Our stay in Barbados was an adventure if nothing else but we were so happy leave and sail to Grenada last weekend (Dec 28th- 29th). I think after spending 10 days in Barbados I can say that it is a lovely place and the people are so very kind and friendly, they have just a beautiful culture. The big problem is that there are no protected anchorages there. Mostly you are supposed to anchor in the open and exposed Carlisle Bay.
For you sailors I know you might look at the charts and say well it cannot be that bad, the land mass protects against the prevailing trade winds, it should be a fine anchorage. Well we will pronounce it the rolliest anchorage ever. I think probably it sets the standard for the rolliest anchorage by which all other rolly anchorages should be compared against. Like our new expression on WildChild is now… ” …well at least it is not Barbados rolly…” , or ” …. just be glad this place is not Barbados rolly… ” . When we read Navionics reviews other sailor write about anchorages when they say a bay is bad because it is rolly we ask well… yes.. but is it Barbados rolly?
So although our time in Barbados when on land went rather well, the people are lovely and the town is wonderful, lots of old world British architecture, the stay on the yacht in the bay was uncomfortable pretty much every minute of every hour of everyday. The constant roll wears you down. As you are sitting below on your boat your abs are working constantly to keep you vertical. We have had sailing passages that were less uncomfortable than Carlisle bay.
This is why we do not recommend for other cruising boats not to go there. Save yourself the upwind smashing to get there (terrible upwind sail) and save yourself the misery of the rolly anchorage. Barbados is just not setup to accommodate cruisers. Check in and out is a complicated affair at the high security cruise ship terminal and there is only 1 dinghy dock to access land. Beach landing our dinghy thru the breaking surf usually went badly.
The roll was so bad and was wearing us down so much I decided to rig WildChild with a stern tie to the anchor chain. It takes about half an hour to setup but once you get it right it does make a big difference. The big problem that causes a bay to be super uncomfortable rolly is when the winds are perpendicular to the swell. When the swell is hitting the yacht on the beam the boat just rolls so much swaying back and forth you can’t sleep.
It takes a little creative effort on the part of the captain to figure out the details. WildChild is easy to rig for a stern tie because we already have a spinnaker block setup on the stern toe rail. Essentially all I had to do was get out the green spinnaker line and get it attached to the anchor chain. Then let out another 20 feet of chain and get the chain reset on the bow harness and snubber. You have to be careful you do not let your chain just rest on the bow roller as some of you might be prone to do, it will pull sideways and rip the bow roller apart.
Once the stern line is out about half a boat length in front you then just get the stern line onto a winch and slowly winch your boat sideways to the wind. Go slow and let the natural swing of the boat help you get the stern pulled to windward. This does double the pressure on the set of your anchor so make sure you are positive your anchor is set well. Being sideways to the wind will increase the surface area the wind has to blow you away.
The main benefit, the very purpose of all this effort, is that now you will put your bow into the swell and take the waves along the main axis of your hull. This will greatly reduce the rolling effect the swell will have on your home. It is amazing that you can change the whole feel of an anchorage with this technique. Horrible sideways roll turns into gentle bobbing up and down like magic.
This is advanced sailor skill stuff to do, and I didn’t see anybody else in the anchorage do this, WildChild was the only one sideways to the wind, but it did make our stay there more bearable. You just have to be more careful when you have a stern tie on because if the wind starts to shift and crosses the swell the stern line can get under your keel.
At least we could get some sleep a few nights, stand to cook in the galley, and relax sometimes. We still dinghied into shore several times just to get a break from the constant roll of the bay. Just to sit still.
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Barbados is a Nice Place
I’m not saying not to ever go to Barbados, just not on a sailboat.
From the deck of our yacht we did see the tourists get to play at and do some super cool things like this jetpac hooked up to the output of a jetski. This looked like a lot of fun.
We watched many many cruise ships come and go to the island. The place is very touristy and both very dependent upon tourism dollars and respectful of the tourists in their country. The beaches are white sand and lovely. There are so many hotels resorts and restaurants to check out if you have a lot of money. This place is awesome to visit with a pocket full of cash on a cruise ship, you will have a great time. Just don’t bother sailing there.
