Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

Not a lot more done yesterday. We finished of the Tuna caught a couple of weeks ago and watched ‘A Knight’s Tale’ on DVD. Another one of those implausible movies that just make you smile throughout.

This morning we listened into the Grenada Cruisers VHF net which comes on every morning except Sunday on Ch 68 at 7:30am. There seem to be many things to do on the island and the costs seem far less than further up the islands. For instance, an all day island tour costs only $25 US – much cheaper than elsewhere. There seem to be quite a few things aimed at attracting cruisers. We’re likely to go to the Clark’s Court Bay Marina burger night tomorrow.

At 8am we listened into the ‘coconut telegraph’ to see how things would be without the water maker on. In the first few seconds we were astonished as to the clarity of the signal but soon learned this was due to the net operator being in the bay next to us. However, with a bit of fiddling we were able to hear a lot more of the boats calling in than we used to so things are getting better.

After all this we shifted Dignity around to Calvigny Island and anchored right outside where we heard we could get a good internet connection and clear water to run through the water maker. We followed the markers back through the reef, the reverse route we took into the bay behind Hogs Island.

Here we ran into our first bit of trouble for a while. When I turned the water maker back on the console said “Salinity Probe Failed.” It doesn’t sound good. I don’t know if this error message is related to what we did yesterday but I can’t rule it out. So far I’ve tried the basics such as reseting the system and making sure cables are connected properly but this has not fixed the error. Given that the unit was left switched off overnight I am wondering if it could be something analogous to a ‘warming up’ issue so right now I have the unit switched on with the error flashing. The next thing is to call Spectra support but as they’re on the US west coast I’ll have to wait.

We’ll probably stay around here tonight and tomorrow as we’re essentially in Clark’s Court Bay and we may just dinghy over for the burger night out. For now it is back to troubleshooting. Later we hope to go snorkeling on the nearby reefs.

Footnote: After writing the above I went back to the water maker, switched it off then on again and now it is working. I think I’ll still call Spectra support and see if they can shed any light on this.

St David’s Bay has a dockyard/haul out facility, a chandlery, a sailmaker, a bar, a fancy little resort & restaurant and a deli. That’s it. Very out of the way and quite pleasant.

We went ashore in the afternoon to take a look around. We soon bumped into a Canadian couple, Chantal and James from the sailboat Q. They had a massive pot of food in front of them and soon invited us to share. They had been interested in how locals put together a local dish and had paid for the ingredients as long as they could watch and film them make it. Now they had enough to feed the masses.

We joined them in the bar and chatted about the usual cruiser stuff. The food was served and was very pleasant. Eventually we had to part as they needed to go back to their boat, which was already on the hard for summer, to complete some work.

We had a wander around the dockyard seeing a number of boats already lifted that we’d seen in the last few months further up the islands. We took a walk around to the deli and hotel both of which were closed for the weekend.

Back on Dignity, relieved of the need to feed ourselves and clean up after, we watched “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” about a chap who ages backwards. Weird film but interesting.

Today we’ll head west. We need to as this anchorage is a little rolly and it’s always nicer when the waters are flat.