The Lagoon, St. George's, Grenada

Wednesday we had an appointment to meet Lucille our wedding planner at True Blue. We have been in email contact for months, so it was great to finally meet up and she took us through all the details over a coffee which put both of our minds at rest. She then drove us round to see the beach where the wedding will take place, the restaurant for the reception, both were absolutely perfect completely how you would dream of a beach wedding (sorry no photo's til the Big day!).

Lucille then gave us a bit of a tour of this area of the island pointing out useful supermarkets etc and taking me to meet my hairdresser for the day. I booked an appointment for the next day for a very overdue trim and then Lucille dropped us off at a shop she’d recommended for some wedding items we’d still not found. Unfortunately, we still didn’t manage to get what we wanted and ended up back at one of the first shops – in a way that men always deny doing!

Finally, wanting to get everything done in one day we returned to St. George’s by bus to see about some shoes now the rest of the outfit was sorted only to find they didn’t have the right size. We did get some books at the second-hand shop though and then had a nice cool drink at the Yacht Club.


Kevin and Lucille overlooking Grand Anse beach

The Lagoon, St. George's, Grenada

Tuesday we ventured through the Sendel tunnel past the Carenage to where the cruise ship docks to do some shopping from the wedding – outfits for groom, best man and father of the bride. After all this time in foreign ports it was very odd to hear all the English, Scottish and Irish accents in the area with three very large cruise ships in dock. Although we found some excellent hardware stores and a good second-hand bookshop we didn’t manage to find what we were after here for the wedding clothes. We decided to try some of the shopping malls in Grand Anse where the large hotels are concentrated at the back of the beautiful 3 mile white sand beach. We took one of the excellent local minibuses for the grand total of £1.25 for both of us each way. There are so many that they pas by every few seconds, it really is an excellent form of transport and would certainly cut the congestion on UK roads and perhaps the loud reggae music would liven up early morning commutes! We were a little more successful in our shopping here, though no pictures as we don’t want to spoil the surprise for our guests on the day!

The Lagoon, St. George's, Grenada

Monday morning we decided to venture by road from True Blue to see Spice Island marine boatyard which turned out to be a five minute walk…funny when we asked for directions at Horizon Yacht charters we were told 20 minutes and two buses and recommended to take a £10 taxi! We found the Budget Marine chandlery which although well stocked on some things didn’t have the fishing gear Kevin was looking for. We did however manage to book in for some work we want to do on the boat on 26th Jan.


Kevin at Grenada Yacht Club

We decided after our lazy quiet weekend to head back to St George’s which is a bit more central to allow us to complete some of the wedding preparations we need to do. We found a good anchoring spot in the Lagoon and visited the excellent Grenada Yacht club. The water is clearer on that side of the lagoon and we watched several large fish jumping out of the water in hot pursuit of the smaller fish hiding around the dingy jetty. There were several egrets roosting in the trees just off the balcony, you wouldn’t think you were on the edge of the capital of the island.


View from Grenada Yacht club balcony at night

True Blue Bay, Grenada

Sunday we decided to make use of the facilities and spent the morning doing some boat jobs / cleaning and the afternoon swimming in the pools of the hotel. A great day and obviously several more chapters of Captain Jack Aubrey’s adventures to keep me entertained.

True Blue Bay, Grenada

We decided to head south on Saturday to see the True Blue resort where we would be staying during our wedding. It was a fairly short sail round the south west point of the island through the channel to the uninhabited Glover Island and along the south coast with its deep inlets created sheltered coves, which makes Grenada so popular for sailors. We visited Prickly Bay first which is the most famous of the bays and it was chock full of anchored boats however with 25 knots winds blowing across their decks and no shelter that we could find we weren’t sure why this was so popular.

We decided to try True Blue Bay instead which was far more sheltered from the wind, through there is a fairly consistent light swell. We didn’t mind this however, for us it was a nice gentle rocking which made us both sleep very soundly that night! There are a number of mooring buoys available in the bay managed by Horizon Yacht charters who also operate the jetty there for the resort. We decided to take one of these and after a quick lunch we ventured onshore to check in and have a look round. We paid our £10 a night for the mooring ball, which gave us access to showers and two pools in the hotel and free Wifi and seemed very reasonable to us!