Before we left Saturday Elena really wanted to go check out the chocolate factory. This seemed so important to her we actually postponed our departure just so Elena can go check out the chocolate shop. It is called Agape Chocolates and is considered one of the top 4 chocolate stops in the Caribbean. What girls do not like chocolate?
This little excursion did delay our departure though. We ended up leaving Barbados later than I had planned. So my plan was to leave Saturday morning around 10am, because of the chocolate delay we left Barbados after noon on Saturday Dec 28th.
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The Sail to Grenada
The sail from Barbados to Grenada was our first downwind sail in a very long time. Downwind sailing is so freakin easy… we should do it far more often. I had chosen this weather window because we are just so tired of sailing in 10 foot waves we are highly motivated to not do it anymore. Last weekend we had lovely waves 1.7 meters and below. The dominant wave period was around 8-9 seconds and the waves were losing their energy from the calm Friday light winds the day before we left. Soft and swelly the waves came from behind and gently rocked us back and forth as we sailed.
The sail down to Grenada we made great time. We did not have to tac or fight upwind. We held course and just easily ran our way directly to Grenada. The sail went rather well.
The only problem we kind of had was that the winds on the second day (Sunday Dec 29th 2019) were less than half of what was forecast. We were supposed to be running downwind in 12-16 knots of steady winds and what we really had was 4-6 knots of wind almost all day.
Usually in a run WildChild could achieve almost 90% efficiency, normally she could sail downwind at 5 knots in 6 knots of wind, but our hull had pretty heavy Luperon growth on it again. The inch of growth on the hull really reduced our light wind boat speed quite noticeably. I knew the hull needed cleaning in Barbados but with so much up and down swell there we didn’t risk diving the hull to clean it; what if the hull came down on our heads when trying to clean it?
We did not arrive in Grenada until about an hour after sunset. It was pitch black and we just made our way around the point of Prickly bay in total darkness using the radar and thermal imager to slowly feel our way into a spot where we could drop the hook and sleep.
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Grenada Culture
The next day we got up and launched the dinghy to go figure out how and where to check in. There seems to be many Canadians here in this bay and our first stop was to visit the Canadian sailboat anchored in front of us to ask for local knowledge. They pointed out the dinghy dock in the distance to us and explained to us how to find the customs and immigration place.
I was a little nervous about this stop. When you read all the active captain reviews for Prickely bay you hear that it is a rolly anchorage (but nothing near Barbados rolly) and there are quite a few mentions of crime in the bay. We never really know the local culture or crime when we land in places so we always read the reviews from other sailors. Prickely bay seems to have mixed reviews.
The next thing that had me concerned was there seems to be a lot of historical reviews, and I have gathered a few personal stories from other sailors, about how rude the customs and immigration officials here are. The word is that the officials are too busy on their phones to do their jobs and basically ignore you. That they can be unhelpful and even mean. One story had a cruiser waiting in the office for over an hour (nobody else there) as the officials watched YouTube videos and told the cruiser to “sit down and shut up”.
There is an active captain note that the customs and immigration people in Grenada are so historically rude it was cutting down on their tourism because boats started skipping this island. The president of the country apparently last year fired all the agents and replaced them with new ones better trained to be nicer and easier to deal with.
My tolerance for power trips and stupidity are kind of low and I just dread running into this type of problem. I had a female sailor friend once tell me the best thing to do is just kill em with kindness and keep smiling.
Well… our experience…
The 2 young men were wearing very official uniforms as they sat at their desks playing on their cell phones. They addressed us kindly when we first stepped in. The one guy mumbled something at us so fast and so poorly enunciated I could not understand it. I smiled and gently asked “I am so sorry I didn’t understand… what did you say please..?” He repeated it 2 more times. Although he was mumbling something about the paper and the printer on the table beside us his instructions were extremely unclear.
This kind of put us on a bad footing to start with. Eventually I figured out we were supposed to take one of the carbon triplicate forms resting under the weight of the printer and go fill them out ourselves. There was nobody else around and the two guys did not put down their cell phones. We filled out the forms as best we could, it is full of stupid questions we have never been asked before, and we brought it back to the young officer. Finally they put their cell phones away and addressed us as I sat in the chair across from them.
