{"id":1701,"date":"2013-07-04T22:56:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T02:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tusentakk2.com\/wordpress\/?p=1701"},"modified":"2013-07-04T22:56:18","modified_gmt":"2013-07-05T02:56:18","slug":"grenada-june-22-30-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tusentakk2.com\/wordpress\/2013\/07\/grenada-june-22-30-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Grenada – June 22-30, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

We love Grenada. \u00a0No island feels safer. \u00a0No island has friendlier people. \u00a0Few islands are so free of pesky “boat boy” vendors. \u00a0No island (except perhaps Trinidad) has so many cruiser-oriented activities. \u00a0Terrific hikes: pleasant walks near the anchorages and more challenging treks up in the rain forests. \u00a0Regular “Hash House Harrier” hashes that are popular with locals and cruisers alike. Regularly-scheduled shopping excursions to the malls, banks, grocery stores and chandleries. \u00a0Special nights at the local restaurants. \u00a0Pizza night at the Tiki Bar at Prickly Bay Marina. \u00a0Friendship night at Le Phare Bleu. \u00a0Caribbean cooking classes at True Blue. \u00a0Jam sessions every Sunday at Whisper Cove Marina. \u00a0Hamburger night and pot luck night and movie night at Clarkes Court Bay Marina, which also organizes bi-weekly bocci tournaments, and on the off weeks, cricket games for all comers, even ignorant Americans. \u00a0(For a glimpse of burger night, in a YouTube production we had nothing to do with, click here<\/a>.) \u00a0Occasional “dinghy concerts” in the middle of Clarkes Court Bay, with the audience arriving by free ferry service and sitting on a huge barge, or arriving by dingy and listening from their own vessels.<\/p>\n

We feel most at home in the scenic and tranquil anchorage at Hog Island, which we had learned about even before first arriving in 2007, courtesy of Ann Vanderhoof’s book “An Embarrassment of Mangos”. \u00a0(She has since authored another: \u00a0“The Spice Necklace”. \u00a0We enthusiastically recommend both. \u00a0Click here<\/a> to see her blog.) \u00a0Through Ann and Steve (Receta<\/em>), who we subsequently met and who we now count as dear friends, we met local Grenadian fishermen Dwight and Stevie, who often stop by on their way back for a chat and a snack. \u00a0Dwight free dives with a speargun to incredible depths, notwithstanding a gimpy leg caused by the bends back when he hunted with scuba. \u00a0Stevie mans the boat, keeping it near Dwight and desperately trying to clean the fish, sea cat (octopus), and lambi (conch) that Dwight brings up. \u00a0On good days he falls far behind on the cleaning so they often finish that job while tied to Tusen Takk II<\/em> before coming aboard. \u00a0On one such day I watched as they cleaned lambi. Stevie had already punched the holes into the shells. \u00a0Now, Stevie was removing the lambi from their shells, and they were both cutting away the inedible “stuff” from the denuded lambi. \u00a0Watching Stevie remove the lambi was a revelation; I have spent tens and tens of minutes trying to extract one lambi, alternating between cutting through the hole and turning the shell around to attempt to pull the beast out. \u00a0Nope, stuck. \u00a0Try some more cutting. \u00a0Then try some more pulling. \u00a0Darn. \u00a0He has retreated in so far that I can no longer grasp his foot. \u00a0Several times I have had to give up and just bash the entire shell in order to extract the “good” part. \u00a0Stevie, on the other hand, gives one brief punch with his knife into the hole in the shell, and then turns the shell around so that the lambi can fall out of its own accord! \u00a0(See the series of pictures below to see one such removal.) \u00a0So adept is Stevie at this operation that he can even perform it when he is dog tired. \u00a0The pictures of the extraction were taken on a day when Stevie had been up until 4 AM celebrating a friend’s birthday. \u00a0Later, after coming aboard and a little snack, he fell sound asleep in his chair.<\/p>\n

Barb did some noodling with the “girls” in Hog Island, but preferred to join me in noodling behind TT2<\/em>. \u00a0 “Join”, as in dragging\u00a0me out to the water by my ear. \u00a0You may have noticed the dear girl is growing her hair out. \u00a0She asked me to document her progress on the eve of a visit to a hairdresser for a slight trim — see her portrait below.<\/p>\n

One afternoon while we were lounging in the cockpit with Dwight and Stevie, Hunter and Devi swam by our boat on the way to their own. \u00a0I grabbed a snapshot to document the occasion: they were just finishing a swimming circumnavigation (1 3\/4 miles) around the whole of Hog Island! \u00a0(Perhaps this helps readers to see why Barb and I are taking swimming lessons from Hunter!<\/p>\n\n\t\t