MIMPI MANIS
A family's dream of freedom becomes true
Diary
2006
April: Unburdened days anchoring in the lagoon at St. Francois while „Morgi“ and „La Gitana“ were close to us. But we have a problem, as our health insurance has run out end of March and nobody told us. We thought that the contract will be automatically extend for another year. But the insurance company has cancelled the basic contract and so all people insured via the TOC were without a valid health insurance. But the TOC was able to get a new basic contract with another health insurance and so we could solve the problem with some faxes and emails.
On the 3rd of April we left St. Francois for Marie Galante, another small island belonging to Guadeloupe. „Morgi“ and „La Gitana“ were waiting there already as they had left St. Francoise a few days earlier. We are impressed from this tiny island. The people are very friendly, the landscape charming, the beaches whiter then elsewhere, oxcarts loaden with sugarcane are heading for one of the rumdistilleries, time seems to pass slow here. To have seen the rumdistillery is a must. There is no guided tour and you are welcome to walk through the production halls by yourself. Take your photos and watch the molasses running through open channels in the floor right on your way. Everywhere steam is hissing out of leaking pipes, making rum in a live-version. This factory is certainly not certified according to ISO 9001 but worth visiting. One litre of rum (59%) costs 6€ and is really tasty. Marie Galante is one of the places we will remember when it comes down to settle ourselves again.
Wind is leading us onwards to the „Iles des Saint“ again where we want to relax a few days. Stephan's ears got inflammated from the saltwater. He should clean them more often, then he also would here the wishes of Evi instead of missing them. And he would not had to present his painful ears to Evi for taking her a look inside the ears to see if the inflammation has gone better or not. Lena has got used to life on board of „Mimpi Manis“ again and don't mind if the boat is rolling. If it is rolling too much, she just sits down where she is, waits to calm the boat again, stands up and continue her walk through the boat. Also she got used to the sea and is very keen on being on the beach as often as possible. But as soon as she feels sand under her feet she runs for the water and runs into it without any fear. Having swallowed some saltwater does not stop her she coughs one or two times and returns for the water again. She will become webs on her hands and feet in a couple of weeks if she continues like this. Even when she is getting blue lips she does not stop splashing and mama or papa has to carry her out of the water under her constant protests. But as soon as she is released from the arms of mama or papa she runs to the water again. Only a few months ago she was frightened when had to go into the water and now?, she has changed by 180 degrees.
Next stop on our journey down the West Indies is the island of Dominica. Not to be mixed up with the Dominican Republic further northwest, Dominica is situated between the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. It's only 25miles to be covered from the Iles de Saintes to the harbour of Portsmouth on Dominica. But we were unlucky to have a southeastern wind and so we had to tack and fight against 2-3m waves. Luckily Lena is sleeping most of the time, she felts asleep just after having lifted up our anchor. It seems that she likes the movement of the ship even when there are high waves or the engine is running. In our berths we are rolling from one site to the other, we can hardly get some sleep and get up with backpain and and Lena even seems to sleep more when we are sailing. After 5 hours of rough sailing we finally reached Portsmouth situated in the Prince Ruppert Bay. Before having dropped our anchor the first boatboys came up to sell some fruits or arrange a tour on the Indian river. Its very luxurious to get fresh bread at 8 o'clock delivered right to your boat or buy some bananas as Lena likes this fruit and eats as much as 6 of them on one day. So her parents are always on the run for new bananas. The boatboys also take rubbish with them and all for small money. They also take a “No Thanks” without any hassle and are always very friendly.
Just after having dropped our anchor we get ashore to the second largest town/village with only 5000 inhabitants. At customs we are surprised again by very easy paperworks. Clearing in and out is done at the same time and gives you two weeks of allowance. So if you want to leave just leave and if you want to stay longer, go to customs again and extend your allowance.
It's Eastern in a few days! And so we are getting prepared for this feast and are buying lots of eggs, boil and colour them. In addition Evi is baking a pineapple cake. Hiding boiled and coloured eggs is an old German habit but we are not hiding them as we are not willing to find them again weeks later with fungus on them or having them rolling somewhere in our boat. Lena likes the bright coloured eggs and cries „ball, ball, ball!“. She likes it when we break the shell at each others heads and likes to eat the shell and not the egg itself. We had no lamb on Eastern but a very tasty creole dish consisting of pies, sweet potatoes, cooking bananas, pineapple, curry and honey. We had fresh squeezed guava jucie with rum to drink.
How are Dominicans celebrating Eastern? There are no Easterneggs or Easterrabbits here as these are old German habits. So they are having big party on the beaches. Big party means very loud music, dancing and lot of alcohol. But this kind of arrhythmic noise lasts till 4 o'clock in the morning and we believe it not to be connected with music at all. Are we getting to old? Even on our boat the noise is so loud that we can hardly understand each other when talking in normal voices, although we have anchored several hundred meters away from shore. Getting some sleep was a tough task and we were glad when Eastern was over and the noise/music has come to an end.
