Carriacou, and the "home" stretch

Here are our photos of the Grenadines, including Carriacou:

2011 06 Grenadines and Carriacou

After Bequia we headed first for Mayreau, which has a very small "half moon" beach and anchorage; we had a nice beach barbecue, but the anchorage was horribly rolly. We now classify anchorages not "rolly" and "not rolly", but by HOW rolly...Mayreau was maybe a 7.5 on a 10 point scale. It's not life-threatening, but can make cooking, sleeping and general maintenance much more challenging and tiring.
From Mayreau, to Union Island; we have very fond memories of our first stay there, on a charter in 2005, despite that fact that Susan injured her good knee on the way there and we needed to find a doctor (who assured her, correctly, that it wasn't irrevocably damaged, and that a few weeks would heal it, which was exactly the case). Anyway, we were interested to go back to see if it was as we remembered it (including Happy Island, the pile of conch shells turned beach bar that featured in our Christmas Card that year). It is truly a lovely, amazing anchorage, right on the reef (both times we were led in by a local "boat boy", this time Angelo, and took a mooring from him). We stayed several nights, did indeed revisit Janti on Happy Island (in a wild squall); we found a little market called Captain's Gourmet (I think), with a French woman proprietress (and homemade yogurt), and generally enjoyed the stay very much, despite the regular squalls. We are having a series of tropical waves, every four days or so, so we are traveling with an eye on them.
After Union, we headed for a night on Petite Martinique, which is one of the three islands (with Carriacou) that makes up Grenada. It is a fishing village, off the path of most cruisers, and we had an enjoyable (and only moderately rolly) overnight there.

As I write, we have been at Carriacou for several days, and will head off tomorrow to Grenada for our last stops before the passage to Trinidad.

Alex complained that our pictures are not "Fair and Balanced", so we tried to take a few of the "other side" of life in Paradise; not sure we really succeeded, but here they are:

FairAndBalanced

To be honest, I think we try not to be excessively "American" in our views of things that are different here, but of course we don't always succeed with that either...

Martinique and new friends

After a few very nice days in Dominica, mostly in Prince Rupert Bay near Portsmouth, and one overnight in Roseau, we headed on Saturday morning for Fort-de-France, Martinique. In the end we decided against anchoring right off the city (the largest in the Caribbean) and headed for a place called Trois Ilets on the other side of the bay.
We had a big adventure on the way: We caught a large swordfish, which yielded 33 pounds of fish. When we got to the anchorage, we sought out fellow cruisers to share our bounty. Neighbors on Dreams at Sea and on Magus happily took us up on our offer.
In return, Magus had us and Tsamaya for dinner on board last night - a gourmet feast, as Yani on Magus is a trained French chef, Indonesian-born. Tonight we will have sundowners with Dreams at Sea.
Tomorrow we will likely head on south to Rodney Bay on St. Lucia, and perhaps a little marina stay.
I am typing on a French keyboard, so don't really have the patience for much more hunt and peck!

The Galley

This is a photo of Raconteur's galley, taken today from the companionway steps. I am doing a little pre-cooking for the trip, as mentioned. Last night I did pork chops with potatoes and carrots in the pressure cooker; it actually tasted pretty good. It was a VERY basic recipe (no experimenting with more complex or expensive items, though meat and fresh vegetables are plenty expensive in the Bahamas, since nearly everything is imported), but the flavor was absolutely remarkable, and the cooking time amazing. The prep is very similar to conventional recipes (no avoiding peeling and chopping duties) and it is best to brown meats first, which I did, but once the chops and the veggies were in, it took about 10-12 minutes to come up to pressure, and 15 to cook, and then maybe 10 or so before I put it on the table. Pork was not overcooked, veggies were tasty, and if I wanted I could easily have thickened the sauce for a proper gravy.
Today I tried chili. It came out a little less thick than we normally like, but we sampled a bit for lunch and again the taste is amazing considering we typically cook our chilis for hours and hours - this was 13 minutes under pressure. Put three medium and two smaller Sterilite containers in the freezer.
This is the floor space of the galley - I can put one foot in front of the other five times from the aft cabin door to the sink, and three times from the oven to the companionway steps, four from the fridge to the bottom of the companionway.


