Our Wedding Anniversary was just days away and this hotel just was not our style so we sail a few miles away to the next island, Union Island. Union has a nice little bay with lots of ocean front restaurants. We found the one we liked and had a lovely 7th Anniversary Dinner.
After Union Island we left the Grenadines and headed another couple miles south to the island of Carriacou which is part of the country of Grenada. We hopped around to several different anchorages on Carriacou. At the anchorage in Tyrel Bay we had to laugh because there was a Tiki Hut "want-a-be" barge. This guy had taken a small floating platform put a pathetic little plywood counter and hung a couple palm fronts and had he courage to call it a Tiki Hut Bar. He had come over to our boat inviting us to come patronize his bar. We figured sure, why not, we would go and grab a beer at sunset. He was so proud of his TikiHut and figured that this is the way he was going to make a fortune. He kept saying it's never been done before in the Caribbean….no one has a floating Tiki Hut Bar. He showed us how he had built the bar with a little generator to run a string of twinkle lights and a radio. He obviously has never seen Sharon's brothers Tiki Hut Bar. Their Tiki Hut is a palace compared to this guy's hut. But he did have a point, we hadn't seen any floating Tiki Huts in the Caribbean. Perhaps it should be my brothers' next endeavor, because if you're going to do it…it should be done right! When we arrived at the hut he said "I really can't legally serve you a drink because I don't have a liquor license"! So if we wanted we could pour ourselves some rum from his personal bottle and he could sell us some coke or juice to go with it….and if we wanted we could just leave him a "tip" to pay for the rum. You do meet all kinds out cruising!
We had a nice sail from Carriacou to Grenada. We rented a car in Grenada and enjoyed touring the island. We went for a hike through to a nice waterfall in the rainforest. All along the way there were huge groves of nutmeg trees. There was nutmeg everywhere. It's interesting how nutmeg grows. The trees are huge, their leaves are similar to an orange tree but the canopy is so dense you all light is blocked as you stand under them. The nutmeg grows like a fruit, similar to an apricot but straw yellow green in color. The flesh of the fruit (the apricot part) is used for jams and jellies. It is the pit of the fruit that is the nutmeg. Even more interesting the pit is surrounded by a bright red "net like" growth and this bright red stuff is the spice mace! So now you know! We did fill our pockets as we walled back to the car.
While driving around Grenada we headed up into the hills and back roads. We are not quite sure where all we went. We did get lost a couple of time, but you never stay lost for long on an island. While wandering the back roads we enjoyed sampling some of the locals roadside BBQ's. We had been looking for a restaurant for lunch but could not find one. Finally we realized that once you were out of the tourist zone, there were no restaurants. The locals just BBQ'ed by the roadside and were happy to sell you some of what they were cooking. Their pork was great. The biggest challenge of driving was remembering to stay on the WRONG side of the road. Grenada was an old English island so they drive on the left side. Very confusing when you are not use to that. Vaughn did great job driving and only once did he almost get us killed.
Mid June we left Grenada and headed for Trinidad because it was time to prepare the boat for going home for the summer. It's a long 90-mile sail from Grenada to Trinidad so we left at 2:00am in the morning to ensure we would arrive in Trinidad with plenty of daylight. Nothing worse than having to go into a total unknown place in the dark. The winds were light but we were able to sail until about 10:00am in the morning. Then the winds got so light we could tell we would never get to Trinidad by nightfall at our slow speed so we fired up the motor. A minute after we started motoring there was a god-awful noise and the transmission sounded as if it was going to explode! For the 4th…yes count it, the 4th time this year the transmission had crapped out again! This was getting really, really old. So we put back up the sails and slowly drifted on toward Trinidad. It's not fun spending the day drifting knowing you are now going to arrive after dark, with no motor, and very little wind. It's just Murphy's Law, if anything can go wrong it will and at the worst possible time! The previous four months we had great consistent Caribbean trade winds. Loose the use of our motor and walla…you loose the wind also. We spent the long, long day drifting along discussing installing a NEW motor in Reality in Trinidad. We had been thinking about it all year, but weren't sure that spending $20,000 at a time when the stock market was down was a smart thing for our finances. We then decided that "Reality" was talking to us and it was loud and clear. Either spend money on a new motor or she was going to keep breaking down at the worst possible time and all the time. We drifted into darkness with Trinidad still miles away. With the help of radar, GPS and chart plotter we navigated into Trinidad and got to within a couple miles of the anchorage when the wind completely died. We spend several hours going absolutely no where. At 9:00 pm we tired calling our friends Bob and Kristin because we knew they were in Trinidad. We were hoping they would have their radio on! Thank goodness they did! They heard our call and the cavalry came to our rescue. They dinghy'ed out to us and towed us into the anchorage with their dinghies. By 10:30 we had safely dropped our anchor. We thanked our friends, said our good nights and couldn't wait to get in bed to get a good night sleep.
The last couple weeks in June we were very very busy. During the day we scurried around: placing the order for our new motor, lining up "the best" motor installer in Trinidad. We also had lots and lots of other boat projects that had to be done before we could leave her for the 3 months. In the evening we got together with our friends for dinner and to share boat project stories. We got "Reality" put up on the hard and set for the summer and headed for home for our vacation…...