Dominica is said to be one of the most beautiful island in the Caribbean Sea and so we rented a car for two days to take a tour around this mountains island. Dominica is 50km long and only 25km in width, green hills and mountains, huge tropical trees, lots of waterfalls for swimming, with one word: a paradise for hiking. Driving on the left side has to be learnt and the condition of the roads are not the best ones. Lots of potholes on the tiny and winding roads make it advisable not to drive in the night. Sometimes we stop and put Lena on papas back and are wandering a short hike. As Lena is getting close to 12kg we can't carry her longer than one hour. We like this island and it's friendly people and promise to come back next year when we will cruise down the Antilles Islands again. Also the rowing ride on the Indian River and visiting Fort Shirley at Portsmouth are part of our sightseeing program. Fort Shirley is worth visiting as it is under renovation and is located just above Prince Rupper Bay and provides beautiful views on the bay. Lena likes running around in the ruins and has lots of stone to collect and carry them to her parents.
Life would be really boring if we would not have a To-Do-List and this one is growing every day. Today a new item has made it right to the top, the thermostat of the fridge has stopped working and either the fridge is getting as warm as 30° or it's freezing inside. So we let the fridge run for one hour and than switched of the fuse for 3 hours. But the lettuce looked really good when it was frozen, but got flabby when defrosted. But on Dominica it is really impossible to get a spare one, so we postponed this for Martinique.
After 9 days we decided to go further south to Martinique. We were very sure on leaving when we saw a watersnake swimming right next to our ship. You probably will not die when bitten but it said to be very painful. The locals told us that lots of these watersnakes are living at the bottom of the sea and getting to the surface to breath air. As it was saturday we got to the local market and stocked up on bananas and grapefruits. The later ones are incredible cheap here. „Morgi“ who made it to Portsmouth the day before will stay a bit longer and we will meet again at the Anse Mitan in Martinique in a couple of days. We received lots of warnings on crime activity here in Dominica but we felt very save and the locals assured us that the crimes are a problem of the past. The anchorage was swelly on some days but the friendly people and the beautiful landscape made Dominica unforgettable for us.
Early evening we are lifting our anchor for the nightsail to Martinique. We had to motor for the first 20 miles as we were on the lee side of the island and had no winds at all. As Oskar our selfsteering device was in Germany but already repaired, we had to steer by hand, we missed him! But 5 hours of constantly steering by hand can be very exhausting. But leaving the lee of Dominica we had wind and were able to sail the leg to Martinique except when we got into the lee of Martinique and had to motor again. Sailing was 5bft from east and we had to go southeast, so we put one reef into the mainsail and asked Fridolin our windvanesteering to get us to Martinique. At 5:30am we arrived at the anchorage of St. Pierre and the captain went to bed and the rest of the crew got up half an hour later. 11 hours of continuously watch made him tired!
St. Pierre is a really nice town at the northwestern coast of Martinique and once was it's capital till 8th May 1902 when it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption of Mont Pelée killing over 30,000 people except one prisoner in his gravelike cell. There's a museum and some ruins left which remind you on this tragedy. Nowadays St. Pierre has only 6,000 inhabitants, less than a fifth of the former population. We put Lena into her buggy and walked through the streets.
Although it was Sunday we were able to clear customs. We went to a Internetcafe and the friendly lady did all the paperwork with us. Really easy compared to our hassle in Guadeloupe where we were not able to clear with customs for more than one week. In the afternoon we went to the beach and on the next day we left for Anse Mitan further south where we had an appointment with „La Gitana“ and „Morgi“.
Dominica is missing beaches but here in the southern part of Martinique there are plenty of them, as white as snow, with palmtrees all around and well protected bays. Anse Mitan is well populated with sailing vessels, app. 50 are always anchoring and so lots of dinghies are running around. But as we are close to Fort de France, a public boat is going there twice an hour, and the beach is ideal for Lena we have chosen this place.
On the first day Lena has made friend with Fanny, a blonde French girl only one day younger than her. Fanny is living with her parents on a catamaran and have one year time. A child at the same age as Lena although her parents are from France, they speak English very well. Most the families we met up to now had children at the age of 4 or older. Lena likes playing around with Fanny in the warm and shallow water and even forgets that she is tired. As Fanny and her parents will go south till Grenada the next two months we hopefully will give both children the opportunity to play again from time to time.