This next part is hard to explain. The culture here, of Grenada, is sort of very rude. There is something about the way they are. They seem to treat white people automatically as though we are stupid. They look at you like a bug. They just seem, at first, like they are annoyed with you or are upset with you, just automatically the very first thing before you even speak. It seems cultural. They are not trying to be rude, they have no idea that in first world culture they are being rude.
I think part of it has to do with their local dialect, which they don’t even seem to know they have. They speak English here… but it is a very fast shortcut kind of bastard English. Like English with their own ancient African dialect superimposed on it. I have listened to 2 local guys standing in a line behind me talking super fast in their native language, I couldn’t detect a single English word in their speech. When I asked the lady at the counter helping me what language the men were speaking she laughed at me and said, as though it were completely obvious and I was an idiot for not knowing, “its English of course”.
And I think that is why/how they seem so rude here. We westerners cannot understand them when they speak. They mumble and skip half the words in any given sentence. They speak so fast it is hard to figure out what they are saying. They culturally seem to be intolerant of our inability to understand them. It seems to annoy them to have to speak more slowly and clearly for us westerners.
Now if you can stay calm centered gentle kind and polite thru the first 2 minutes of conversation with a local person. Just be apologetic and be an interested listener, most of the locals will open up and are actually kind.
There is just this weird way they first come across that seems rude to us.
Hmmm…. I guess this adventure is about exploring new cultures huh. This has been an interesting and new experience for me.
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The Cell Phone Story
Grenada is actually a lovely first world island with the happy remnants of British colonialism. It is a wonderful place for cruisers to come and visit with many little bays to explore. The people are a little reserved but still usually approachable. They use the E.C. for currency here. That is the Eastern Caribbean currency shared among many of the British islands. To give you an idea right now the exchange rate is about 2.7 ec equals $1usd. So any prices you see for stuff you have to divide by 2.7 to understand the actual cost in terms we can understand.
So when you first see the price of things here you kind of choke and say …. holy crap this place is expensive. But then you do a little math in your head and figure out this place is only kind of expensive. Maybe imagine everything is about 2 to 3 times more expensive than in the states. So if you are planning to hole up here for hurricane season, it is a lovely place, but it is expensive.
I needed to replace a USB cable that has rusted and it was $35ec to buy here. So this is about $12 for a usb cable worth $3 back home, maybe $5 if the store was making a good profit off it. Here the cable is clearly more expensive but not wildly un-affordable.
Well I was in the cell phone store (called FLOW) and was arranging to get myself a local SIM card. I was speaking with that lady in the blue shirt in the background. Eventually she helped me get setup with a local SIM card and 10GB of data for the next 30 days. All for about $100ec (about $37usd) which isn’t bad.
I couldn’t help but notice while sitting there that beside me was their counter of cell phones available for sale. I was mildly curious because I just bought Elena a Samsung Galaxy S10 in St. Martin for 160 Eruos (about $180usd). I was curious if I had gotten a good deal or not.
I happened to find the exact same phone for sale at this counter.
And I nearly choked when I saw the price. I gushed out loud in shock and started laughing. The price down here is just so extremely ridiculous that it seemed to be a joke. The lady reassured me that was no joke that really is the price for that phone, and she did not see the reason for my mirth.
They charge $1,400 usd for the same phone…!
I am not sure if maybe in St. Martin the french government subsidizes the costs of cell phones or maybe the Grenada government taxes the import of cell phones heavily..?
but… HOLY COW I HAVE FOUND THE MOST EXPENSIVE CELL PHONES ON THE PLANET…!
The poor people of Grenada getting ripped off like this, wow.
So mental note… do not let Neptune get your phone when you are visiting Grenada.
Anyway… We are about to go diving on the hull now to clean it again. I got half of it done yesterday and we will finish it today. It is all sunshine here blue skies 35 degrees C inside the boat as usual and there is a lovely 10 knot wind blowing thru the bay.
Welcome to the year 2020 sailor fans.
Cheers
Captain Lexi
…. the safe but spiritually lost…