Next we spoke to Peter at the Aquanauts dive school there about some diving for our guests coming for the wedding. Peter was very helpful and it looks like they are very active from the boats in and out during our stay.

We then went up to the hotel and Jennifer the reservations manager showed us round, which was well worth it for her as we decided to upgrade our room to a Tower suite. This has a fantastic Tower overlooking the bay and as soon as we saw it we decided as we will only do this once we wanted to have that room. The resort is lovely, lots of brightly coloured small buildings in tropical gardens, very Caribbean and relaxed. You have guessed it… that evening we also surveyed the Dodgy Dock bar for sundowners, which passed the test well. We returned to the boat for another splendid Wahoo fillet dinner (with Kevin special five spice / piri marinade) and were joined by a black hooded Caribbean kite which must nest nearby as it flew over the headland behind us. It is a really quiet and protected bay and the lovely evening there was only improved by the sound of a great saxophone band playing later at the Dodgy dock and drifting over the water to us.

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

Port Louis Marina, St. Georges, Grenada

We were away early into a nice gentle 15 knot breeze and very gentle swell for a great leisurely sail south through the Grenadines toward Grenada. The plentiful yachts began to thin out slightly from the hoards further north and we had a really great sail downwind past the beautiful islands of Petit St Vincent & Petit Martinique, Carriacou and Ronde Island before we entered the lee of Grenada. The smaller islands looked great and we hope to get time to head north again at some point to visit them too when we have completed our preparations.
Grenada is very green and mountainous and much bigger than the other islands visited so far creating a large lee which provides a millpond sea along the west coast, though we did need to start the motor to go closer in.



We were within sight of the lovely colonial architecture of St Georges, the capital of Grenada, complete with large cruise ship in dock when there was a sudden buzzzz of the fishing reel. After one bite that had not taken earlier in the day we had been just about to put the reels away to go inshore. However, as Kevin had predicted when the sun got a little lower and the fish came shallower again we got another bite about 4pm. At first it seemed that it had gotten off again because there didn’t seem to be much tension on the line. Kevin lifted the rod out of it’s holder and started to reel in to check when clearly his catch now realised he been hooked and started to swim off fast in the opposite direction. The line ran out at a rate of knots, about 100 meters running out within seconds as Kevin fought to apply the clutch to the reel to stop him. The reel really heated up from the friction, as well as Kevin’s thumb! Clutch applied, Kevin started to reel him in, the bend in the rod suggesting this would be our biggest catch so far. It was quite a battle to reel in, I was sure the rod would snap from the bending but sure enough soon there was a flash of silver in the water, Kevin shouted for me to get a photo, I guess in case the landing was unsuccessful. I lent out the back to catch him coming to the surface and couldn’t believe the size! I thought we’d got a marlin or something on, though a few minutes later Kevin had him on deck and alcohol was swiftly applied as he’d managed to slip his hooks. It was a 4.5ft Kingfish, same family as tuna. Kevin was thrilled as you can see from the photo.
It was all go then as we were practically in the channel for St. Georges, we dropped sails and managed to get a berth at the new Port Luis marina being built by Camper & Nicholson who have marinas in all the tops sailing spots around the world. It is only partly built yet, but nearly all the superyacht berths were full already, infact there was more of them in than normal yachts! We were soon alongside and Kevin did a very neat job on processing the fish, I was on rinse and cling film duty. We now have about 15lb of fish fillets in our tiny box freezer and the Norwegian boat next to also benefitted with a couple of very large steaks!







There is a nice bar in the complex who had a half price happy hour when we went to look round, so it seemed appropriate to participate! We went back to the boat for a lightly fried fillet with fresh garlic, ginger and soy sauce and I have to say it was the best fish I have ever eaten, which is probably just as well as we will be eating it for weeks!!!