Life in Prickly bay, Grenada

It's humid here, 12 degrees north of the equator, and it doesn't cool down at night time. We can't complain, it's what we left the uk for but you can't walk up any hills during the day and fixing the AC has shot up to near the top of the jobs list. For now we have lots of fans moving the air around, particularly at night. So a new great pleasures in life is to stand in the rain and have a lovely cooling fresh water shower.

We took a mooring ball in Prickly bay marina for 2 months as the hydraulic rods were getting new seals and we have no steering. Here's a great tour of our current home. 

Best be on a mooring ball, that's checked weekly, than on anchor when you haven't got any steering. It also stops our anchor chain getting smelly. Because the water is so warm the wee beasties grow at a phenomenal rate. Someone told me their dinghy was so thick with growth after 2 weeks they couldn't get on the plane. As my diving kit is also on the list of things to fix and they only charge £65 to clean your hull we got the marina to do it. The copper coat is amazing, so worth the cost, but still needs wiping down. 3 young guys took 1 hour to do a great job. It would have taken me a day. Anyway that was another job ticked off the list. And another newly found great pleasure in life, diving under my boat and stroking my lovely smooth, clean, copper bottom.

Besides jobs we still have time for fun. We went to Bingo with Joe and Vicci from Dolce. It was very like Bongo bingo, loud music and you had to do a little dance if you won. Not like the solemn church-like British Legion bingo at all. I hated it :-) It was very popular with the locals and students from the university as the big prize was £700. Someone won 2 rabbits when we were there and last week someone won a goat!! Never again.

Other activities for cruisers include dinghy poker which is basically a pub crawl in your dinghy to collect poker cards. Had a few more trips to the Brewery, I think I have tried all of his brews now, ranging is strength from 4% to 9%. 

Lots of socializing with our cruising buddies

We tried fishing from the dinghy with no success. Apparently you can catch mahi mahi out in the channel so we will defo have another go soon. Good fun though.

I've also learned how to get in the dinghy without fins and not looking like a flailing beached whale.

Another day I was in the bilges deeply engrossed in in my toilet, removing and cleaning a completely blocked outlet pipe. The second worse job on the boat. I suddenly heard shouting and a horn going off. I went on deck to see another, unoccupied, boat, which had lost it's mooring ball, drifting towards us. I jumped in the dinghy, with my sexy headlight still on, and using the dinghy as a tug pushed the boat so it wouldn't hit us. Shortly after that many dinghies arrived and we pushed and pulled it onto another mooring ball. It was amazing how everyone came together to help.

Something I'd never seen before just started happening the other day, every afternoon a fish feeding frenzy happens in the bay. It sounded and looked like something from a horror movie. Big fish eating little fish and the birds grabbing the leftovers - crazy.

We had a walk to the next bay along, Clarks court and hog island. Started off as a 17 minute walk and turned into a 2 hour trek in the scorcio heat and no water. It's all happening over there, much bigger and many more boats than Prickly bay. But the water is a bit murky and when we went the smelly sargasm was drifting in. I think I prefer Prickly bay. It was a Sunday and everywhere was closed but luckily Joe came to rescue us in his dinghy and we went back to Dolce for some water before heading out to Le Phare Bleu for brunch. A great place with a free swimming pool.

Hog Island bridge 

Le Phare bleu

Having to stay below 12 degrees north during hurricane season for insurance purposes is a great way to get all our outstanding jobs done. So when we arrived in Grenada we had 30 items on the job list. The most important being the steering rods, the batteries and the water maker. So after a month here we have our steering fixed. (It's better than ever, you can turn the wheel with you little finger) 

The batteries are back to 600ah and the watermaker is making 85 litres an hour. We've reconfigured our solar panels and have gone from 2.5 kw/hrs a day to 4.2 kw/hrs. We use about 4 kw/hrs per day when not making water. So we are getting close to getting all our power from solar. We've just ordered another panel which should take us to positive solar. Also done many other jobs including clean toilet pipes and fit new swimming ladder bracket.....

Also serviced generator, ran cables for new solar panel, make new cushion covers, clean and silicon all window seals, polish stainless steel, fix 2 spare water pumps, fit fabricated frame for new solar panels and make ginger beer. Also I finally fixed the 20 year old air conditioning system, yippee!! which needed a new pump and replumbing due to the watermaker install. The Boat is nearly good as new and we still have 3 weeks here. The last important job to do is service the engine and a few other littler tasks. Then we can explore a bit more of Grenada before we leave for Curacao. So we are living the cruising dream, great snorkeling, cocktails at sunset and barbies on the beach but not until we spend a good proportion of each day fixing things. Maybe I'll even have time to read a book or play my guitar now......