Laying Low in Grenada

Last week we had to go apply for a visa extension here in Grenada.  That’s a first for us – staying in one place long enough that we’ve worn out the initial visa given to us when we cleared in to the country.  In Grenada they give you three months which we passed on September 16th.

Why so long?  The major reason for a long stay here is that it is summer, and with summer comes the Hurricane Season.  Starting in June and running until October it is the time of greatest risk for tropical storms and hurricanes.  Our insurance company frowns at us spending time in a hurricane and in fact puts severe restrictions on our location as a result.  We can actually BE anywhere we want to in the summer, but if our boat gets damaged or lost in a tropical storm inside the “exclusion zone” we will have no coverage at all which would be pretty back breaking financially.  So it pays to stay near someplace you can run to safety.  Our particular insurance policy states that we need to be South of 11°50″ North latitude in the event of a storm – that line is just North of Trinidad.  Grenada is about 80-90 nautical miles North of Trinidad, so in the event of a storm it is less than a day’s sail to the area where – even if we are not safe from a storm – at least the insurance policy will fix the boat if she is damaged.  Although Hurricanes do visit Grenada from time to time they are very infrequent this far South.

Mt. Carmel Upper Falls

We’re not the only ones in this situation of course, Grenada has a large and vibrant cruising community during the summer as hundreds of boats come here for shelter from the weather North of us.  Many boats are pulled for the season and stored on land while their owners return home.  But there are many like us, where home IS the boat and these cruisers stick around to enjoy the island.  There are a a good number of children, lots of social events, and a fair amount to do.  Much like our extended time in St. Martin we’ve fallen into a happy routine of doing school, hanging with friends and occasionally checking out the charms of the island.

Will & Danielle sliding on the lower falls at Mt. Carmel

Grenada is certainly not without many charms, the weather is warm and the water pretty clear.  There are beaches, mountains, volcanoes, water falls, and of course warm water and water sports.  Grenada is known as the “Isle of Spices” and with good reason.  It is the second largest producer of Nutmeg in the world (and it’s associated spice, Mace, which is the red vein like coating around the nut), as well as a producer of a wide variety of other spices.  There’s no excuse for using old dried cinnamon sticks in your curry when you can get fragrant cinnamon bark still damp from the tree!

Sightseeing

One great day trip we took was to the Mt. Carmel Falls, which is a stretch of river with two separate falls on it.  We piled onto a bus and made the long and winding trip through the foothills into the mountains where we got off at the trail head for the falls.  The walk is quite short and easy, and the path littered with mangoes and beautiful vegetation.  The upper falls are scenic and the water breaks up into a cooling mist as it cascades down more than seventy feet.

A short walk back up the path and a fork down the river takes you to the lower falls.  As falls they aren’t as impressive – as you can see from the picture they are more like a long rock slide.  Which is exactly what a group of local kids were using it for when we arrived.  Will and Danielle quickly joined them, learning how to ride the falls from the top all the way down to the big splash in the pool at the bottom.  All of the local kids were very warm and friendly, taking time to show our kids how to get the best ride from the top and how to get back up again quickly.  One particularly charming young girl was fascinated by Kathy and determined that she needed her hair braided on the spot while the older boys roughhoused and splashed in the falls.

Danielle and friends walking on the Cocoa Beans. This is just one of many steps in the processing.

One very popular way to see the island and the sights is by guided tour, and a friend of ours arranged a taxi bus for another day to visit the Seven Sisters falls, and the Belmont Estates cocoa plantation.   The plantation provides the organically grown cocoa beans for the Grenada Chocolate Company as well as growing other spices and local products.  While I always knew that the path from Cocoa Bean to chocolate bar was pretty convoluted I had no idea there were quite so many steps.  Whoever figured out this process did mankind a wonderful favor – all the drying and rolling and roasting and grinding; it’s certainly not something just anyone would have thought up!

Local fruits, vegetables and spices. I am still intimidated by cooking many of these.

The array of spices and foods available and produced here on Grenada is quite intimidating.  Many of these same fruits and vegetables are available on other islands but it makes them no less daunting!  While we’ve mastered a few, and a few are familiar we’ve still not yet figured out things like the Soursop, breadfruit, or any of the local root vegetables.  The tour of the plantation gave us a lot of information about the history of cocoa and agriculture on the island.  And plenty of samples of the Grenada Chocolate Company’s excellent products!  For those of you reading this within range of a Whole Foods, you are lucky enough to have access to one of the only places where the chocolate is exported too.  It’s worth the extra premium in price to give it a try, if you are fond of dark chocolates.  If you are looking for milk chocolate here you will just get a puzzled look in return.

Grand Etang Lake

On the same tour that took us to the Belmont Estates we also stopped at some of the famed Seven Sisters falls for a nice hike and a refreshing swim.  Beautiful falls with two nice swimming pools under them, unfortunately none of us brought our cameras because we were all planning to get wet!

The Grand Etang National Park is another must see tourist spot on the island and very popular with visitors.  The park is centered around the Grand Etang lake, a good sized body of water formed in the basin of a volcano.  Surrounding the lake is the park with numerous trails that went their way through the rain forest to a number of scenic overlooks.  Supposedly there are monkeys around this area, we didn’t see any.  Our visit was pretty muddy, so we didn’t complete a lot of trails so much as went as far as our sensibilities and desire to get muddy permitted.  It’s a lovely spot, and the Grand Etang House across from the park entrance offers a decent and affordable lunch.