A few days later „La Gitana“ and „Morgi“ are coming to join us. But only for a couple of days, as Volker and Michaela are cruising with his parents for one week and Claudia and Edgar want to go to Tobago keys as soon as possible. We were invited to sit together and have some beer or wine on „La Gitana“ but only Stephan could join, as Lena was already sleeping and Evi had to keep an eye on her. To start earlier would make things for us much more easier and comfortable. To take Lena with us at app. 7Pm is no problem and than she falls asleep and we get her back onto „Mimpi Manis“ where falling asleep after the short waking up is no problem. But to wake her up after one hour of sleep to go to another boat, make her sleep again and the same procedure again 3 hours later, she won't like it.
Tomorrow is first of May and we are sitting in the cockpit, writing on this website and suddenly we realize that tonight in Germany lots of people are on the streets to make use of the possibility to ply pranks on others. What about changing some dinghies, make knots into anchor lines, block through hull fittings, cut through rails, ...? But there are not many German boats left and will our French, English and American neighbours understand these jokes? We do not want to know and so we staid with our wine in the cockpit.
May: It's now exactly one year that we set sails for the first time in Slovenia for the trip to Greece. How fast time is moving! We have covered more than 8600miles, nearly 6000 of them under sail and the rest motoring. Although we had days with bad weather we did not encounter a dangerous storm. But the wind was not always favourable and tended to blow from the wrong direction especially when sailing in the Mediterranean sea. So for sailing one year we set new flags as the old ones were thumbed and faded, no sewing would have helped us. A new German flag at the stern and a Bavarian flag right below the left saling.
On second of May, as the first of May is a holiday even here in the Caribbean Sea we rented a car and drove across this green island. But why did we choose a rainy day for this trip? A shower every now and then and so we did not do any hiking as the paths were muddy and we had no intention to walk in the rain and have a lookout at clouds moving up a hill. So we went into a rummuseum and stocked up our rumsupplies with a 4.5l pack.
After 10 days in Anse Mitan we lifted our anchor out of the sand and motored to St. Anne a small village further south with beautiful sandy beaches. We stayed there for a couple of days and did a daytrip to Le Marin to stock up our food supplies. A „Leader Price“ (a discounter supermarket)has it's own dinghy dock and is well known with sailors to be well stocked and cheap. As we are going further south and some kind of food is pretty expensive there or just unavailable (e.g. beer, cheese, sausages, yoghurt, milk, ...) we bought two huge shopping carts full of food and transported it with our dinghy to „Mimpi Manis“. Our dinghy managed to carry everything without sinking and Lena had the opportunity to sit on 4 trays of beer.
Next island we stopped was St. Lucia only 25 miles south of Martinique. But instead of the promised NE we had no wind in the morning and than SE. So once again we had to tack and bank and „Mimpi Manis“ heaved and set. So all bulkheads were tightly closed and the air inside was getting bad quick. Lena decided to make the best and slept most of the time we were sailing. This is making sailing easy for us. So whenever it suits we sail during the night and Lena falls asleep quickly and wakes up when we have reached our destination. Or for shorter legs we sail while she is having here little nap around noon.
After 5 hours of sailing we finally arrive in Rodney Bay in the northern part of St. Lucia. Having dropped the anchor we went to customs and immigration and strolled around to get an overview of the new country we have just arrived. Our shopping list has grown in length and lists items like fans for the berths as it can become very hot and stuffy when there is no wind blowing or we have to close bulkheads and hatches while on sea. Also our old laptop has stopped working and Stephan was not able to fix it. It works well for anything between 1 second and several hours but than suddenly the screen gets black and all data are lost. As it is more than 7 years old it does not make any sense to have it repaired. Maybe we can sell it to a museum. As St. Lucia is a duty free zone for foreigners we went to Castries the capital and got off the minibuses every now and then to check shopping malls and computer stores. After hours of searching we finally got one, although not this cheap as we had thought. But now the hard work starts as Stephan had to transfer all data from the old to the new one. After several hours he finally succeeded and was able to transfer all data. It's good having someone with you who knows on dealing with computers. Working on the computer now makes fun as it is a pretty fast one and the screen is bigger too. The old one only had 32MB of RAM, the new one 512MB!
After having bought all the stuff we needed and got a refill of our gascontainer we moved to the nearby bay at Pigeon Island. Pigeon Island was a former site of a English fort and used to be an island till during the second world war a causeway was constructed. Nowadays it is a peninsula and on the southern side of the causeway a huge hotel is located as fine sandy beaches invite for swimming. Not far away a small bar/restaurant provides inexpensive meals and WLAN free of charge. What else does a sailor need? Sandy beaches, a calm anchorage, WLAN, ... Once we climbed the 120m high hill to get a good view of Rodneys Bay and the surrounding.
