CARNIVAL SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY

Our little starboard bow in the pic with the mega yachts.  For some reason they put us in mega yacht row.  We had a great slip.  It was at the beginning of the marina so we got a good breeze as we were near the entrance of the bay.  Was fun to be there till a mega yacht came in one night or early morning (3am) to dock at the pier next to ours and used it's bow thrusters for 40 minutes.  I finally gave up on trying to go back to sleep and came up top to watch.  

The best part of our dockage arrangements was the sailing vessel One White Tree was next door and Zero to Cruising,  Liberty and Troupador close by.  So nice to not have to get in the dingy to go see your friends.  We would all meet to go to the pool, go to the parades etc.  All of the activity took place on the road by the marina so you could not ask for a more convenient place to be.

Sunday Night Pot Luck

We had a pot luck on our boat.  We figured that out around 4 pm.  Spur of the Moment always turns out the best.  We ended up with 16 people in our cockpit. (That was at last count) We sang and had a good time.

Look at all the people crammed around the table.  The food was good and the company was great!!

This is a poinsettia plant (tree).  I would say it is about 15 to 20 feet high.  You can barely see the pink flowers.  

Pretty Parade on Monday afternoon

Check out the costumes.   wow

Some were really daring and most were pretty risqué

This one was so big, he had help walking along the road.

Yours truly enjoying the parade.  I was dancing for Diana being a smartee when she snapped this shot.

The dancing is unbelievable.  The rhythm and moves unreal.  If you want to see what it was like to be a part of Carnival go to ZerotoCrusing.com.  Michael and Rebecca participated in 2 of the events and there are pictures on their blog.

Pantasic Saturday

On Saturday morning at around 7:30 as we were preparing to move the boat, Kirk noticed a fire smoking on Hog Island and there were no boats there.  The cruiser net just happened to be on the radio and he called in an emergency traffic reporting the fire and the net controller just went on to the next subject.   By this time we could see flames.  So I got dressed, grabbed the buckets out of the forward locker while Kirk lowered the dingy, we hopped into the dingy and sped towards the beach.  Michael and Rebecca were behind us.  Along with 2 other cruisers we put the fire out.   I since then have named Michael the Mayor and Kirk the Fire Chief.  

We pulled up the anchor and motored around to Port Louie Marina where we had reserved a slip for 4 days during CARNIVAL.

After dinner on Saturday, we walked out the marina and got on the public bus and rode it to the bus station down town and then walked to the stadium for the steel pan competition.  It was called

Sitting in the stadium.  Left to right  Donna, Diana, Ross, Barb Stew 

Pan Band

Another Pan Band

Close Up

There were 8 different bands that played.  One for each Parish of the island.  Was a fun night.  I fell asleep in the stands 3 times (in between the steel bands playing) so we went down on the field for the 5th and 6th band and then came home.  We did see the band that won the competition so that was good!!!

Cooking with Dingis

On Friday August 10th, we had the super opportunity to go to Dingis's house for a lesson in how to make roti.   Dingis is a wonderful, soft spoken, loving, delightful Grenadian lady who was introduced to us through Ann Vanderhoof's books Embarrassment of Mangoes and The Spice Necklace.  We were all very excited about this opportunity.  The guys were elected to go with us to play music while we had our cooking lesson and also for the roti lunch we were preparing.  

This is the view from behind Whisper Cove Marina that I talked about in a previous blog.  Our boat is in about the middle at the top.   I can hardly recognize it as it looks as if it is combined with a boat behind us.  If you look for the tallest mast at the top of the picture and follow it down there we are!! The land in front of the boat is Hog Island.

Here is part of the crew at the bus stop.  We were waiting for Shauna and John to arrive via the bus.  Little did we know they had been dropped off further up the road and had walked down the hill and were already at Dingis's house.    Barb (blue top) and Diana are talking to a girl waiting to catch the bus.

I was peeling potatoes with Raymond (Raaaaymoun).

Dingis is working the dough into balls a little bigger than golf balls. These would then be filled with a split pea mixture and the dough rolled out and fried.   Yours truly is outside.

