Moving to St George's Grenada

We left Prickly Bay after lunch on Saturday 20 January for what we thought would be a short gentle sail around the coast. It all started well. Having lifted the anchor, we worked our way carefully through the mooring area to find something of a channel between the yachts.

With one last look at the small marina and yacht club and we turned south to leave the bay.

Turning the south west corner of the island St George’s was visible ahead   

We passed the airfield on the south coast which had partly prompted the American invasion of Grenada in 1983. It was judged to be too large for commercial traffic and, instead, ‘must’ have been a forward base for establishing a Soviet military presence in the area.

More rain!!! Just what you come to the Caribbean for!!!   

With the airfield past us we turned north and St George’s was visible ahead. And, with just a few miles to go, we thought that we’d nearly completed one of our most uneventful and shortest passages… and then the rain showers hit us. It was a total passage distance of just 6.4nm but I got completely soaked whilst steering. However, in true Caribbean style, the heavy rain came and went quickly. We saw rainbows [Ed:  yes, rainbows, plural!] and then it was back to warm sunshine and fluffy white clouds. At least the rain was reasonably warm.

Approaching the anchorage off Ross Point, just outside St George’s   

With the rain past, we dodged a couple of lobster fishermen. We saw the small fishing boats some way off but getting closer we realised that they were empty. Then we twigged that the fisherman was actually snorkelling and diving down to catch the lobsters, popping up every now and then for a breath or to throw a lobster or 2 into their boat. We waved to show that we had seen them and gave them a wide berth as we headed in towards St George’s. There is a Camper & Nicholson marina in St George’s in the dredged lagoon and, theoretically, you can anchor in the lagoon but there really isn’t much space now that the marina is established and the Grenada Yacht Club [Ed: the GYC, just like our own Guernsey Yacht Club] has grown too. Instead we joined lots of other yachts anchored just outside the harbour off Ross Point. Some people have commented that the holding isn’t great there but we had no issues; our anchor dug in well and we felt very secure there.

The Ross Point anchorage   

The town was just a short dinghy ride away but the immediate urge to explore ashore was put on hold when another heavy rain shower enveloped us. It wasn’t quite the ‘4 seasons in one day’ that you can experience in some places but we felt that we had seen rather more rain that we had expected for the time of year here, certainly in one day. Instead we stayed on board for the evening and planned our trip ashore. There were forts, volcanic lakes and waterfalls to see and we needed to find out how to get to them, as well as exploring St George’s town.

St George’s, Grenada