The Force 10 oven holds a 10" pizza pan, and though we don't have one, it would JUST hold an 11X13 baking dish. We store the 6 quart pressure cooker there when we aren't using it or the oven (it hangs out in the aft cabin while we are baking). Here's the oven and stove, and yes that is a little microwave built into the cubby above the stove. We don't use it a lot, though when we are making passages, we switch on the inverter and use it to reheat our dinner (things like the pre-made chili):



The giant cutting board you can see in the first photo is one of our best investments - it is custom made to fit on top of the stove, providing additional surface. It's heavy and you have to watch to keep your fingers out of the way when moving it around, but it's a great thing.

There is never enough fridge or freezer space, and what is there is awkward, but many earlier boats don't even have the luxury of such systems. You may remember we replaced "the system" in 2010, and I say nice things about it every day. So what is in there now?

Fridge: English muffins; celery, carrots, spring onions, small sweet peppers, two heads of romaine, oranges, limes, lemons, two and a half semi-ripe (!) tomatoes, six leeks, a half pint of cream, various canned drinks (tonic, club soda, beer, ginger beer, V8, coke, ginger ale...) a plastic bottle of cranberry juice, several pints of OJ, two 16-oz containers of sour cream, various cheeses including extra sharp cheddar, colby, a wedge of "Italian", some shredded parmesan, two kinds of butter...that's what I can think of without looking.

Freezer: newly made chili; beef tenderloin bought whole and untrimmed and cut into a 1+kilo roast, nine 200-300 gram steaks, and a 250 gram "tail"; a large pork tenderloin; ten pounds of chicken quarters; a bottle of gin, a bottle of vodka, one and a half large bags of ice cubes; one package of English muffins; a one pound bag of tiny frozen scallops; a one pound package of bacon; a smoked sausage link and a kielbasa link, and some brown-and-serve sausage.

So you can see what is on MY mind today...

We are getting ready to set off toward Long Island (the north coast) tomorrow morning, and then from there to Conception. We are too out of practice to take on a 45+ mile journey all at once! Susan and JP replaced the bung for the dinghy, and did some stainless polishing (read: rust removal) while I was cooking this morning, and all that will be left is to top off the water tanks today, and stop for fuel on our way out of the marina in the morning.

Probably no internet until we hit Rum Cay later in the week.

Day 5: Smith Island

We have long wanted to visit Smith Island, which is Maryland's last inhabited island (reachable only by water, unlike our own Kent Island). We finally got the chance today when the weather cleared and after a morning exploring Crisfield (photos on the Google site), including a visit to my friend Cindy's family home on Somerset Avenue just off Main Street, we set off for Smith on the local mail boat.

The island is beautiful; those are pomegranates that are growing there. The visitor center was not open when we arrived, although we did get to stop in before we left on the 4pm return. Here are a few pictures; what they perhaps do not convey is the total intimacy of island life - you have to like your neighbors, or at least find ways to live in harmony and cooperation with them.





Stopped here for a shared crabcake sandwich (Susan and Leigh) and a softshell crab sandwich (JP); they offer Smith Island Cake but we had bought a whole one earlier in the day at the Sweet Shoppe Cafe (run by two Smith Island natives; I'll post about that separately).



We walked a little ways into the marsh but it was warm again today, so the mosquitoes were having a little resurgence.


Saw a gorgeous great blue heron.














This was the mail boat, and a few pictures from the boat when we were leaving the island.







A lovely day. We will head south again tomorrow, to take advantage of a wind shift to the NW, though the seas will be a little bit higher than ideal. Heading for Kiptopeke State Park, a bit of a stretch but we will head out early. We will be on the hook and then just have a few miles to hit Mile 0 on the ICW.