Thursday, 22 Feb: As promised to the Canadian couple last evening, we pick them up from the jetty at 9:30 and head into the mangroves with the dinghy. This large enclosed mangrove lagoon is also used as a hurricane-hole. Yachts come into it if a hurricane is coming but otherwise they need to stay out because there are also oyster beds. Once inside the water is flat and there is a kind of eerie peace. There are several yachts and boats rotting against the mangroves, clearly abandoned for good. One even has a mangrove tree growing on top of it! We had been told that if we look into the water here, with a mask on, we would see lots of colorful jellyfish. But all we saw was green weed on the bottom.
Back at Cloudy Bay we have a very nice chat over some coffee, and we show our visitors around the boat and explain how life is living on board. They mention that it feels even bigger than their flat in Toronto. But after just a short time in the cabin, Nick is starting to look a little green, so we hurry him back up to the cockpit where he can see the horizon again. Below decks always makes people more susceptible to seasickness, because there is no horizon for reference.
By midday we take them ashore for their ferry back to Grenada and we catch a bus into the main town, Hillsborough. Same as Grenada, the bus is a small minibus for about 10 people. They are very friendly and we seem to pay the local fare with no foreigner inflation. Hillsborough is a very small town and we manage to walk from one end to the other in 10 mins. The same scene as in other towns / villages we have seen so far: few improvised bars, lots of derelict buildings, fishing boats on the beach, and the reasonably busy town jetty with local boats loading & unloading by hand.
As we reach the end of Hillsborough, we head into La Playa, a quaint beach bar where we meet a Swedish family that also came across the Atlantic the same time as us. Lots of people in common with us here it seems, away from the average tourist.
Other than buying electrical cable for the boom light, we leave the town empty handed excepting a few maps from the tourist office. We try to hire a scooter for tomorrow, but decide to hire from Tyrell Bay instead.
Back on Cloudy Bay for a late lunch, Glen gets to work soldering the LED strip to the new cable. But after soldering the adapter that drops the 24v boat voltage to 12v for the LEDs, Glen realizes that it was live (had 24v on it) as he made the joins and now it doesn’t work! Ooooph a whole evenings work for nothing, as we now need to get a new adapter. What a numpty!!