Port Louis Marina, St. George's, Grenada

I can’t believe that in my last post with our excitement of catching the big Wahoo I forgot to mention the largest school of dolphins had passed by us only 30 minutes before! I was at the helm and at first saw dozens of fins close together on the surface to which my first reaction was that I had missed some sort of off lying rocks on the chart and shouted Kevin up. The next thing was that the whole pod of dolphins then left the water in unison and dive through the air. They were coming at us very quickly and showing off jumping through the air, when Kevin shouted me to give a hand to pull in the fishing lines quickly in case they took a liking to the lures. They’d passed by as quickly as they had appeared but it was a great welcome into Grenada.

We were up really early on Friday morning as we were both excited to see some more of Grenada, our arrival here was long awaited as we had read so much because of our wedding here. We decided to have a walk into St. George’s before breakfast, which turned out to be about 20 minutes walk around the bay from the marina. It is quite a bustling place, which with all the colonial architecture reminded me a little of Falmouth with its narrow winding streets. Unusually for the Caribbean the older buildings are brick built with tile roofs which were brought in as ballast on the returning spice ships taking the native nutmeg to Europe. A number of the building have been refurbished recently and are used as government buildings with cobbled courtyards surrounding using the old hand made bricks. The town is built on quite a steep hill and a tunnel is used to get through the rocky headland round which the town has expanded. The Carenage is the name of the waterfront which we explored and the water in the bay here is really clear with lots of fish and is still used by the fishing boats.


The Carenage, St. George's


The Carenage, St. George's

After a stop-off at the supermarket for supplies we were back to the boat for breakfast and somehow the morning seemed to escape us as we charged all the electrical appliances and refilled water etc now we had the luxury of marina life again. I checked us in with the marina and found out that the signed office for Customs & Immigration wasn’t actually open yet and we’d have to go to the one at Grenada Yacht Club across the bay. The nearest ATM was also on the Carenage and we’d need to go there first to get some cash for the fees. Our pilot book said that the Customs & Immigration office shut over lunch time and it was about 1pm when we finally made it there with the boat papers. We received a telling off for not reporting directly when we arrived by the youngish and humourless official, but I guess he was right so we can’t complain.


Newly refurbished Government buildings


Original fishscale tiled buildings in St. George's


Statue dedicated to the Bianca C Passgenger Liner which foundered off St. George's

We then needed to do a proper supermarket stock up with shopping bags, finding that the prices here are about half of Union Island and Bequia. After all that walking around in the sun all day by 5pm we were more than ready to take advantage of the half price Happy Hour in Victory bar. We even treated ourselves to a burger and West Indies Vegetable curry as we’d forgotten to get our Wahoo out of the freezer!


Grenadian courtesy flag now we are cleared in