Friday night Fish n Chips at Clarke’s Court Bay Marina and a Saturday morning flea market at nearby Fleur Bleu brought us to Clarke’s Court Bay yesterday. Our sail round was at midday. The only thing of note in the morning was my dinghying to the dock at Prickly Bay Marina with my face mask and snorkel to search and locate a pad lock dropped into the water on Wednesday evening. I managed to find it fairly quickly despite my initial pessimism when I saw the bed was a jumble of large rocks. Dripping wet I walked into the mini-mart as I’d heard they needed something dropped off in Trinidad. Now I’ve got us running a box load of Doyle’s Cruising Guides south.
The motor sail round to Clarke’s Court Bay was a bit of a pounding – particularly around Prickly Point – as the winds were slightly south of east and waves squeezed into small places. At one point a pair of my swimming shorts blew off the rail (they shouldn’t have been there really). We probably could have quite easily turned to get them but we were squeezed between the shore and off shore rocks in messy water. The economics or risking your boat/home for your swimming shorts made us decided to pound on through.
Once round the point we again took the marked dinghy channel inside the reef of Hogg Island where the waters were much calmer. We found a spot a little away from the main pack in the bay and anchored – our Manson again setting firmly on first bite of the ground.
Fish ‘n’ Chips was again delicious. We bumped into the Where IIs and Jacksters and Bristol Roses (briefly). They’ll all be at the flea market too. We also saw Sweet Carolines. They’re off to Trini next week too but later than us so we may see them down there. We also made new friends with a couple from Durban (Whiskers) who are now on their second circumnavigation. They’re on a similar timetable to us for heading across the Pacific. They gave us some useful information on routing and timing which may lead me to adjust our plans a little.
There’s quite a good weather window tonight for the overnight trip to Trini. It’s just a bit too early for us and it would involve paying overtime to customs at each end. The next window looks like Monday night but continue we monitor the forecasts twice a day in case this changes. I don’t mind paying overtime here in Grenada but I’ve heard it’s a real pain in Trinidad. If we discover tomorrow morning (Sunday) that we have a window that evening I’ll take the bus into St George’s and check out in the morning.
Over the next couple of days we’ll get Dignity ready for the passage south. We’ve heard it can be a little rough so we need to make sure we have nothing loose. We’ve got used to traveling without having to put things away. This will be a chore but a useful exercise.
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