We’ve done a couple of really nice walks in Grenada – one in the south of the island up to Mt. William and the other in the north east, around the St. Antoine Rum Distillery – we got lost in the trails, but had a good walk – and yes, we did  indeed end up at the distillery and took a bottle home with us!

 

Yesterday we did another Hash – it was very good fun, though not as interesting as the first one because it was in a more urban environment, so we were in and out of peoples gardens. Never-the-less, it was challenging and it was interesting to see Laurie’s competitive side in full view! She was NOT going to be last and was going to do whatever she could to get home first! It was therefore rather depressing to arrive back at the start/finish to find Bas and Agnes on TiSento already back – especially since those two are notorious for coming last! Turns out they got somewhat lost and ended up on the kiddies route – so that doesn’t count – Laurie’s pride restored!!

So, stealing a line from Tess on Ingomar… we’re half way! That is, since leaving Newport in September, we’ve come all the way south to Grenada and now we’re about to head back – though it probably (hopefully) won’t take quite as long!

We’ll probably leave Grenada (which we have really enjoyed) Wednesday or Thursday and head north – either to Antigua as a staging post or direct to Bermuda. It all depends on what the weatherman says we should do. Our DeLorme tracker will be active again so that anyone interested can check our progress here (once we’re underway).

https://share.delorme.com/Toodleoo

We’ll stay in in Bermuda for a couple of weeks – if there’s room for us (our visit coincides with the start of the Americas Cup events) – and then expect to be back in Newport around mid June… Fingers crossed…

 

 

 

A Hash is a beat through the wilderness on trails marked by ‘hares’ leaving shredded paper piles along the way. We did our first on Saturday in Grenada and it was a blast!!! So much so, we’ve decided to stay in Grenada another week so that we can do next week’s Hash! About 100 people showed up for this Hash – sometimes they have as many as 200 – and the majority are locals, but there’s always a few tourists – including a good contingent of Yoties amongst the crowd. Pics here of us receiving our instructions…

There’s a price to be paid for a Hash however – especially as ‘Virgins’ doing it for the first time – and that is that (for one reason or another…) you get absolutely filthy and smelly – so when we arrived back at the boat we had to strip off everything outside and Sunday morning turned into wash day.

Some may remember that Toodle-oo! is now equipped with a twin tub washing machine! Whoo-hooo! So, Laurie set to on Sunday morning washing our Hash gear. I took advantage of the effort to run our generator to make power for the wash, but also to make some water and to heat some water. All very boring, until the generator decided it’d had enough and coughed and spluttered to a halt.

Monday I looked at the generator and finally concluded that fuel was not getting to it – and my in-depth analysis showed that the lift pump which brings fuel from the tanks, through the primary filter and to the generator was not doing what it’s supposed to. So I pulled it off the wall and looked long and hard at it – and confirmed that indeed, it was not pumping. Fortunately, here in Prickly Bay, we have a ‘Budget Marine’ store, whose catalog (at least the 2016 version) shows they have the exactly correct lift pump… I dinghied over and sure enough, there it was! $250 later, the lift pump is installed, but the generator is still coughing and spluttering. Well, clearly, the fuel lines need to be bled… so for the first time in my life, I set about bleeding the system – turns out to be stupidly easy – one nut has to be cranked open a little bit and wait for air bubbles in the fuel to stop. Trouble is, air bubbles were definitely not stopping.

I decided that I must have installed the fittings to the pump incorrectly – and that air was getting in at the joints. So I went back to Budget Marine and purchased the right (yellow) kind of Teflon sealing tape (as opposed to the while plumbers sealing tape I’d used), disassembles and then reassembled everything. Nope… Still got air in the fuel (more like I have a little bit of fuel in my air…).

Laurie convinced me that a beer and a sit-down would help.

I sat. I drank. I drank some more. I had a thought. Dumb shit!

As soon as I turned to the supply of fuel from the empty port tank to the full starboard tank, the generator barked into action, ready for more charging, water heating and water making!

Anyone interested in a slightly used lift pump?

We had a super cruising day yesterday… We got going fairly early from Prickly Bay, catching a bus to St. Georges and then another up to the ‘Grand Etang” area and the trailhead for the hike up Mt. Qua Qua.

The trail, which was well maintained, followed a mountain ridge around the volcanic lake, slowly windy it’s way up and down to Qua Qua. Quite a challenging walk with steep ascents and descents along the way. I also realized that we were right on the ridge when the vegetation thinned out some and we were perched up there will steep drop offs on both sides – making our trek up Helvelyn seem somewhat easy! Normally I’d suffer major vertigo, but the thick vegetation provided a sense of security – and I guess a grab hold should one miss-step. It was a very enjoyable walk up and back.

Best of all: there’s a bar at the trail head so we were able to enjoy a couple of beers on our return!

Later in the day, we took a taxi ride with a van full of other cruisers, clear across Grenada to the North East point, to one of the three sites in the world where Leatherback turtles come to lay their eggs… The description of the event was something like: ‘We’ll show you a turtle laying eggs, but we’re not sure when…” We arrived at the beach around 9:00pm and got lucky that by about 10:30 our group was allowed to walk along the beach to where a turtle had already started digging out her nest. As we walked in darkness, we could just make out another black blog coming out of the sea for her turn.

