Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

The weather calmed enough this morning for us to fuel Dignity and head back to Carriacou. For the math/engineering heads here are some stats.

We took on board 81.4 gallons of diesel. The last time we refueled was 117 days ago in Dominica. In that time we’ve run the engine for 99.4 hours. This means we’ve run the generator on average 0.85 hours per day at a rate of consumption of 0.82 gallons of diesel per hour. This covers all our motoring, laundry, water making and household use. The week we were away is counted but this is canceled out by the extra hours spent motoring as a result of the recent maintenance tests. All in all, not bad I think. Recent activity, now that we’re not using the freezer but using the laptops a lot more, has brought the hours per day down to around 0.7.

We’re currently anchored north of Hillsborough close to the Bogles Round House restaurant where we have booked dinner for this evening. Bit of a splash for us but what the hell. It should be good. We’re looking forward to this.

We’ve had a walk into Hillsborough this afternoon, about 30-40 mins each way, to stretch our legs. We’ll stay anchored here for the weekend before checking out of Grenada on Monday.

No internet connection so back to SSB.

We haven’t left Tyrell Bay yet. The work on our headsail is taking longer than expected. While the cloth is largely fine, a lot of the stitching has deteriorated in the sun. This was work we were planning to have done at the same time as having the bottom painted in a couple of months time so the only effect has been to bring it in a couple of months and to hang around here reading books. Hard life.

This does affect our near term plans. We’re not aiming to be in Bequia for our anniversary on Saturday any more. If the sail is ready this morning and the wind allows us to hoist it we’ll sail round to Petit Martinique this afternoon and anchor there overnight. We’ll do some shopping and refueling there on Saturday then returning to Carriacou on Saturday afternoon. We’ve been recommended a number of times to go to the Round House in Bogle, Carriacou for dinner on Saturday.

We did get out yesterday to visit the mangroves nearby. It made for an interesting break. At one point the waters were crystal clear and we could see many fish swimming below. A couple of boats had tied up in there for summer as well as there being a couple of old wrecks. At times we turned off the outboard and listened to the silence.

The dinghy received it’s new coat yesterday. I turned up at ‘In Stitches’, the local sail loft / general stitching outfit at 3pm for the one hour fitting. This involved screwing on a number of eyes onto which the cover could be tied and some minor adjustments. The work took two hours as Andy, the owner, was often distracted into conversation or by talking to passers by who wanted to take a look at his motor bike, for instance.

In the picture it looks a little wrinkly as we still need to put additional pressure into the dinghy. The dinghy cover has two parts. The blue cloth is comfortable to sit on. The black material is tougher and protects the dinghy from abrasion. Hopefully this will extend the dinghy’s lifetime by some years.

Yesterday we also gave Dignity a general clear up (at least Helen did) while I replaced the outside speaker which buzzed a lot due to a blown cone. The new speakers were large so I had to enlarge the hole. With the hand tools I had this was difficult but in the end I managed it. Outside sound is now much better.

In the evening we went ashore to the Lazy Turtle pizzeria for dinner where we had a vegetarian pizza which was delicious. The place was quite busy as a group of locals had turned up to celebrate one chaps 70^th birthday. We recognized most of the crowd which just goes to show what a small place this is and, perhaps, we’ve stayed too long.

Today we’ll be off as soon as we have our headsail back and it’s fitted. This won’t be until early afternoon at the latest. We may use the time this morning to dinghy over to the mangroves and explore. Should be interesting but probably won’t take too long. Maybe we’ll look at the projects list. More likely the books will come out.