Water Sports

The founder of the Grenada Chocolate Company, the late Mott Green, was a visionary who envisioned a company producing organic chocolate with fair labor practices – something almost unheard of in much of the chocolate industry.  While he could be eccentric, one of the more interesting things he did was deliver his chocolate to the nearby island of Carriacou by small sailboat, in fact a Hobie Catamaran.  Following Mott Green’s untimely accidental death this past June, the Petite Calvigny Yacht Club acquired his boat for their members use.

The PCYC also sponsored periodic “Catamaran Match Racing” events.  Prior to acquiring this boat they had to borrow boats which made the event more difficult, though now they can use another one that is on the same site as the club’s.  We attended two this summer, at the first one in July we decided to join the club for the sailing and the social aspects.

Kathy and Will sailing the same boat that Mott Green would sail 30 miles to Carriacou to deliver Chocolate.

Match Racing is a head to head competition between two boats.  Much like the America’s Cup, without the billionaires and seventy-two foot boats that sail on hydrofoils at three times the wind speed.  In the PCYC event they drew lots to set up an elimination bracket.  Unfortunately in the first event Will drew a tough competitor and he made a big mistake at the start.  Against a weaker competitor he might have recovered, but not this fellow so he was eliminated in the first round.  I made it to the second.   It didn’t matter though – it was a fun day of hanging out with other racers, eating burgers and drinking cold beer and watching the races.

We learned watching the races, and by the time my race rolled around we figured out how to avoid Will’s mistake.  He took it more to heart – since we’d joined the club we could use the Hobie Cat whenever we wanted he spent some time figuring out how to avoid mistakes, make better starts, and get more speed out of it.  It paid of.

For the second event I drew the fellow that won the whole event in July…not good for me.  I made him sweat the first leg and he didn’t really get clearly ahead of me until more than half the race was done.  Will did much better.  Of thirty two initial competitors, Will handily won all of his races until the semifinal round with just four competitors left.  Will’s semifinal race was a tight one, he started out ahead but lost position after a crossing when his competitor – the guy who eventually won the whole thing – got into some better wind earlier.  He ended up losing by a mere 10 seconds, one of the closest races of the day.  Slight changes in the race and he could have won the whole event.  Again good times were had by all, and Will surprised quite a few people because after his ignominious adventure in the first race no one was expecting him as a contender to win it all.

There have been many other wet adventures here in Grenada as well.  We completed our quest to find a reasonably priced wind surfer for Will and he has been working to learn that challenging new sport.  We took him for a lesson and he had no problem mastering the beginner level board there.  His board though is smaller, less buoyant and trickier.  The upside is it will be much faster and more fun than a beginner board when he masters it, but the learning curve is steeper, and involves a lot of splashing and falling in the water as he practices.

From what I can tell much of Danielle’s free time is spend in free form play with other kids of a variety of ages – from playing on the beach to sailing around in a boat loaded with other kids to playing king of the hill with a surfboard.  We’re not sure what she does all day every day with her friends, but she always arrives back at the boat wet, tired, and happy.

Social Life

As I mentioned earlier there are a lot of cruisers here.  So there is a lot going on with social functions almost every day.  The waterfront business and “Cruiser’s Bars” also have a lot of specials and activities going on, from happy hours and special priced nights for food to trivia nights and live music.  Some highlights include:

Donut Boat.  Not winning any speed records, but it has a nifty spot to hold a case of beer in the middle

Trivia Night   OK, we’re blowing our own horn here and we only went once.  But Trivia Night at Prickly Bay Marina is a hotly contested event and we showed up with just Kathy and me to compete against teams of up to seven people.  We picked up another fellow name Bill from a team that had too many people and the three of us went on to win the whole thing, beating out the usual contending regulars.  Valuable prizes!  We won a case of beer, three pizzas and a two hour tour on one of the marina’s “Donut Boats” which are these marginally ridiculous contraptions consisting a a huge round boat with a canopy and a tiny outboard motor.  Unfortunately Bill had to leave Grenada before we could redeem the prizes but it was actually a fun couple of hours motoring around Prickly Bay in this silly thing.

Pizza/Restaurant Specials  More than a couple of times some other kid boats have arranged to do some of the food special nights – Half Price Pizza, Buy on Get One Free night, etc.  Once we pulled together a group of 32 people (more than half children) to take some buses over for this.  I think we made the restaurant’s night if we didn’t traumatize all the “normals” there.

GO ORACLE TEAM USA!!!

America’s Cup!  What a blast it has been to watch this spectacular event with other cruisers!  Several of the local bars have arranged daily showings of the Cup races which people are turning out for standing room only viewing.  It could be that the bars have gotten smart enough to coordinate the start of happy hour with the start of racing, but the crowd has a fun festive feel as we watch this exciting event together almost every day for the last few weeks.  It’s still going on, with what might be the most stunning comeback in any sport history under way.

Being near all these like minded people – other cruisers – affords lots of opportunities to make new friends and enjoy off the cuff social events.  The kids are enjoying  having other children around, and the adults are enjoying company as well.

Moving On

Sadly, out time in Grenada is drawing to a close.  In October we are meeting family in Trinidad and that is a place we do want to spend some time as well.  At the end of hurricane season we are making our way to Panama to pass through the Panama Canal so when we leave Grenada it will be for good.

That’s one of the sad parts.  We’ve met a lot of nice people here.  But most of them aren’t headed to the Pacific, they tend to stay in the Caribbean, bouncing back up the islands again when the threat of hurricanes has past.  Going through the Panama Canal is usually a one way trip, or at least it seems that way because when you do it you do not return for several years.  The Pacific is a huge place and the prevailing winds take you on to the South Pacific and French Polynesia.  Getting back to Panama from there is a long upwind haul that very few people do.

So for us, unlike most of the folks here, when we leave Goodbye will really mean Goodbye, because we won’t see them again for many years if we ever cross paths again.