It was a fascinating scene. For one, I had no idea how large these creatures are – our missus was about 1300lbs, shell dimensions 169cm long, 130cm across the widest part of the ‘shell’ – with head and back flippers, she was probably 7ft long and later when we saw her front flippers, realize she had a ‘wing span’ of about 7ft! Her shell isn’t! It’s more like leather and moves with her movements and breathing.

It was a little disconcerting about how close we got to the animal while “researchers” took down her measurements and carefully managed the egg drop – one researcher was able to hold a back flipper out of the way for the other researcher to catch and place each egg in the nest – thus preventing breakage. Leatherbacks are very threatened and only one in 1000 little’uns manage to get to maturity. Anything they can do to change the odds is what they’re doing. We were able to watch the eggs being dropped into the nest.

After dropping her load, she then proceeds to smoosh the sand back in place and then pat it down with rear flippers. Then she starts moving sand with front flippers around to the back to completely fill in the hole, and then basically tramps all over the area before heading back down to the beach and out to the ocean. The whole process start to finish takes about 3 hours… She’ll be back in a couple of weeks to repeat the process. Apparently, she lays 50 – 150 eggs in each nest – some with yolks, some without (cushions) and then will repeat 5 or 6 times during the season…

Besides being massive, they’re pretty prehistoric looking! The head is somewhat grotesque and her mouth a jagged affair. As she’s smoothing all the sand back in place, you can hear her wheezing at the effort – can’t be easy for this mammoth who’s basically weightless in the ocean at all other times…

According to our guide, Leatherbacks can swim as deep as 4000ft, staying down for an hour or two before coming back to the surface for air. They must be able to dive faster than me!

Unfortunately, with light restricted to red only, I was unable to capture any photos. I also brought completely the wrong lens – since I thought we’d be miles away from the critters… As Laurie points out, rather weird that we’re able to get within a foot of this highly endangered species as she attempts to re-populate, but are held back 50 yards from the stones at Stonehenge!!!

To round out the day, we got a great view of the southern cross while watching our missus do her thing!

We were lucky in our timing – in that we were back in our boat by 1:30 am – some of the previous visitors were not back until dawn! Even so, with the good walk and late night, we’ve decided today is going to be an easy day!!!

After Bequia, we sailed down to the Tobago Cays, a group of 4 little uninhabited islands with a large reef, protecting them from the Atlantic swells. Many boats were anchored right behind the reef – but we decided to stay behind one of the islands, seeking shelter from the boisterous wind.

We snorkeled around one of the small islands, but the current was pretty significant and it was a little murky in most places. When we finally came into some clear water with interesting coral and fish, we were too tired to really enjoy it! So we drifted back to the dinghy and took a ride out to the reef where we had an absolute blast in crystal clear water, swimming around small (house plot sized) coral beds. The diversity of fish was great.

On our way back to Toodle-oo!, we saw turtles, so in we get again and went snorkeling with turtles. They are really nice animals, though I gather they are far more bad tempered than they were letting on to us. They graze on the sparse grass growing in the sandy bottom, then come up for a breather every so often. Very neat. Unfortunately, I’ve been unable so far to reduce the size of my video files to fit in the blog – probably need to make a link to a U-Tube page, but have not worked out how to do that yet!!! (Update: Maybe I have – check out previous post…)

We then sailed around to Chatham Bay on Union Island where we found Ti Sento and Nomad in the anchorage, so enjoyed happy hour in one of the beach bars with them. The following day we did a bit of a walk – that turned into a marathon day… We scrambled along a very overgrown path following our guide, Alex to the top of a hill that was too overgrown to get a decent view, and then walked down into Ashton where we had a tasty local lunch. We declined a bus ride back and walked back over the hill – with unfortunately Tom from Nomad suffering from heat stroke in the process. It was hot!

After Chatham, we moved to Clifton, still on Union, which turned out to be a hustle bustle little town and met up with three other OCC boats, Sundowner of Beauleigh, Altair and Rhythm – so we all enjoyed sundowners at Happy Island Bar – a bar built on a man-made island on the reef – made basically of Conk Shells! Had an excellent evening!

After Union, we sailed down to Cariacou, just 20 miles south and spent a couple of days in Tyrrel Bay. It was nice not to be hustled by anyone, but we found the island to be a little tame. We’re wondering if we’re becoming island snobs!?

We then sailed down to Grenada, our southernmost destination for the year (just reached under 12 degrees north). We had a great sail, and then spent one night in St. David’s Harbour before moving on to the more popular Prickly Bay, where most of the cruisers hang out. Yesterday was Easter Sunday and Laurie out did herself with the best ever Massa and Biscourts(sp) – so we invited Ti Sento and Nomad over for Portuguese bread!

All was great until we got interrupted by a massive cockroach in the cockpit! We live in fear of getting an insect infestation and take serious precautions to try to prevent them – like no carboard comes aboard, feet and shoes washed in sea before entering, etc… Seeing this 3-inch roach was disquieting to say the least! We believe that he flew in – since we have seen no evidence of little roaches, but just in case, we decided to wash the cockpit out and remove and scrub all teak grates… Today we bought some powerful bug spray… can’t be too careful.

We’ll stay in Grenada a week or so and then begin our journey back north.

We’re thinking we might stop on the way up in Dominica where we can do some sorely missed walks due to Kate’s mishap and then Antigua where I hope to dive in English Harbour.

 

PS: Can someone tell me if the previous post’s videos are actually visible now???