Grenada
Grenada comprises three inhabited islands - Grenada itself, Carriacou and
Petite Martinique - plus a number of small cays and reefs.

The sail from Union Island to Hillsborough, the main town on Carriacou, took less
than two hours. After anchoring and dinghying in, we walked up the main street to
first clear in through Immigration, located inside the police station. There were
more Immigration officers on duty than there were policemen, and each seemed
to have a very specialized role in the process. One gave us the form to fill out,
another checked and corrected our work, then a third checked and recorrected
the second's work. Next, the by-now, presumably correctly filled-in form was
passed to a fourth, who stamped and signed it along with our passports. There
were two other people in the room who observed the process but didn't add value;
we assume they were Quality Control inspectors. All were very friendly throughout;
in fact, we had a nice discussion about the best technique for dreading Jay's hair.
One offered to braid it for him on the spot, but Jay didn't want to go through that
painful process again.

Then it was back to Customs, at the head of the town dock. We had to awaken a
snoozing officer who was reclined at a desk under a large sign that read
"Customs." He growled at us for disturbing his nap and sent us up a rickety flight
of stairs to a small, air conditioned room occupied by a very large desk and an
even larger woman, who handled our paperwork and collected a small fee.

Finally, off to the Port Captain, who had us wait 15 minutes while he chatted with
his girlfriend, then collected one copy of the Customs form.
Now that the legalities were out of the way, we strolled around
Hillsborough, stopping in at the museum and picking up a few
supplies at the grocery. We didn't find this town to our liking,
though, so we returned to Dakota Rose and motored around
the point to Tyrell Bay, on the southwest corner of Carriacou.
Entering Tyrell Bay
We spent a full day scuba diving in Carriacou, with a wreck dive
in the morning, a drift dive in the afternoon and a night reef dive,
after which we met up with the dive shop people at the Lambi
Queen, a local restaurant hosting a 12-piece, all-girl steel band.
Bongo, the boat driver for our dives, sat in with the band playing
his djimbe drum, and Jay sat in on Bongo's spare drum. The next
day there were no dives scheduled in the afternoon, so Bongo
and Jay took our dinghy and went spearfishing out by The
Sisters, a pair of rocks about a mile offshore.
Spearguns in the rubber dinghy
always make Steve nervous!
A pretty good catch
Leaving Carriacou, we sailed about 11 miles across to Grenada then
down its west coast to St. George's, the capital. About halfway between
the two islands lies Kick'em Jenny, an active, underwater volcano
currently on "yellow" alert status; meaning that there's a 1.5 kilometer
boating exclusion zone around it's peak. Go to www.uwiseismic.com
for more info. We pulled into the Grenada Yacht Club. "Grenada," by
the way, is pronounced with a long "a" in the second syllable, to
differentiate it from the "Grenada" in Spain.
St. George's is a 20 minute walk from the yacht club,
around the bay and over the hill. Yes, it's true,that
church on the hill is roofless ... more on that in a bit ...
Rather than hoofing it over the
hill, we took the easy route
Three major denominations - Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian - built
their cathedrals on the summit of the hill overlooking St. George's and
the harbor. The Greeks might have deemed this hubris, for all three were
smashed, thrashed and trashed by Hurricane Ivan four years ago and
have yet to be rebuilt. (Reminiscent of the U.S. invasion of 1984, many
locals say that Ivan was targeting the churches, the rest of the island
just suffered collateral damage.) Interestingly enough, though, the
Seventh-Day Adventist Church, just down the hill a little ways, came
through the hurricane completely unscathed. Makes one wonder ...
Too lazy to walk back, we took a water taxi
for $5 EC (about $2 U.S.)
There's no escaping the plague! (We mean the cruise
ships, not the cemetery in the foreground.)
We took an all-day tour of the island with Vaughen; below,
we tailgate a bus full of cruise ship passengers (notice how
low it's riding on its springs); right, we hike up through forest
and small farming plots to a waterfall.
Jay takes over camera duty for a while.
Below, wild growing cacao pods. Grenada is known as the
Spice Island because it used to be one of the world's major
producers of nutmeg and mace (different parts of the same nut),
cacao, cinnamon, cloves and other spices. In fact, the
Grenadian flag features a ripe nutmeg fruit, the pulp (used in
jams) bursting to reveal the nut within. Much of this
export-oriented agriculture was destroyed by Ivan ("collateral
damage") and has yet to recover. The estate we hiked through
used to inter-crop cacao and nutmeg, but now it's given over to
small, subsistence vegetable plots.
At the River Antoine Estate they make Rivers Strong Rum,
using the same machinery and methods that were used when
the distillery was established in 1785. A water wheel drives the
cane crusher
Feeding sugar cane into the crusher
After crushing to extract the juice, the cane waste is
dried for use as fuel for the still. The cane juice runs
through an open trough to copper pots for boiling
Open top fermentation tanks
The still.
River Antoine Estate produces about 15,000 bottles of rum
each year, solely for domestic consumption. They offer
two varieties: 150 proof and, for those more inclined to a
milder taste, 138 proof. After a small sample of each, we
drove to Belmont Estate, an operating plantation growing
and processing cacao beans organically for chocolate
and nutmeg. There, as Jay pointed out, we could get a
sugar high as well.
A ripe cacao pod
Fermenting the beans
Mace, the outer husk of a nutmeg nut, drying in the sun.
After fermenting, the cacao beans are dried. Every thirty
minutes they're stirred to prevent clumping and assure even
drying. This is done by women shuffling back and forth
through the beans with their bare feet. Jay took a try. Roofs on
rollers are pulled to cover the drying beans when it rains.
Incredibly, after letting Jay shuffle through drying beans with his
[unwashed] bare feet, "for sanitary reasons" we weren't allowed to
visit the actual chocolate factory. That didn't keep us from buying
some of their output ... pure chocolate, just cocoa juice and sugar,
no milk or other additives. As with the rum, their chocolate comes in
two strengths: 71% cocoa, and 60% cocoa.
Grand Etang, a crater lake  in the
center of Grenada
Grenada is the last of the "new" islands we'll visit on our voyage ...
it's now time to start heading for home.

With summer and the hurricane season approaching, we'll head due west
from Grenada, back to Aruba, which we last visited in November, six
months ago. Jay will fly home from there to (hopefully) get a summer job
before starting as a freshman at University of Denver in the fall. Steve will
continue on to Panama, through the canal, and back up to Golfito, Costa
Rica. There we plan to load Dakota Rose onto a YachtPath ship for
transport up to Ensenada, to complete our 2007-2008 voyage.
Our friend Lei Udell, from Coronado, and the
ever-trusty Russ joined Jay and Steve in Grenada
for the 500 mile sail to Aruba
Intense focus on navigation
After a fast, three-day, downwind sail, Jay
"stands" his final watch of the trip as we head
into Aruba