The guys were upstairs playing music.  After lunch, when they were all played out (tired fingers)  Dingis came upstairs with requests.  They obliged and we sang a few songs before we packed up and headed back to our boats.  We were filled with roti and bursting at the seams from our experience.

The Cooking Crew

From the left back row - Diana, Carvell (Dingis's niece),  me, Barb, Dingis, Shauna

Front row  Bici (Dingis granddaughter) and Genell her mom (Dingis daughter)

We had such a good time.  The love and friendship that was shared by Dingis's family was a Grenadian  experience I shall not forget.  We laughed and learned about making Roti.  It took us 3 hours to make this traditional Grenadian / Trinidadian food.  Certainly was a labor of love.

Lots of Grenada

We took a tour of the island on August 8th.  We saw and learned so much.  This is a snip of what and where.

This is  one of the views from Ft. Frederick.  There is much history here.

View from Ft Frederick towards the north.

Mt. Carmel waterfall.   Our taxi driver Cutty and Diana from One White Tree are in the left corner.

Kirk checking out Mt Carmel waterfall.

Kirk making sure i was ok.

River Antoine Rum distillery.  Diana throwing sugar cane onto the conveyer belt that moves the cane to a press.  All of this is run from a redirected mountain stream pushing a watermill.

This is the other side of the cane press.  The sugar cane goes up the conveyor and then is smashed to get the juice out, which then runs in a trough over to the boiling building.  The waste stalks are then transported by a little railway car and dumped near the boiling room where they dry out and are then burned beneath the boiling vats.

The sugar cane syrup.  It is spoon ladled from tank to tank over progressively hotter fire underneath.

They are actually bottling the rum out of the igloo containers with several layers of cheesecloth bungeed around the top.  The "rum" is poured in from a bucket scooped from a big vat of fermented rum.  Wild.....  Farther down the table the bottles are capped with a capping machine.  Then another worker puts the rum in boxes and seals them with tape.

Ross of One White Tree and yours truly getting ready to sample the low test rum.  The 150 overproof version was smoother according to Kirk.

Chocolate processing.  Cocoa beans drying.  These big "trays" slide into the building in case of rain.  The little path is from the beans being "turned" by someone shuffling through the beans.

Cocao pod on the tree.  

  We were in the Grand Etang Rain Forest.  Cool eh?

Check out how long the tail is.

Was this monkey checking things out or what?  Notice, he is eating a banana.

Nutmeg on a tree.  The red is mace.  The nut is under the mace in a shell.

Beautiful palm fronds in the Rain Forest.

More beauty of the Rain Forest.

And the flowers go on and on and on.  This was on our walk to to Mr. Carmel waterfall.

Another view.  We were pretty high up in the Rain Forest.  We could look across to other mountains.

This is the morning after the island tour.  The widest rainbow I have ever seen.

calm before the storm

Our boat this morning.  Picture taken from Zero to Cruising's boat.  Was still and calm.  No breakers in the ocean.  

Looking towards Grenada from our boat.  Notice how the boats are all facing different directions.

We did a 360 this morning in the stillness.  Current was controlling the boat.  A boat 3 down from us is on it's side on the reef.  It is a mono haul.

august 3 Ernesto????

As of now 7:15 am Friday morning we are still awaiting ERNESTO.  This has been a few days of waiting and preparing and watching and waiting.  

Has been quite a lesson in how other cruisers think

Our forward sail, bagged and ready to store

Kirk working on removing the main sail from the cars that hold it onto the track.  Was a quite a job as the hardware was stiff from the salt of the ocean.

New hatch cover design that was dismissed as no good.   Notice the brown on the cover.  That is Sahara desert dust.  Everything is covered with it.  Amazing that it travels over the ocean and lands here.  It is all over the boat and the rains do not wash it off.  

Good ole design   New covers in light color

Stripped down boat.  Notice second anchor on deck ready for deployment.  Third anchor in locker.  Also fancy rain and shade cover designed by Kirk.  It works really well.  We are able to keep the hatches open at night and rain does not come in the boat.