We left Rodney Bay for other destinations south. After 10 miles we reached Marigot Bay, to be said one of the most beautiful bays in the Caribbean Sea. We are disappointed as a huge hotel complex is in a final state of becoming ready with all the noise and dust of a construction site. Also the mangroves make for a dirty water and in the night when wind calms down mosquitoes are finding their way into our boat. But we are lucky and can fight them with our fans and mosquito coils. After only two night we leave the bay and head for the marine nationalparc at the pitons. Marigot Bay may have been a sailors dream not far ago, but we were happy to leave it.
The pitons are a landmark of St. Lucia and you can see them symbolized in the flag of St. Lucia. Those remnants of volcanic activity are app. 770m high and start right from the sea. As it is a nationalparc you are not allowed to anchor but to use a mooring boye. Also you have to tell customs if you intend to stay there and a special permit will be issued. We stay there two days before we leave for Bequia. On the first day a „Coast Guard“ speedboat comes up and checks our passports, permits, ships papers, ... those guy were really friendly and one of them was joking with Lena. They also had lots of questions on the equipment of „Mimpi Manis“ and after 15 minutes they went of really satisfied.
We also left St. Lucia and headed for Bequia (pronounced Bek Way) in the State of “St. Vincent and the Grenadines”. As this leg is 70miles we decided to sail during night. Usually winds are lighter during night and Lena is sleeping anyway, so sailing is less stress. For the first couple of hours we are motoring against a current of up to 3 knots resulting in a speed of only 2-3 knots over ground. Later on the current solwed down to 1-1.5 knots and we are able to sail without using the engine. 13 hours later we arrive at Bequia early in the morning. Just after having moored at a buoy we had breakfast and then got ashore for seeing customs and immigration. We also went to the market to get some bananas, other greenstuff and bread. Here at Admiralty Bay in front of Pot Elizabeth, the capital of Bequia, lots of sailing yachts are anchored or moored to a buoy, must be more than 100 yachts! Lots of Liveaboards and Charteryachts meet here at the gateway to the Grenadines, especially to the Tobago Cays. But before leaving we want to take a closer look at this only 18squarekilometer measuring island and also getting some sleep.
Next morning we chartered a pick-up taxi to take us to a turtle-farm on the northeastern tip of Bequia. We and especially Lena can see Green Turtles and Hawkbill Turtles living there. As soon as they get out of their nests on the beaches they are collected and feed at the farm for 5 years to give them a much better chance to survive. Most of the baby turtles do not survive the first weeks or months as they are helpless against attacking birds and fishes. Turtles can become as old as 200 years and lay their first eggs at the age of 25. Lena is running around the different pools of the turtles and gets frightened when a turtle is lifting her head and staring at her. Especially the small bays, only two months old are her favourite.
For the evening we had a sundowner at the Frangipani, a pleasant and peaceful beachbar. Lena is running up and down the beach looking for mussels, stones, ... and we have some smalltalk with other long-term sailors. We only drive back to “Mimpi Manis” when Lena falls asleep on the wooden bank we are sitting on.
Next morning right after sunrise we lift our anchor and set course for the Tobago Cays with their turquoise water and white sandy beaches. On the way we make a short stop at the former whaling island of Petit Nevis where still remnants of the whaling station can be seen. Scottish whaler settled here about mid of 19th century. There is still some whaling here, but only two whales a year are hunted and the meat is divided within the community of Bequia. Easiest method is to catch a baby whale and then the mother who would not leave her baby alone. Hunting is still performed with small rowing boats and the harpoon driven by man and not a gun. The same method is described by Herman Melville in his novel “Moby Dick”.
Staying on “Petit Nevis” for only a short time we left for the leg to the Tobago Cays, a 25miles sail. Having nice wind from the side makes for an averagespeed of 6 knots. Sailing like is this real fun and Lena is taking her nap in the cockpit on a blanket on the leebench. It's much cooler out here as the dinghy is tied to the foredeck and so the hatches are closed and the air inside is stuffy. Lena is grabbing her cow called “Resy” a comforter and 5 minutes later she's snoring next to us. She only wakes up when we take down sails and run the last mile using the engine. After 4 ½ hours we reach the Tobago Cays and we are fascinated by the colours, water is dark blue to turquoise green and the beach is white with coconut trees behind. A reef good for snorkelling, lots of wind to cool our boat inside and make lot of electricity with our windgenerator, no waves, ... anything else someone needs to stay here for a couple of days or even weeks? The surrounding islands are not inhabitat and so boat boys bring bread, fish, or whatever someone likes. And those guys are really friendly and helpful, although some guidebooks say that they can be unfriendly and rude. “La Gitana” and “Morgi” arrived here one day earlier and so we drop anchor close to them.
