices for higher education . . .).
When Rick and I returned, Jim and Ardy dinked to shore for a walk of their own, and happened to run into Donnery and Denny, our tour guides. In the meantime, the rest of us enjoyed cocktails and nibbles. Dinner was crab salad stuffed in a tomato, followed by shrimp and pasta in a pink sauce, with baked bananas in a warm fruit sauce for dessert. Charlotte has definitely raised the bar for my own galley efforts. Shortly after dinner, we went to bed and slept really well because of the calm of the anchorage.
Saturday morning dawned grey and rainy, and everything above-deck was wet, including the towels Rick and I left hanging on the lifelines. Breakfast was french toast with nutmeg syrup. We motored into Prickly Bay to take a closer look at Valsheeda, and then undertook our last bluewater sail of this charter, venturing south into the sea in order to have the correct approach into Mt. Hartman Bay. Everyone enjoyed the roller-coaster ride over 6-10 foot seas into Mt. Hartman Bay, especially the sound defeat dealt to Eva Lois (another crewed Moorings boat departing from True Blue this morning), which was an unwitting competitor in our race.
By 11 a.m., we were safely docked at the Moorings base. We exchanged addresses with Charlotte and Mick and wrote in their guest book. We packed our grungy belongings up, by now saturated with sunscreen, salt and sweat (an unholy trinity). We hung out in the cockpit til close to noon and drank our last Saga Boy Caribs and Tings. By noon, we are bumping along the road to Grand Anse and our hotel for the last night on Grenada, the Grand Beach Resort.
