Log 44D Anchored in Hog Island


Written at : St. George's Lagoon, Grenada

Aug. 12, 2007

Hi Folks,

It has been a few weeks since my last log, as I am now caught up on them, and we are staying put here in Grenada. We have been here for six weeks without moving more than ten miles from Hog Island; once to Prickly Bay for a couple of days, and now here in the Lagoon for a week to have comfortable access to WiFi and enjoy Carnival. More about this in my next log, which I will start on our way to Trinidad and Venezuela.

All is well with us and Veleda, although I have been to a dermatologist to get the site of the basal cell carcinoma that was removed examined and though it was OK, I was prescribed an ointment to remove areas with extra keratin on my forearms and shoulders. The ointment causes then to blister and thus remove the keratin, making my skin feel like a bad sunburn, an uncomfortable one month process.

Oh yes, because we are in such a quiet cruising mode staying in one anchorage for a long time, I have finally have time and have started THE BOOK. I have thought about and been encouraged to turn my logs and experiences cruising into one or more books, and so I have started by writing down a few free-flowing concepts of the form, theme, and approach I am thinking about for it. I am thinking of calling it LIVING THE DREAM, perhaps with a secondary title such as Origins, Preparations, and Casting Off for the first one. I have already got a dozen pages on the thinking we have done to take off, and the initial stages of selling the house and getting Veleda and fixing her up for blue water cruising, and the many considerations we had to make in the process. The last part of the book will be leaving Toronto on July 3, 1998, sailing the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi and Tenn-Tom to Mobile, and over to the Keys, Cuba and the Bahamas for the first winter before out Atlantic crossing in May of 1999. Hopefully a second book will continue from there.

All the best,

Aubrey

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Log 44D Anchored in Hog Island


This is my first log since we arrived here at Hog Island on July 6, 2007,and we have been lazing around in good Caribbean cruiser fashion since. As indicated in my last log, we saw many boats that were here when we were here last year. Hog Island is such a good cruisers' anchorage that many make it their Hurricane time location, others are long term live-aboards all year long, and still others use it for sheltered storage while going back home or for long term storage for years due to lack of funds for repairs or other problems requiring them not using the boat for prolonged periods of time. Most are at single anchors, while a few long term storage boats are tethered to the mangroves with two or more bow or stern anchors out. There are many transient boats that are here for a few days or weeks before moving on. There can be as few as 20, to up to 50, boats in the spacious anchorage at any one time. There are several from Canada and the U.S., as well as boats from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the British Isles. For us, this is our summer home.

We have put up our sun shades to cover most of the boat, with the forward one a large rain catcher. Judy made these two shade canopies last year while down here. This is the rainy season now, but the rain is only for a few minutes most evenings, just enough to make us get up and close the hatches, the dodger window and take in the cockpit cushions; more a bother than serious rain. However a couple of weeks after putting them up, we had a heavy rain, to the extent it overflowed our water tanks in less than an hour and we had a wet cushion and carpets that took two days to dry out.

We have done a lot of socializing, having the crews of five boats over for my birthday on July 19, and in turn we have been to a few parties on other boats. We have a far more active social life at any anchorage, but especially here in Hog Island or over at Prickly Bay, than we ever had when living in downtown Toronto. The morning VHF net is still going, welcoming new cruisers, saying goodbye to others, and giving valuable weather information as well as notification of social activities, availability of parts and services, items for sale or trade and a few advertisements from local marinas, art shops, restaurants and medical offices. There are still pot luck suppers at Clark's Court Marina, as well as art classes, poker and dominos on a weekly basis. Unfortunately the pizza and movie nights at Whisper Cove are no more, as Phil and Shelley left last fall and the facility has been unused since.

Roger's rustic beach bar is still there with its Sunday afternoon barbecues. Roger, with the help of the cruisers, has erected a shore-side covered bandshell, as well as a couple of mooring posts for boats and dinghies to tie up (there is no dock, dinghies just pull up on the sandy beach). There are several large day tripping catamarans that come over to Roger's beach once or twice a week with dozens of sunburned tourists out for a day on an isolated Caribbean beach. The trip is good value for the money for these tourists from St. George's. Roger has had a few more picnic tables donated, and a few cruisers have helped out with some art work, painting Caribbean and Arawak designs on his walls and tables. The sheltered bandshell even has an intriguing rope spider web spun by one of the cruisers on one of the open walls. Bubba is still there on Sundays, helping with the cooking and serving in his silent, large lumbering way, a greasy towel slung over his shoulder.

The construction work that was started last fall has gone into limbo. It desolated a third of the island, clearing off trees and bushes for condominiums, and put a road around the northwest hill down to the dinghy gap, where a bridge was planned to come across from the mainland. The project is now on hold as there are many objections to the project and a similar one at Mount Hartman, as both go through a conservation area that is home to the Grenada Dove, an endangered national bird. Fortunately, except for a bit of the road, the rest of the foliage around Roger's and the anchorage is undisturbed and scenic.

