June is the start to another new adventure for us!

June is the month we left the USVI and made our way to Grenada.

On May 30th we sailed from St. Thomas to St. Croix. We went ashore and found a brewery tap room of course!

That night, at a tiki bar, we met with the four other boats sailing down to Grenada with us to finalize plans and have a toast. They had the coolest tiki drinks!

We left St. Croix, USVI on May 31st at 7:30am and arrived to the beautiful island of Grenada early on the morning of June 3rd. During our three day passage we covered 395 NM, sailing about 90% of the way, traveling at an average speed of 5.3 knots. We had good wind, which made the seas a little rolly, but made for good sailing.

We traveled with four other sailboats on our passage. On our chart plotter, the screen is divided – on the left is the chart view and on the right is the radar view. At night the radar is important for picking up storms and other boats out on the ocean.

The weather was beautiful most of the passage.

There wasn’t much to do but hangout…

rest, relax…

and hard core daytime napping!

Until Shannon yells, “Dolphins”!

We had a few bad hair days along the way…

Overall, we had a wonderful and safe sail to Grenada!

Once we got to Grenada we did a quick check-in with the ministry of health and made our way to the quarantine anchorage for 14 days.

We liked the front row where the sand provided excellent holding for our anchor!

We had great plans for getting lots of boat chores completed while we were stuck on the boat for two weeks. But somehow we found ourselves being pretty lazy!

Caper did a lot of swimming off the boat too! Chance doesn’t like jumping off the boat into water so he just watches. Our friends on Bella took this great video of Caper jumping off the boat:

Some local fisherman came to the boat and sold us some yummy red snapper that we made tacos with.

The same guys brought us bananas and cashew fruit which is the red fleshy part that grows above the cashew nut.

We also enjoyed plenty of mangoes and passion fruit.

They even brought us the local beer to try.
It was a wonderful welcome to Grenada.

The town of St. Georges’ is home to 20,000 people.

A rain forest sits in the middle of the island gets a good amount of rain. The mountain is covered with clouds most of the time.

We are not the only ones who are running from hurricanes. Each week the country lets 40 more boats in. We all had to register and were assigned a week we could come in.

The only outing we could take during the quarantine was to the dock to drop off trash…

and pick up some provisions, like pastries and bread from a local bakery:

We are thankful for our health and many beautiful days and sunsets in Grenada!

So on Day 14 of quarantine we dinghied to the dock to be tested with the other 40 boats that came in the week we did. If we are COVID free, we get to stay in Grenada.

Important note, Grenada is completely COVID free and they are working hard to keep it that way. The only air travel is for Grenada citizens, and once they arrive here there is a 14 day quarantine as well as the COVID test for them.

Yay! We all tested negative! We are free to explore Grenada!

It was time to start exploring and enjoying all the wonderful and unique features of Grenada!

First stop, the marina pool with our good friends Kent and Kathy (Wind Ensemble) who we have not seen since February and our new friends Mary and Kevin (Pisces) . Our last fresh water dip was in FL last November.

We enjoyed eating at a restaurant for the first time in weeks also!

A group of 13 of us took off for an Island Tour. What we encountered was not the typical tour. Everywhere we went, we were the only ones there. The usual cruise ship tourists are not here. At some of the places, we were the first tourists to visit since March, when the island shut down for COVID.

We made our way toward the center of the island into the rain forest.

Our first stop was to learn about the spices grown here including nutmeg and cocoa.

Next we visited Annandale Waterfall.

The foliage and fauna here is incredible.

Time for a quick rest at Mark’s to hydrate with the owner.

Next we were off to look for monkeys. None to be found. Addie is bummed! The locals think they have gone to lower ground to find food since no tourist have come to feed them.

On to the center of the island, Etang Lake where the island gets it’s fresh water.

View of the whole lake, which is the crater of the volcano:

On to the original airport, which is now a park.

On the northern tip of the island, we visited Leaper’s Hill where the Carib Indians jumped to their death to avoid capture by the English settlers.

It was a great day!

A few days later we went with a smaller group to 7 Sisters Waterfalls.

The hike in was about 1.5 miles.

All of us swam under the waterfall. The water was clear, cold and the current was very strong. It was super fun.

Grenada has a national dish known as Oil Down. It includes salt fish and/or goat, breadfruit, coconut milk, dumplings, veggies and spices.
It was yucky!

We needed a swim after that truly unique dish.

Of course, we went to the West Indies Brewing Company a few times after getting out of quarantine… 🙂

We are grateful to be in this amazing place with friends and safe from tropical storms!

Coming up next month:
Exploring Grenada and a hurricane down here!?!