If you read the previous blog, Grenada Boat Gremlins, you know that Daggers Down was overrun with gremlins when we returned to the island after a 5 month hiatus. It has been emotionally, physically and financially exhausting to have so many things not working, especially since they all worked perfectly well when we left in April 2024. However, we understand that this is boat life. So, my husband, the fix it man, immediately started identifying the problems, fixing what he could, and ordering parts where needed.
Ordering parts and hoping they arrived in a reasonable time frame in the islands was always a crap shoot. For someone like me, who prefers things to go according to plan, it was dang nerve-racking. Especially when the parts we needed were not minor things:
- Starter for port engine
- Voltage regulator for generator (which turned out only to be the first thing we needed; luckily, we had the other two parts on board)
- New autohelm
However, patience was the name of the game. We tackled what we could and while we were waiting we took time off to have a little fun and de-stress. We found plenty to do and people to do it with, especially since October was my birthday month!
Wine Tasting Party
After arriving at the marina, we hosted a wine tasting party to try out some South African box wines. You say box wine??? Well, they are cheaper, last longer in the heat and are easier to store when you take the bladder out of the box. So, I decided it would be fun to try out a few to determine if there was one that was acceptable. Wine and More in Grenada sells two white box wines, a rose and a red. One white was out of stock; therefore, we had three wines to serve.
As you might imagine, a wine tasting party was very popular as we ended up having around 23 people participating. Each couple or family brought an appetizer. Thus, there were plenty of munchies. It was fun to see old friends and meet new ones. At the end of the day, the rose wine turned out to be the tasters’ choice, but not by much as the white and red wine tied for second place. While I usually prefer white when its hot outside, I found the rose to be quite refreshing.
Nirvana Pasta Paradise
Our friend, Bill, who we met in Chesapeake, has bought a boat and made it to Grenada. It was fun catching up with him. He is a fix it man too. So, he helped Ben tackle a few of our gremlins. In addition, while his wife, Sue, was visiting, we had a wonderful dinner on Nirvana’s porch. Nirvana’s Pasta Paradise offers some of the best pasta/food on the island, bar none! She mainly provides take-out dinners, but occasionally hosts a dinner on the porch of her house. It was a special treat!
Since Bill’s family is Italian, he really enjoyed the homemade pasta dinner. He ate every bite while the rest of us took a lot of it home with us. It was excellent but quite filling. The evening was delightful!
Concord Falls
We also took Bill and Sue to our favorite swimming hole, Concord Falls which is high up in the mountains. The drive is almost as amazing as the falls themselves. Check out Grenada’s Beauty is Never Ending: Pictorial for more extensive pictures of this drive and falls.
We all relished the cooler temperatures in the mountains and the refreshing water of the falls. We even enjoyed just sitting on the rocks in the rain until it started to thunder. We scurried out of the water at that point and were glad we did, because in moments the falls and calm swimming pond became a torrent river, and the rocks tha we had lazily sat upon were covered with rapids! Wow! What a dynamic change!
Birthday Celebration
Tracy and Rich from SV Unleased invited Ben and I to join them for a birthday lunch celebration. We met at Le Phare Bleu for a lovely lunch at the marina with cool breezes to enhance the meal.
For birthday dinner, Ben and I decided to eat in and devour some of Adrian Welch’s wonderful lobster that he sells at Jenny’s market every Saturday (during lobster season) as well as wonderful tuna, Mahi and snapper. Ben grilled the lobster with garlic butter, and it was divine!
Ben also surprised me with a Chocolate Mouse Cake from House of Chocolate at True Blue marina. They make an amazing chocolate cake!
New Restaurants (new to us)
This is our 3rd hurricane season in Grenada, but we still find new and different things to do. We found a new beach where we needed to snorkel, Grooms Beach, and we dined at a few new to us restaurants.
Coconut Beach Creole Restaurant
We met some cruiser friends at Coconuts and dined on the beach while watching the sunset. This was a lovely way to spend an evening: eating bar food and laughing with friends.
This lovely place overlooks the calm waters of BBC beach. The food was superb as well as the companionship provided Tracy and Rich.
This small restaurant in Woburn was delightful in every way. The local food was awesome, the views were eye popping and hanging out with Bill was always a fun.
Road Trip
One day after some frustrating days of working on the boat, I said to Ben, that’s enough! We need to get off the boat and enjoy this beautiful island. So we grabbed our friends, Tracy, Rich and their dog, Moby and headed to the northeast side of the island. We had been wondering how affected this part of the island was by Hurricane Beryl that blasted through last June. We found that our favorite blue beach bar where the fish was so good was leveled on Bathway beach, but many of the other structures seemed to have survived with little to no damage.
At Levera Beach, the beach seemed a little smaller but otherwise it was not obvious that a category 5 hurricane had blown through. The locals indicated that because of the recent rains, leaves had grown back, and it looked more normal now, but the devastation had been real.
Other Favorites
In addition, we continued some of our old favorite traditions such as ladies’ coffee on Thursday mornings at the Port Louis Marina’s, Knife and Fork eatery as well as swimming/exercising in the new pool.
Sabrina Francis Treehouse Production
Last year a few of us went to hear Sabrina Francis’ concert up in the bush of Grenada. The venue is a quaint structure with a high-tech sound studio where the music being played is mixed and piped into each participants’ headphones so that the sound is flawless. This year her production was more of musical story. The venue, the ambiance and the production made for an enchanting evening with a group of fellow cruisers.
The grounds were beautiful!
Appetizers and drinks were included. It was almost time to start!
Let the story begin
As the month of October wound it’s way down, we even had a pair trick or treaters for Halloween! So adorable!
Gremlins???
So what about the boat gremlins you may be wondering? Well, as of this week all the parts have finally arrived, and the technicians came and fixed the generator and port engine. Ben and Bill put in the new autopilot and another technician came and fixed the air conditioner that decided to stop running in the middle of all the other repairs. So as of this day, this moment in time, the major gremlins on the boat have been eradicated! We even checked the windless and as of today, it worked too. Thus, it is Gremlin Eradication Day!!!
Our next big chore is to unpickle the water maker and we are ever so hopeful that we will find NO gremlins in this part of the boat!
We have company arriving on the 16th and if all goes well, Cruising Season 2024-25 will begin shortly thereafter! Thanks for hanging with us for Cruising Season 2023-24 and our long summertime break in the states.
Let the next adventures begin!!!
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