Goodbye Grenada, Hello Sint Maarten!

Finally. We have finally sailed somewhere. Like actually sailed somewhere. Not just hoping anchorages where you put out some canvas just because…actually sailing. OMG it feels like it’s been forever. Oh wait….that because it HAS BEEN FOREVER. 

I know, I know…I’m sorry my loved ones in Ontario who can’t really go anywhere right now. I see you and I understand this might solicit an eye roll. Especially now that flights to “sun destinations” have been halted…and here I am sailing between “sun destinations” (which btw have a very low risk of COVID and are much safer than Canada is presently but I won’t digress into my take on how the Canadian government is bungling their COVID response). 

But we HAVE been forever in Grenada and HAS been forever since we’ve had a proper not-just-going-around-the-corner-sail. Forever being a term relative to how long cruisers generally stay in one place per seasons and cruising permits. 

How did this come to be? Well we had been talking and talking and talking for months about what to do in this COVID-cruising environment (i.e. where can we go that won’t cost us thousands of dollars in tests?) but ultimately you can blame (thank?) our water maker. 

This is the grit / scale / mystery stuff that was piled under the watermater :S

Our trusty 20-year old ENWA water maker (Swedish) crapped out on us. And I mean really crapped out on us. End caps  cracked, some crazy grey gravelly looking stuff leaking out all over the bilge, crack down the side of the pressure vessels…not sure when this happened but we’ve noticed throughout December it was hard to get the PPM down to a level that didn’t taste like too much water softener in your cup. We also noticed that when we would test the PPM would jump all over the place…350, then 560, then 310, then 750 then 230….weird. We thought it was the meter but then we looked at the actual equipment and saw that it was over. 

Upon discovering the water maker bust on Jan 4th we immediately checked the weather and had a fast conversation with our friends on S/V Bliss and together made the call to leave literally the next day for the best place we knew of to get the parts we needed. The weather window we were looking for was E or maybe even SE but SE is rare this time of year. Basically we wanted to avoid a NE beat for 3 days. When we checked Monday the weather (according to Predict Wind) indicated that is was going to hold until about Thursday night and then start to break down and winds would build out of the NE. Honestly we were grateful for the window and that is was the next day. Now or never…well not “never” but when the Christmas trades kick up you can easily be stuck somewhere in 30knots for 2 weeks and we didn’t want to miss this window and still be in Grenada (with no water maker parts) in February! 

Could we have ordered them in? Sure; however as we have vented before it is HELLA hard getting stuff into Grenada…time consuming and very expensive. We’d been talking with our friends for a few weeks about where to go next….Martinique was high on our list since it had been 10 months since we’d had French food however, only EU passports are officially allowed (though we’d heard many stories about people getting in anyway). Just as we were trying to come to a decision we discovered this water maker issue and that sealed the deal. Sint Maarten. Shipping here is crazy easy, and cheap, and fast, and duty free! Certainly explains why I can look out the cockpit right now and see 40 mega yachts moored around us. It’s THE place to get boat work done. AND we could check in on the Dutch side without a PCR test since we were coming from a low-risk country. AND S/V Bliss hadn’t been here yet despite being on year 3 of their travels AND we’d be positioned North which is better if we decide to cross the Atlantic this summer AND after a time we could get over to the French side and GET FRENCH FOOD. 

I’m sorry I can’t impress enough how important this last one was to us. We have been living in some very humble (and beautiful!) places for a very long time now (Dominica + Grenadines + Grenada = 10 months) and while I love traditional island foods our palates were craving crusty breads, buttery pastries, meat that wasn’t chicken or ground beef and cheese that wasn’t mild cheddar. Also wine….I forgot to mention the wine. OMG the great wines that are less expensive than a loaf of bread, which is also inexpensive!!!!