A new marina is starting up across from Clarke's Court Marina, a very primitive floating dock and a repair shop so far, being developed by Karl, a long time local cruiser from the US, calling it Anykine Marina. We leave our dinghy there when going over to Woburn, and use it for economical water (10 cents EC$ or about 4 cents Canadian a gallon), free garbage disposal, and his free WiFi access. He has a standard, economical breakfast menu which we have not sampled yet other than a coffee and muffin when using the WiFi a couple of times. He has a repair shop with metal work and metal bending tools as well as other repairs he or his small staff can work on. There are rumours that he might try for Whisper Cove, to buy or lease, who knows? I wish him luck.

Other than lazing around, reading, swimming and busing to St. George's for supplies and DVD's, we have done a bit of maintenance. Some of it was routine, such as changing the engine and transmission oil, working the through hulls, checking and topping up the battery levels, cleaning the waterline and the hull from barnacles and other sea growth. We routinely service the heads (toilet) by treating it as a salad, giving it lots of oil and vinegar. We have done a few more major tasks such as taking the dinghy over to the beach to clean and sand the bottom and put a couple of coats of white bottom paint on it. I took over to Rogers all the dorade boxes and the on-deck hand rails to scrape, sand and paint over a few days. We replaced the old fan with a new one in the main cabin. I did some repairs on the dinghy Mariner outboard engine as it periodically would not change gears or would stick in forward only. Twice it accelerated on me and I could not throttle back and had to shut it off to stop. The control cables needed to be repositioned around their sheaves and shortened to prevent them from coming loose again. However, the propeller periodically slips and I may need to replace it. The last time I had this problem with the propeller was when Walter and I were up the Tiber River in Rome, and it slipped all the 15 miles back down to the sea. I could fix it by putting a pin through the prop and shaft, but it would endanger the whole motor if I hit a rock. So I may face having to replace the prop in the not too distant future. Our main engine is working well, except I still periodically have trouble getting the starter motor to engage. We are quite happy with our Yanmar 3GM30, although it develops a rumbling cavitation at low revolutions. One of Judy's definitions of cruising is that it gives the opportunity to do maintenance in exotic locations.

I enjoy DVD movies and use a video rental shop near Spice Island Mall where I can rent five DVD's for five nights at only $16.00 EC or about $6.00 Canadian. We are only a $2.00 EC (80 cents Canadian) mini bus ride from our dinghy dock in Woburn to downtown St. George's. Also from Woburn local shops we get our eggs, ice and rum (after all they are called Rum Shops) from Nimrods, and fresh fish and conch at the other local dock. We can dinghy in ten minutes over to Martin's Marina for fuel, and about a fifteen minute dinghy ride to Prickly Bay for pizza, laundry, free showers, and Budget Marine, a large chandlery. So Hog Island is a beautiful safe convenient friendly anchorage from which we can easily bus into St. George's or dinghy to several marinas and restaurants for food, fuel, supplies, and entertainment.

When we came back from Toronto last spring we brought some bandages that Doug Caldwell, our crew member who scalded his wrist, had left over. I have pasted below an article sent to local papers, my Power and Sail Squadron in Toronto and the SSCA Bulletin regarding a donation we made to the Woburn Medical Station last month of those bandages. A longer article on that experience last January and our night entry into Christiansted on St. Croix is to be published in September's issue of Caribbean Compass.

 

Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

Last January Aubrey and Judy Millard were on the second day of a 1200 mile passage from Antigua direct to Cuba on board Veleda IV, a 1978 Ontario 32, when Doug Caldwell a crew member who had joined from Toronto scalded his wrist and Veleda had to divert to St. Croix. He then returned to Toronto where he was well cared for and the scald healed up with no scarring or limitations. He was given a batch of dressings to protect the wound between debriding sessions as it was healing. However he had many dressings left over after it was healed and gave them to the Millards on their spring visit to Canada to donate to a medical facility on their travels.

There is a large international cruising community at their favourite anchorage at Hog Island near Woburn on the south coast of Grenada. On Tuesday July 27, they made a donation of the packages of medical dressings for the Woburn Medical Station to Nurse Pansy Francois, who then gave them a tour of the facility. The medical station was re-commissioned by the Basic Needs Trust Fund Programme in February of this year after damage from Hurricane Ivan which devastated Grenada a few years ago. It was funded by the Government of Grenada, the Caribbean Development Bank and the Canadian International Development Agency. However the station is still short of some equipment and furnishings. The Millards returned later in the day to donate an electric kettle and a gas regulator and hose for the cooker, which they noted were needed.

Thanks also goes to Deborah and John Gerber of Sea Witch, long time liveaboards located at Hog Island, for the information about the needs of the station and for transportation to and from the facility. The Millards would encourage more cruisers to donate to worthy causes in communities in which they anchor or hunker down in marinas in addition to just buying groceries and supplies as their contribution to the economy.

PS - They never did make it to Cuba as they had to divert to Jamaica due to steering problems, and enjoyed the courtesy and support of the Royal Jamaica Yacht Club.


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