So much happening in a week

We bid a teary farewell to Doug and Vicki at the fuel dock where they found Trevor their ride to the airport. We went back to the anchorage to regroup before the next adventure. We were waiting for a weather window to make our trek south to meet Cat Tales ( my sister Dawn and Laurie). Denis our weather man recommended to not to move before Tuesday. We were happy to just sit for a few days. We had some chores to catch up on and provisioning to attend to. The ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers)was arriving in gusto now about 30 boats in a 24 hour period. The stores and services in the marina were busy. We managed to fit a few more social events into our relaxed schedule. No sense in cleaning if you're going sailing. Brian did stem the leaks in the seal on the new window we had replaced over the summer. Rain coming in is one thing but not salt. When D&V were here we had much laughter over my laundry bucket. It was breaking down pretty fast. Well when you drop a full 5 gallon water jug on it it didn't stand a chance. So we went out searching for a new washing machine. So when we found a 20 litre bucket for only 12 EC at the paint store,we bought two. I'm pretty happy! (Merry Christmas Eh!)

These two pics are from Martinique when we had trouble downloading. The colourful doors are the entrance to the mall in Fort de France.

We started off on Tuesday to sail south to Caneries to stage ourselves for a jump off to Bequia. We anchored in Caneries in a lovely quiet calm bay all by ourselves. That was a first for us.

 The first thing we noticed and didn't miss was the lack of noise. We love Rodney Bay but it so noisy with beach bar racket that goes on half the night. I do mean half the night often until 2-3 am. But this bay was perfect. We were ready for a early start. We had winds from the south from 6 knots to 22 knots in the passage between St L and St Vincent. As always that is a wild passage but we managed with nothing breaking. The passage between St V and Bequia is much shorter and still a bit wild but fine. Nice beam reach, small jib and triple reefer main, we were doing 6-7 knots! We anchored at about 4:30, put up the yellow Q flag and left early the next morning for Carricou. Carricou is one of the small islands that make up the country of Grenada. We left in a squall (22-24 knots of wind, reduced jib, boat speed 6-8 knots) and were pretty wet (fresh water) for quite awhile. We had very little visibility so we kept a very close watch for oncoming boats. The winds for both days were up and down and we sailed and motor sailed. Just before we left Canada we bought a new auto pilot which Brian installed in Rodney Bay. We put it to the test on this journey and it preformed beautifully. We arrived in Tyrell Bay about 2:30 on Thursday. Brian went off in the dinghy to check into customs. It started raining really hard shortly after and I quickly tried to get the rain shields attached. While I was so focused on getting that job done to keep the cockpit dry. Where was Vicki to yell "squirrel" and I would have run inside to close the hatches that were wide open over our bed and the livingroom. What a mess inside but the cockpit was dry. "Squirrel", is what jwe say when you are doing one job but spy another thing to do and run off in that direction. It seems to happen all the time onboard. We spent yesterday snooping and shopping around Tyrell Bay and Hillsboro. It seems like a very small quaint island so far. There are a very large number of Canadian boats around us. Often we are asked why there are so many Canadians down here.......we reply "do you know how cold it is in Canada right now?" Although we do see it is quite mild in SW Ontario and the east at the moment.

We will now wait for Dawn and Laurie and another boat Aspen, Steve and Maria, to join us. This is probably where we will all spend Christmas together. At that time Cat Tales and us will head south to Grenada and Aspen will head north. This is our next door neighbour and yes someone is living aboard. And I worry about cleaning and polishing! 

Hope you are all having fun running around the malls,baking your goodies,wrapping and generally enjoying the Christmas frenzy. My friend Sue gave me a Christmas magazine and the recipes and decorations did make me miss it all, a bit.