We enjoyed the beautiful and sunny days while bathing in the water, building sand castles with Lena, playing volleyball, snorkelling and watching Volker trying to kite. We also had a nice barbecue on the beach while celebrating Michaela's birthday enjoying a sundowner, salads, red wine, chocolatecake and loud music! Lena was sleeping right next to us despite the music and the blaring sailors.
After one week anchoring in the Cays we lift up our anchor and motor to the small island of Mayreau, only 3 miles away. Sailing here means motoring as the distances between the islands are just too short to make it good for sailing. For the time we would need to uncover the sails, set sails, get them down again and cover them, we can motor the whole distance. So we use our motor frequently and produce water and electricity while getting from one island to the next. Mayreau is inhabitat, but only 500 people are living there and so it only takes you some minutes to walk from one end of the village to the other. Some small "supermarkets", restaurants and only one road connecting the two bays of "Saline Bay" at the southern tip of the island and "Salt Whistle Bay" on the northern tip. It's very quite here, no noise, clean and calm water, sandy beaches, ... There's also a volleyball playfield at the beach with a net hanging at the right height. So Evi, Volker (from "La Gitana" and Edgar and Claudia (both "Morgi") are playing beach Volley ball. Settling down here? No, the island is just too small and there's no possibility to live outside the village or go for cinema to the next town as Clifton on Union Island is not much bigger and the next cinema would be in Kingstown (80 miles north) or Grenada (85 miles south). But we like this island and it's hard to lift up anchor and go further south but we need to be in Grenada at the beginning of June for the start of the World Soccer Championship.
Palm Island, a small island with only a hotel on and white sandy beaches nearly all around the island and palmtrees one next to the other but the anchorage is very windy and tidal currents are shifting us around. Next stop is Union Island where we can stock up our greenstuff, check emails and weather forecast on the internet and check out with customs and immigration. Petit St. Vincent is our next stop for only one night. A hotel is located here but the beaches are free for everyone who gets ashore, although you should not walk around some parts of the island, especially were the cottages are situated. Petit Martinique is on our way to Carriacou and we stop there to fill up our diesel (260l) and gasoline (60l for our outboard) as it is a pretty cheap place to do this. From Petit Martinique we head for Hillsborough on Carriacou to check in with customs and immigration. We have now entered the state of Grenada. Next stop on the same day is Sandy Island for a short swim and playing with Lena on the beach. For the night we moved on to Tyrell Bay. Lots of boats are anchoring here but none we have seen up to now, except one. For the last days we hopped from one small island to the next and enjoyed white sandy beaches, turquoise waters and promised to come back next season. Lena likes playing on the sandy beaches and swimming in the water. She sometimes even brings one swimming trousers to indicate that she likes go swimming now.
By the way, Lena is testing here borders! Does "NO" really mean "NO"??? She likes sitting on the table and when mama or papa are telling here to get down again she's just shaking here had. She also loves painting, especially on everything else than here painting book. No pad, table, newspaper, book is really save. Here third favourite leisure-time occupation is to play with water. This includes all type of drinks we serve her. As soon as she has drunken enough she likes to empty the glass onto the table or floor and play with the liquid, no matter if it's pure water, milk or fruit juice. She's so quick on this that we have no chance at all to stop her. Or she throws food or her comforter into the half filled glass and looks if it's swimming or drowning and how it tastes after it had a short swim. You ever tried this yourself with cheese, sausages, bread, noodles, ...? It' s enough to drive us mad sometimes! We hope that these games will stop soon and that all other children must have had a similar phase during they grew up. While having any meal we always have a sponge at hand to be prepared for any joke of her. Since a few days she has developed a new game: throwing over board! Her comforter, glass, clothes pegs, .... Her comforter was immediately far away due to the strong current when we realized that she had thrown it over board. Stephan nevertheless jumped into the dinghy and picked it up again luckily several hundred meters away. Lena was happy to get it back again only to throw it away immediately after the rescue. This time Stephan jumped into the water to the comforter back again. We locked it away for the next hours till she went to bed! She didn't like being without a comforter but we played it hard this time.
Finally we arrived in Carriacou, a island north of Grenada. We cleared customs and immigration there and Lena flirted with the officers. Only a few officers can resist her waving, so it's not much of a hassle as other yachts report from time to time. Seems we always meet the friendly officers. Carriacou is a friendly island with people saying hello when you pass them. We will relax here and wait for fair sailing weather before we sail on to Grenada, a 40 miles leg.
