Saturday, 3 Feb: Late up this morning after last evening’s antics 🙂 It’s a beautiful clear day where the colors seem particularly vivid, the turquoise sea, the lush green land and the blue sky. The volcanic peak has lost its cloud cover and the regatta yachts are already out starting a race. It’s Grenada Sailing Week.
We heard that this weekend is also the regatta for workboats. We guess the Grenadian equivalent of fishing smack racing. It’s to take place off the Grand Anse, the largest beach, about a mile from us. We are not allowed to anchor off the beach so we take horsey, and on the way we swing passed the main regatta with colorful spinnakers on their downwind leg of a race. We both declare that we miss our racing days on MaiJay, our J22, in Dubai.
At the Grand Anse we find waves breaking strongly on the beach. It’s no place to land a dinghy, there would be a high risk of swamping it and the outboard before we could pull it up the beach. Been there, done that, not to be repeated! But at the far end of the beach the waves are less and we get in and onto the beach OK, pulling it high and dry above the tide mark then hooking the anchor into a tree root to be sure it’s secure from being washed away by any large wave.
The beach is wonderful. Busy but not crowded. We walk in the surf to keep our feet cool and soon arrive at the work boat regatta. Their small open boats, 14-18ft long, are very crudely built. Their gaff rigs use bamboo for the gaff-pole and the sails are clearly cobbled together from other yachts rejects. Each boat is painted in very bright colors, making quite a spectacle as they sail off. And they do seem to sail well and it’s clearly quite competitive. On the beach there is music and all sorts of local cooking and quite a buzz. We buy a large grilled lobster to share – and eat it on the beach while watching the scene. The lobster is absolutely scrummy!
Back at the boat the sea is calm and as the sun sets with golden-red colors reflected off the water we decide we couldn’t possibly get bored of sunsets like this.
Evening sees us back at the regatta party in Port Luis, with the same gang from last evening. The rum is flowing and we end up having to leave at 1am as they turn the lights out on us. But the night is young …. for the young among us!
So it’s off to the Banana Club for more frolicking. As expected from the name, the club is a bit weird and no where near the atmosphere we experienced at The Brewery, last night. But we still manage to stay till 3:30am and yet again help some of the others back to their boat, where one instists beyond reason that we go on board for a drink with him …. like we haven’t had enough. But sense prevails and we ride horsey back to CB, in a pretty straight line all things considered. Thank goodness tomorrow is Sunday. We can rest!