Aden’s crepe…we all basically clapped like idiots when it arrived ;D

My absolute 100% favourite Croque Madame: ham, swiss cheese on brioche and sometimes béchamel with melted swiss cheese and an egg on top…ya that’s right…boo ya

Context: This island is partially owned by the France and partially owned by Holland with a “border” in between. For those of you paying attention, yes I said we were checking into the Dutch side but then gushed about eating French food…you are free to roam the island on either side but your “big boat” has to remain where you have checked in…hence the acquisition of said delicacies :) 

Back in Grenada: We had grabbed a few groceries the day prior to our water maker discovery so the boat was well stocked with fresh fruit and veg for the week. All we needed to to was check out, get fuel and fill our tanks with water from the marina since we couldn’t make any (water conservation mode ON). By noon on Jan 5th we were off! Our weather routing told us that we could expect to be reaching 100% of the time (yes!!!!) and that the waves would be less than 2m (double yes!!!!)…with this information we hoped we’d have a fast passage. 

Damn were we right. We averaged over 7 knots and cut about 12 hours off our arrival time…which is a lot when the total trip was only going to take 72 hours! Usually when we plan our routes we estimate a conservative 6 knots which allows us the freedom to bob along in the 5’s if it’s comfortable or suffer through the 5’s if we are bashing upwind into big waves (both of which we have done before). But this time with modest chop and reaching the whole time we FLEW! We saw top speeds of 9.5knots and we weren’t even surfing downwind! Full sail out the whole time and Matriarch handled the occasional gusts of 24knots like a pro…totally didn’t even phase her. Once we realized we were going to have consistently between 14-18 knots true for about 80% of the trip we just kept the sails out…we really need about 10 knots true to get moving at a respectable clip and we don’t reef until we are consistently in above 20 apparent. The boat performance truly made this little passage pleasurable.  Well except the confused seas on Day 1 made Aden puke despite having 1/2 patch on her…below is a clip of me basically talking about our early conditions (feel free to skip this if you don’t want to hear me drone on for 6 mins :P I think I was missing doing IG stories and no that’s not food on my lips, it’s sunscreen!)

Right after this clip ended Aden came up and barfed all over the cockpit…poor kid. And poor me that had to clean it up because puke makes Greg….puke.

(If you haven’t already, go to this post where I have shared some videos I took of the second night on watch during this passage) 

It was such a pleasure to arrive early, in time for sunset (and anchoring in the light!) and even more a pleasure to feel the much cooler Sint Maarten trades in the evening…compared to the still-blistering-hot-despite-being-winter-in-Grenada. I even wore a hoodie - it was lovely. 

All cozied up in my favourite hoodie (bought this in a gift shop in a hotel in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada when it was -50C and Air Canada lost our luggage :S) enjoying the lovely cool breeze (probably 25C but that feels cool compared to 40C in Grenada!!!)

For the first few weeks we basically ate ourselves into a coma and it was truly enjoyable. Such luxury to have so many really good restaurants with really good food from all over the world. We’ve started to slow down on the eating train now for pragmatic (health and money) reasons but man…it was great while it lasted. We also spent the first few weeks getting very serious about ordering stuff: water maker parts (new membranes and high pressure housing); generator parts (exhaust elbow and related other bits currently being held together by JB Weld); homeschool books (math books for the next year specifically); head parts (our forward head macerator was giving us some grief); cruising guides for the Atlantic islands (e.g. Azores) and probably some other stuff I can’t think of right now. On top of the order there have been multiple trips to chandleries for other bits and pieces we need to do the various jobs. Oh ya, and I’m actually work-working again (like paid work) at a degree that is now worth mentioning…Monday to Friday now has meaning again. And we are still planning our big refit and Atlantic crossing - which we will discuss in a separate blog post. 

We’ve been busy. 

Despite all this busyness we STILL are waiting on the water maker parts (they were delayed a week) so we had to fill up our water tanks again here; thought our Grenada water lasted us almost a month! Generator parts arrived yesterday so prep / planning time is over and work time officially began yesterday.  We hope to be done with these repairs in the next few weeks then load up (and I mean SERIOUSLY load up) on French foods here and then head to the USVI to enjoy the beautiful waters of St. Croix. Since we’ve been here we’ve been in the lagoon and, ummm, no, we don’t swim in the lagoon….

So we left the slow life of the southern Caribbean behind and are now in the hustle and bustle of the North…working hard but still loving life and keeping our eyes on the horizon for a big adventure this summer!

Much love, 

M