Life in Prickly Bay

Life in Prickly Bay is good. The morning radio net keeps everyone informed about local events such as Yoga at Secret Harbor, Tai Chi on the beach, Mexican Train dominoes at the Tiki Hut and so on. We enjoyed going to two-for-one pizza night at Prickly Bay Marina, and getting up early to watch the European Formula One Races on the big screen with Jack and Marce on Escape Velocity.

After the Bahamas it's so nice to have normal grocery stores for provisioning.

We got a local SIM card for our iPhone so we had some semblance of being in touch with the rest of the world, did shopping trips to the IGA Supermarket in Spice Island Mall, and enjoyed frozen yogurt on rare occasions.

The high-end Port Louis Marina in St. George's.

In St. George's we explored the posh Port Louis Marina where our friends on Distant Shores were staying, wandered around the various shops, and stopped for delicious baked goods at the British-run Merry Baker.

Just "liming" with friends on the 4th of July.

The Fourth of July was not a big deal here, so we ended up on the beach with the crew from Field Trip and an Australian boat who had less interest in the holiday and more on the party. Locals would have described us as "liming," a local term for just hanging out and doing not much of anything.

When we sailed down from Carriacou it seemed that our genoa was beginning to show it's age. We took it off the boat and into the local sailmaker who wanted $1000 just to repair the leach line area.  Instead we got quotes for a new genoa and settled on using a local rep for Neil Pryde Sails who now builds their sails in the Philippines. We got a fairly good quality sail for one-third the price charged by the top end sailmakers in Seattle. We figured we could replace it three times for the same price.

The problem, however, was we still needed to sail from Grenada to Trinidad for our haul out, a passage of about 80 miles. I had been deathly sick for the previous three days, not getting up out of the sauna we call our bed until I realized time had come to leave for Trini. We had left some buffer time in our departure date but Tropical Storm Chantal pushed the date back about one week, and it was now time to go.

The Queen of the SailRite.

 
We hauled out Meryl's SailRite industrial sewing machine and set up shop on the top of the life raft on the foredeck. Although I was still wiped out from being sick, I helped Meryl wrestle the huge genoa around the deck and feed it into the throat of the machine while she guided the stitching. With some new size 20 needles Meryl did an incredible job sewing a 8 ft. patch along the leach of the sail which proved good enough to get us to Trinidad. We figured we paid for the machine in that single repair job. Trinidad here we come.