June: Hurricane Season has started officially! So we have to be careful and be check weather forecasts regularly. As long as we have WiFi it is no problem at all, start up the computer, hook onto the internet and check the weather sites. But there are anchorages without WiFi! What to do if a hurricane comes up to us and we are right in his intended path? There are a couple of so called hurricane holes here in Grenada, especially Port Egmont. But Tobago and Trinidad does not have a secure anchorage and if a hurricane hit there it will be a run either to Grenada or Venezuela (Laguna Grande). But up to now we are not in danger (September is said to be the month with the highest risk). Grenada was long time (more than 50 years) a secure island and regarded to be off the hurricane belt. Since 2004 when Ivan hit Grenada and Emily in 2005 hit Carriacou this attitude has changed. Especially Ivan has made lot of damage to the island and destroyed much of the fruit plantationes and uncovered houses. So insurance companies have changed their statues and now some regard Trinidad as a save place and others go as far south as 10deg North (that's almost Brazil!). But as we do not have a insurance we can stay wherever we like and only need to be on the watch. 2006 is regarded to be a season with a hurricane risk above normal level and the first tropical storm (called Alberto) has gone over Florida well north of us. Trade wind disturbances can easily become a “Tropical Wave” and those are the start of a “Tropical Storm” or a “Hurricane”. A “Tropical Storm” and a “Hurricane” are easily to be distinguished, as a “Tropical Storm” has a windspeed of less than 12Bft and a “Hurricane” of more than 12 Bft (63m/h or 120km/h). The difference is not much of an interest for an sailor, as above 50kn (app. 80Km/h) you should not be out on the sea or at an anchorage not well protected. Windspeed is not the worst problem, but the waves generated by theses storms are. Waves up to 6m can shake you at your anchorage and make damage to your ship. Hopefully we do stay clear of those storms!
As hurricane season has started, rainy season also has. Here in the tropics there are two seasons, one with lots of rain (12 rainy days a month, dry season) and one with even more (22 rainy days a month, rainy season). So going ashore starts with a look at the sky and an estimation when it will start raining. It is not wise to be in the dinghy and realize that it starts raining as it is just a matter of seconds that you are soaked. Stephan even started to built a device to collect rainwater (good enough for the washing machine and showering). Doing laundry should be timed with a dry day to avoid that your clothes are more soaked in the evening than directly taken out of the machine. Or you are running onto deck to get your clothes into the dry just before a shower and hang them up again. This can be a dayfilling job as showers are frequent.
At beginning of June we have arrived on Grenada, the so called spice island. Sailing down from Carriacou was easiest as we had fine winds from the back and we were much faster than planned. So we skipped the stop at Ile de Ronde and continued to St. George's, the capital of Grenada. There's a lagoon at St. George's with muddy water and ideal for all those sailors coming here. A huge shichandler (Islandwaterworld), a supermarket, the Grenada Yacht Club, they are all located here and have a jetty for dinghies. And to top it all, there's Wifi without charge, so we can email, skype and check the internet 24h a day or till Lena stops us! The centre of St. George's is only a short walk away or take a minibus. On Saturday a well stocked market takes place and fresh fruits and other greenstuff are available at reasonable prices. Also lots of spices are available and Grenada is called the “Spice Island” for its production of nutmeg (30% of world production just after Indonesia), cacao, cinnamon, ... But unfortunately it is getting more difficult to buy “european” greenstuff like brokkoli, cauliflower, ...so we switch to the local ones: Okras, Calaloo, Eggplant, Ignames, Batatas, Christophines, cooking bananas, ... So we are getting used to new dishes like: noodle gratin with leek and cooking bananas, creol vegetable stew a al Mimpi Manis, mashed Igname with Red Snapper, chicken breast in mango-red wine-cocosmilk, batatacake with rum (not for anyone below 18 as Evi has taken 200ml instead of 20ml of rum). Stephan and Lena are eating everything, even when it is not this tasty as it 's supposed to be, lucky Evi.
While walking through St. George's you still can see damages done by Ivan and/or Emily, roofs are missing or the building has collapsed completely. Taking a look at the national museum (2h are enough) we learn about the flora, fauna, geography and history of Grenada. In 1983 Grenada made it into the headlines when the US-invasion took place. By the way, just when paying admission to the national museum a couple come up to us and asked us: “you are the penguin boat, right?” Those two were following us since Antigua and always held a strong lookout for us. We remembered to have seen their boat too, as it is red with a turquoise stripe on each side, not a colour combination seen often. “Steuerbert” on the right bow and “Backbert” on the left make for lots of photos as other sailors tell us. “We like penguins and took some pictures of your penguins!” It seems that all sailors between San Maarten and Grenada know the “Penguin boat”. No one knows that our boat is called “Mimpi Manis”, we are just the “Penguin Boat”.
