We had a little more excitement than we'd hoped for on our way from St. George's to Prickly Bay. We'd left late in the morning, planning to snorkel or scuba around Moliniere Point north of St. George's before heading to the south coast; it wasn't very far, we'd be close in the island's lee, and our wind generator hadn't been keeping up with our power consumption in the well-protected harbor, so we just motored on over. Less than ten minutes out of the anchorage, the depth/speed indicator flickered out. It came back on in only a second or two, but we have learned from experience that little electrical glitches usually signal big problems, so Britt rushed below to check out our systems. I turned the key to stop the alternator, and we immediately headed for a place we could anchor. Anchoring was made a little trickier by the fact that although the depth/speed display had come back on, the depth was flashing 0.0, but we got ourselves stopped and immediately shut down the electrical system.
Britt pulled out his meter and got to work in the lazarette. After various tests, he determined that a ground wire had vibrated loose from the alternator regulator, which allowed the voltage to run up unregulated until it got so high that something melted, breaking the circuit. The "something" in this case was our battery on/off switch, but it should have, of course, been the fuse. It was easy to fix -- we moved an unused switch to replace the melted one, and replaced the dangling wire -- but the damage had been done. Our depthsounder now reads a permanent 0.0, and our sea temperature display (part of the same instrument as the depth gauge) flashes random, ridiculous pseudo-readings: 256, 944, -29, 521. The cigarette-lighter mini-inverter that we use sometimes with our computers blew a fuse, and when we replaced the fuse it blew again immediately, signalling something more serious. (Fortunately, the computer that was on was apparently unaffected.) Although our SSB (high-frequency marine and ham radio) wasn't on, something happened to it as well, and we lost the ability to transmit. I hate to think what it did to our batteries, which are barely performing as it is. All in all, it was like being hit by a small lightning strike.
Grenada, alas, is not the best place for getting repairs and equipment. After Britt described the tests he'd already done on our SSB (checking fuses, etc.) to the electronics guy here, he recommended sending it to a repair shop in Trinidad, so that's where it is now. They're waiting on parts to be shipped in from god knows where, so when we will get it back (and what it will cost) is anybody's guess. It's tough being without the SSB, since we used it for so many things: email, weather information, staying in touch with cruising friends. Now we are begging radio time on friends' boats here so we can do email once a week, and depending on other boaters to relay weather information. Fortunately, there are lots of cruising boats here, so it's not too difficult to get a fill on what's expected to blow in. As far as the depth/temperature gauge goes, the local chandleries would need to have one sent in from St. Maarten or the US. Their prices are fairly high to begin with -- and then we'd have to pay shipping and 2.5% customs duty. So since we'll be flying back to the US soon, we'll just make do without and buy one directly from a US distributor for about half the cost.
We're settled in, more or less, at Prickly Bay on Grenada's southern coast. There are twenty or thirty boats here and an equal number on the other side of the Lance Aux Epines (bad French for "Prickly Bay", and pronounced "Lansopeen") peninsula. There's a VHF net three days a week, happy hour every evening at the bar, a laundry, a mini-mart, and a great big dumpster. For those needs not supplied here, there are occasional buses in to St. George's. Life is good.
One thing we're enjoying in Grenada is all the interesting and unusual food. When we eat lunch out, we usually get roti, which is usually both the cheapest and the most filling thing on the menu. It's a thin tortilla-like flatbread wrapped around a filling of curried potatoes and some kind of meat (usually chicken or conch), sort of a cross between a samosa and a burrito. Great washed down with the local beer, Carib, which is a nothing-special lager but has the virtue of being fairly inexpensive.
For fresh provisions, we shop at the open-air market, a vibrant place filled with a riot of color and scent. Despite the farmer's market feel, most merchants aren't selling produce they've grown themselves. Some of the produce isn't even local; we were astonished at the number of stalls offering Washington state apples! But we've been sticking to local stuff, such as bell peppers, tomatoes, and bananas. Though we can pick windfall mangoes from the side of the road for free (and frequently do), we always buy a few mangoes from the market. The variety we like best, Ceylon, is big, sweet, and juicy, and not at all fibrous or stringy. We have also tried French cashews, which are not nuts, but red apple-shaped fruit with the taste and texture of an astringent pear. And we've become almost addicted to a popular local fruit called variously skin-up or chin-up, which another cruiser has told us is a type of leechee (thus the name "chin-up", a corruption of "leechee nut"). It's sold in bunches like oversized grapes, fifteen or twenty for an EC$ (about 40 cents). You squeeze the fruit and it neatly pops out of its bright green skin -- then you pop it into your mouth. The fruit itself is a thin layer of sweet goo around a large, hard, inedible seed, so you suck on it until all the flavor's gone, then spit it out. Little boys sell chin-ups to commuters wating for buses; green husks and white seeds litter the curbs. It's the Grenadan equivalent mouth-habit to chewing gum.
One
day we joined several other cruisers for an all-day island tour. Some
of it we could have done without, like the visit to a "nutmeg oil
factory" which was actually the home (not the factory) of a guy who
makes a spray from nutmeg and other oils which is supposedly good for
arthritis. It was really just a thinly-disguised opportunity to buy
the product (which many people did). But we enjoyed seeing the nutmeg
processing plant in Grenville, one of three on the island. Calling it
a "plant" implies a level of automation that doesn't exist at all, as
it is really just a big warehouse where dozens of women sit
cross-legged on cushions, sorting nutmegs. Britt muttered that he
could easily design a much more efficient factory, but we both
understood that efficiency is not really the point here. The guide
liberally distributed handfuls of nutmegs as souvenirs, and we've
picked up about a dozen while hiking, so now I'm flavoring just about
everything I cook with nutmeg.
Another inefficient but interesting factory we saw was the River Antoine rum distillery, the oldest in the Caribbean. Sugar cane is crushed by a waterwheel-driven press, then the juice is boiled in huge copper bowls over fires fed by the mashed cane fibers, ladled by hand into open fermenting tanks, then distilled to 75% alcohol and bottled by hand. It's 18th-century White Lightning, with an acid burn and a kick like a crazed rodeo mustang. (Nobody bought a bottle -- one taste was enough!)
Even just walking around Lance Aux Epines is a visual treat. This is definitely not the low-rent district: our neighbors are a few small and attractive resort hotels, elegant houses ranging from understated to palatial, and the U.S. embassy. One house is an adobe hacienda that appears to have been lifted from Santa Fe, another has crenellated castle walls, another is in a style I can only describe as "tropical ski chalet". Every yard is landscaped with hibiscus and bougainvillea and neatly trimmed lawns. One house in particular takes our breath away. It's three levels of stone arches and plate glass, built underground into a hill crest at the mouth of Mt. Hartman Bay. We hear it's for sale, asking price $3 million US. Maybe sometime when we're bored we'll dress up and pose as buyers, and see if we can get a tour!
