Hello again, after a time with poor internet, we’re in Phare Bleu Marina, on the south of Grenada, with some of the best and fastest internet we’ve had for ages. It also has a swimming pool and a good restaurant, hence, we’re recovering, catching up on stuff, got Skype working properly (please try us) and got to do the water filter yet again! It’s great to not have to fill up with water but the maintenance is a hassle.

So, what have we been doing?

We went up to Carriacou, to Tyrrel Bay and Hillsborough, both very quiet. We had some good snorkelling on Sandy Island, and then went to Petit St Vincent and Petit Martinique. Petit Martinique is part of Grenada, hardly anything there, but had a lovely meal on the shore. John and Keith, (Maxine’s husband) walked all the way round the island, Maxine and I sat in a bar and put the world to rights.

From there, we came back to Grenada, a fabulous sail down the windward side of Grenada, past all the little off-shore islands, which are very pretty, with sandy beaches and interesting rock formations. The best bit was catching 2 fish, an albacore and a Spanish Mackerel. They weighed about 3lb each and were really tasty – the mackerel was filleted and pan-fried, the albacore was oven-baked with garlic, lemon and white wine. We then spent a night in Hog’s Bay before getting back to Prickly Bay and Maxine and Keith left on Friday 14^th to go home. It had been lovely to have them to stay, as I do miss family and friends. I don’t miss work one scrap, well maybe the money but I do miss some of the people.

We then had a very busy week for us – we played golf at the Grenada Golf Club, up above St George’s. It’s a lovely 9-hole course, quite challenging, not very long, par35 but all slopes and very fast greens. We had caddies, £4.00 each and had a fun game. We will definitely play again before we leave Grenada. We’ve been diving, did our revision course and then dives on various reefs, including one at an underwater sculpture park which is just amazing. There 50 odd full size statues, underwater, including a ring of children holding hands and a boy riding a bike. We then borrowed some gear and dived round the boat, giving the bottom a really good scrub, helped by fish who came to help by eating all the barnacles we knocked off the hull.

Then Easter Saturday we did the Round the Island Race, Grenada. This is slightly smaller in size than the IoW race, but fought just as hard, if not more so, by the local people, who include serious racers, going on to do the Caribbean series. Unfortunately, the entry number was small, probably due to the big swells coming through – you got the wind, we got the waves from the Atlantic storm last week. However, we did come 2^nd in class, which amazed the locals who we beat, particularly since they all had at least 4 on each boat and we had only 2. The other boats of our size had full teams of 6 or 8 people – I must admit, we were very tired after.

Yesterday we got up and did 2 dives, down to 90’ on a wreck and then a 50’ reef. We were just about tired out then, so today is our day off, work on boat again after we’ve done 2 more dives tomorrow morning and then we’ll try to treat the “sticky anchor” syndrome and leave Grenada.