After a few days we are leaving St. George's although it is a nearly ideal anchorage as everything you need is pretty close. But in the night it gets hot inside our boat as no wind is blowing and the smell from the muddy lagoon water does not suit everyone. And there is just no place Lena can swim, even a pool at the yacht club is missing! So we head for Prickly Bay at the southside of Grenada, with winds even in the night, clean water, sandy beaches, a few restaurants, a Minimaket, a shipchandler, sailmaker, frequent buses to St. George's, Wifi (50$US per month), a Sports Bar showing all games of the Soccer World Championship, ... Unfortunately it is a bit roly here but all the other positive aspects make it worth anchoring here, We intended to be in Tobago for the Soccer World Championship but Grenada is a more convenient point for receiving equipment. So we stay here for a couple of weeks and wait for our two parcels (seacharts from the US and a SSB transceiver with antennatuner from Germany). We have lot of time and spend most of it watching football at the Bananas Sports Bar. A fever has spread and Stephan got infected by Evi. Even Lena seems to suffer from it, she cries “goal” and “ball” and plays with her ball at the Sportsbar. So every day we watch at least one game or up to three if possible. The looser of our private bets must organize a “typical” German dish, “Wiener Schnitzel with potato-salad”.
What to do when there's no footballmatch on TV? Going back to our boat? No, there's a small hotel pretty close, just a few minutes to walk from the Bananas. At the hotel there are two pools and a playground we are free to use any time we like. Lena can get rid of all her power she has and Mama and Papa can relax in one of the deck-chairs. Diving into the water from the side, using the slight leading into the water, ... Most of the time we are meeting other sailors with their kids. After two hours of romping Lena usually falls asleep when going back to the “Bananas” for the second or third match of the day.
For watching the matches we usually go to the Bananas Sports Bar and in between we head for the True Blue Hotel just 10 minutes walk away. At the True Blue Hotel are two swimming pools with several slights, deckchairs, ... and a small playground for Lena. Admission is free for everyone! Lena can dive into the water, use the slights and the toys at the playground or just stay in the water and relax. Lots of other children are here and so it's seldom quite but Lena has some comrades to play with. After 2 hours of running around she usually falls asleep while walking back and so we can watch the second game without watching here the whole time.
We are very regular at the Bananas Bar, the staff already knows us and some play with Lena when they have some time! 1 to 3 games a day if Lena allows. Every day we are missing the possibility to to join the parties held all over Germany, we are really envy you. But football/soccer is not one of the national sports here. Cricket is! So only for the matches “Trinidad & Tobago” some locales come too and then the atmosphere here gets really hot. At every possibility they play the song “I ama soca warrior”, the Trini-team call themselves “Soca Warrior”. The crowd begins to dance and playing even with Sweden was regarded as a win. Only in 1938 Cuba was able to get this far in a world championship as the first Caribbean team ever and now Trinidad, a dwarf when it comes down to football. Atmosphere in Trinidad must be hell and we are sorry not to be there at the moment.
Certainly we watch the German matches and wish them to win all of of them. The whole German fanclub on the yachts anchoring in or near St. George's was invited to watch the match Germany versus Poland at Uschi. Uschi is the local Trans Ocean Officer on Grenada and living on this island for more than 20 years now. As she likes to speak German from time to time she invited all of us to come to here house, watch the match and have a BBQ afterwards. We certainly met again lots of friends, like the “Morgi”, “Seezigeuner”, even Gerd and Wilma from “Aquila” were here. We last met them in Agadir 9 months ago and lost traces since may when we learnt that they are still in the Caribean Sea. Also Roland and Petra from “Avalon” joined the party we meet them every couple of months since the Liparic Islands in August last year. After the “last minute goal” against Poland we celebrated the early qualification of Germany for the next round. It was indeed a nice evening, many thanks to Uschi.
Wow, we never thought that the team of Klinsman will make it this far in the World Champion Ship and they are playing a really nice football. 3 wins in the qualifying and then the they win against Sweden like if there are no Swedish guys on the playfield! And their last match against Argentina, it was worse than watching a thriller. Equalization only in the 80th minute and than the penalty shoot out, our hands were wet from sweating. But they made it and kicked out the Gauchos. Atmosphere at the Bananas is getting better the closer the final! Lots of Expats now join in for the matches of their favourites. English, French, Italian, Americans, Germans and of course the locals and all of them are sure that their team will win, except the Americans and the Trini-fans who had realized that their team has missed the semi-final. After the match Germany-Argentina we took our German flag and waved it all over in the anchorage when motoring an extra round with our dinghy, but no other sailor seem to be interested in the football world championship. We are looking forward to a clear win against Italy in the semifinal on Tuesday 4th of July.
