Off To Safer Pastures – St. George Bay, Grenada, November 19, 2023

After spending the last two weeks in a marina, we had an appointment to move down to Spice Island Marina to get some of our rigging replaced. Majority of it has been replaced in the last 2 years but we still had to redo our shrouds on the side. According to the riggers it was a good thing we did since even though they had updated and fixed pieces on the bottom, they never did the top and if it had broken on the bottom, it would likely break on the top. I am glad we are all set and we may have it tuned once we get to St. Martin since they guys here didn’t use any instrumentation to do the tuning just “by feel.” Good news is this only took us a couple of days. Ron also knocked off one of the last projects on the list and restrung the trampoline as long as we were stuck at the boatyard for the next couple of days.

The wind was expected to pick up so Sailing Hubby decided we needed to be on the other side of the island and we headed over to St. George Bay.  Being in Le Phare Bleu was nice for a while since we had a chance to catch up with a few friends from last year but the swell was so bad it had actually ripped the cleat off the side of our boat.  We were tied to one of their stationary docks and it was about a 3-5ft swell at times.  This puts a ton of stress on the boat.  Because of the stress we also decided to try out some snubbers for the lines and this made a huge difference but I am glad we were off and after an uneventful sail around we were hitched up to a mooring ball and plan to snorkel and relax the next several days.

We headed over to the Underwater Sculpture Park just north of our anchorage. Wow it was pretty cool but the visibility wasn’t that great. The park was created in 2006 and in all there are 75 statues scattered around the area. The sculptures were put in as an effort to help protect the reef since it was a national park and was protected but sadly some damage has already been done. One of the highlights we saw was “the vicissitudes” which is a circular set of statues – 26 children – holding hands. The meaning is debated and some say they represent slaved thrown off the ships years ago while other say it is a symbol of peace.

There were many others as well including “Christ of the Deep”, “Lady on the Park Bench”, “The Turtle”, and many more!  Apparently, they are created on land by a British sculptor and transferred to the ocean site by crane.  His message was if we don’t start to take care of the ocean, we should.  He has many sculptures under the sea around the world and some of his other are off the coast of Spain.

We had such a successful day snorkeling the sculpture park we took the chance on Ron’s birthday to snorkel just north Flamingo Bay Reef which was some of the best we have seen since we have gotten to Grenada.  Finally, we saw some fish, a fairly health reef, and even a lobster but since it a no take zone, we just let him rest.  Happy Birthday Hubby 😊. 

Today we are off to go to Sandy Island, just off Carriacou, where we can snorkel a day or two and then check out of customs before continuing our voyage north to the Grenadines. This brings me to say we have decided this year to head back north to Georgia for hurricane season and tick off the remaining projects on our list to get Mariposa in tip top shape. We both felt like we still have plenty to see and plan to hit some of the places we missed on the way down last year. Not only that, but after a month in Grenada (I can’t believe it has been that long but it has!) doing little else but boat work, we both feel like we need a reset. We have planned a trip back home the end of December to Ohio to see our daughter’s and are looking forward to the break and restart come January.