Although we do not like to miss any of the matches and some of us got really addicted (especially Evi) we had some time for a trip to the Concord waterfalls. 5 Adults, 6 kids (21 months to 7 years) from three different boats and nationalities (German, Dutch and English) rented a taxi to get to the parking lot at the falls and than hiked up for one hour. The small path is leading through green lush vegetation with some nutmeg trees or cows. Several times a river has to be forded and for the last part we had to use the river as the path to get to the falls itself. This last part of the path was not visible to us as hurricane Ivan has made lots of damages to paths and has changed the rivers bringing so much of rain, so we rented a local farmer as a guide for the last 20 minutes climb. Without him we would not managed it as there was really no path and we would have turned as the waterfalls are not to be seen since you really reached them and the path was very exhausting even for the adults. Lena and Rebecca (2.5 years) had the easiest part as they were carried on the back of her father or mother. Having reached the top we took a swim in the “cold” water and started to climb down after half an hour. We were so lucky to reach a shelter at the parking lot just in time before a thunderstorm started and bringing lots of rain. Climbing down while raining is not one of the things we like to do as the muddy path would become a river itself and none of us had walking shoes but only sandals. After the rain has come to a stop we walked down for another half an hour to the mainroad, got on a bus and drove back to St. George's. We enjoyed the 3 hours of being in nature and learning lots of interesting stuff on the plants, especially the nutmeg. Being in St. George's again Evi headed for the TV at the Yachtclub and the kids romped through its premises.
Coming back to the dinghy jetty at Prickly Bay at 6pm we couldn't believe our eyes, our dinghy was locked under the jetty. While low water is was ducked below and got jammed as water has risen again. There was no way we could get it out at the moment except destroying the jetty, we had to wait till water falls to get it out again. So we started to wait and had dinner at “de big fish” a restaurant located on the jetty. But even after dinner at 8pm there was no real fall of the water visible. Our neighbour from the yacht “Dreamcatcher” made the same experience just one day before and offered to drive back Evi and Lena to “Mimpi Manis”. Lena was very tired of the long walks today and it even was her usual time to go to bed now. Stephan stayed for another couple of beers and waited till 11:30pm till he could get out the dinghy again. But at that time he still had to bleed some of the air of the tubes, let in some water and than stand on the tubes to get it out from below. Coming home to “Mimpi Manis” he went to bed directly after this exhausting day.
It's a pity that “Orion” is leaving so soon after having made friends with them. Pieter and Arjanne with their daughter Hedwig (4) and son Leendert (7) are heading for Venezuela. Will we meet again somewhere out on the sea or in a bay? Also Monica and Gerard with 3 kids from „Clarabella“ are leaving. They are heading for Trinidad to do some repairs on their boat. We also want to go to Venezuela but first we are heading for Tobago. We probably arrive in Venezuela in October or November and “Orion” will be at the ABC Islands at that time already. But who knows if we keep to our plans or change them frequently like we did in the last months. We have learnt that the world and especially the seas are small and you meet sailors again you would not even have dreamt of.
We also are thinking of where to stay during summer. Trinidad, Tobago, Venezuela or Grenada? There seems to exist no ideal location. Grenada was considered hurricansafe till 2004 since Ivan has hit and in 2005 Emily hit again Grenada. Trinidad an Tobago have no really secure anchorages in case a tropical storm or hurricane hits. Although the risk is small there have been hurricanes hitting those islands in the last century and NOAA is predicting a highly active season! Venezuela is still far off the hurricantracks but there we would have to deal with a high criminality with the risk of being robbed at a gunpoint. But the Grenadines are not safe also, as proofed by the burglary on “La Gitana” at Petit St. Vincent. But on the other hand we are making experiences we have never dreamt of. While changing the bus at St. George's we lost our digital camera and a friendly Grenadian picked it up to hand it over to us :”You lost something! Here you are!” We also left behind a floating toy of Lena while getting of the bus at our destination. A few days later when we already had put the floating toy back on our shopping list, a member of the security at the marina walks up to us and asked if this floating toy is ours. The bus driver has returned the next day and left the floating toy at the security post giving them a description of a family with a little girl having left behind it in his bus. Would the same happen to you in Germany or a other place in Europe?
There's not much else to be worth reporting: Our anchor gets settled deeper and deeper in the mud here in Prickly Bay, while there are no football matches we work on our To-Do-list, the sailmaker has stitched some reinforcements on our sails, we try to collect rainwater with a canvas (needs still some improvements) and are getting the feeling of being at home here. But as soon as we believe Prickly Bay not be roly we stayed here to long and we must leave. But this will take some more time as we are still waiting for a parcel from Germany. The seacharts (covering the Pacific Ocean) ordered in the USA have already arrived and thanks to Uschi again it was very easy to get them from FedEx. Customs was cleared by FedEx so we only had to go there and after paying a small fee we could take them home with us. Thanks Uschi for being patient with us and doing all the emailing. Let's hope that the parcel from Germany will be here soon and that it will be easy again to get it.
