Carriacou and the Iguanas

Carriacou and the Iguanas

After a sleepless night at a rolly St George we upped anchor at 7am and made for Carriacou.

The previous night we had done a passage plan, ensuring that we were both comfortable with the trip, a total of 34 nautical miles. Leaving first thing in the morning gave us the privilege of sailing with no other boats around; you could smell and see Grenada waking up. The cockerels were squawking and smoke was coming from the hills as the locals fired up their stoves.

The reason for noticing such detail was that we were hardly moving. With typically no wind early mornings in Grenada, Dylan was sulking as we motored in the lee of the island unable to put up any sails and doing between 2 to 4 knots. The engine ruining the ambience of the setting.

After 3 hours having just passed Gouyave, we finally found the wind and boy did it blow!! By then other yachts and cats were beside us and they headed inshore close to the island. Not Dylan, as the skipper he opted to head offshore to get the sails up, beating into the wind and battling the swells. Having got over the initial fear of the toe rails in the water, I started to relax and enjoy the sail – Dylan was beaming away happily at the helm whilst I clung to the bimini.

As we cleared Grenada and started the open passage towards Carriacou, the swells subsided and we started to relax at the helm. Just as well as constantly checking wind direction and sailing straight into it is tiring work! Sailing along, wind in our hair (well mine at least) we spotted lots of flying fish and even a turtle popped up to say hello.

As I took the helm, Dylan went down below to check the bilges and found that that the engine water pump was leaking, having filled our bilge. As the wind dropped off again, we had no choice but to turn on the engine again and it was my job to keep my head in the bilge clearing it every so often and that may be why at that point I came up into the cockpit looking slightly green....and proceeded to feed the fish over the side. Reluctant to turn on the engine, when we had Tyrell Bay (the anchorage) in sight, we started to tack trying to hold off pushing the starter button (turns out it was just a broken seal). We hear a drumming sound and Dylan panics thinking something else is wrong below...turns out 7 miles offshore we were hearing the carnival celebrations!!

7 tacks later, we made it into the bay and found a nice sandy /slightly weedy spot to drop anchor at 5pm. As we approached our spot we were almost deafened with the sound of reggae music. I reckoned it was a dodgy looking party boat so we moved away from them and realised the music wasn't any quieter. With the sun starting to go down, Dylan quickly grabbed his snorkelling equipment and dived on the anchor, ending up manually re-bedding it so we could get a decent's night sleep without worrying. Meanwhile I was on the lookout for the hooligans playing unsociably loud music. As we looked around the bay, we saw many boats we had got friendly with in Grenada; our neighbours were Patrick and Miriam off Skye so we jumped in and swam over to say hello. These guys filled us in on the source of the music. Unknowingly we had arrived for the start of carnival which was starting on the Sunday and continuing to Tuesday...that night the music didn't finish until 3am.

Carriacou is a quaint place. A small (ish) island where most of the locals rely on fishing and the occasional yachtie to make ends meet. As we awake the next morning, we go into the cockpit and hear a 'skip skip'. As we look over the side, there is a traditional fishing boat with a a guy pedalling his wares. This time he was flogging lobster, mangrove oysters and wine. We politely declined as I remembered Donald Street mentioned the oysters have been traced back to the source of a hepatitis outbreak in 2000.

Keen to get involved in the local festivities, we headed ashore with Patrick and Miriam off Skye and Jim, Stephen and Deanna off My Deere. Fastening our dinghy to the main jetty, we caught a bus into Hillsborough (the capital), 21 people rammed into a 16 seater in addition to 3 kids on laps. We arrived at 3pm when we thought the festival was starting...and ended up spending 3 hours milling around or sitting on the pavement waiting for the locals to get things moving. We should have learnt by now, add at least 2 hours to any start time and we may be closer to island time!

The Carriacouan ladies wore traditional carnival dress, glitzy skimpy bikinis with fabulous headresses, of all shapes and sizes and covered in glitter. As the music got going, the ladies jumped onto a truck carrying massive speakers and started shaking their booty. A line of ladies followed all in groups dressed in the same colours as well as men at the end dressed in multi coloured smocks and head dresses. The music was addictive and you couldn't help but dance along with them at the side of the road. We found a lovely little smoothie shack on the beach where you can sit on their pastel coloured stools and watch the ocean whilst sipping on a soursop smoothie. Gabriel the owner was very friendly and we promised him we would come back for some more.

At around 8pm, the carnival died down so we caught a bus back to Tyrell Bay with Marcy and Keith who had got to Carriacou that day and joined us at the festivities.

Although we didn't see it (as it commences at 5am!) I must mention the Shakespeare Mas. It is tradition every year for locals from Carriacou to dress up in costume and recite lines to each other from his plays. If the local gets the lines wrong, they hit each other with a stick and start jousting!! Sounds a 'hoot' as Dylan would say, but unfortunately the kick off time put us off. So we were in our beds fast asleep when at 5am...the music starts blasting marking the start of this tradition...we might as well have been in the action rather than trying to ram our ear plugs further down our ear canals to block out the commotion!!

The next day we went wandering the town and came across a huge iguana. Having not seen them before in the wild, I was amazed to find this green monster staring back at me and kicked myself for not bringing my camera. As we continued walking down the beach, we stopped to buy fresh fruit from a multi coloured shack and came across some locals cooking iguana! Just getting over my surprise at seeing these things in the wild, I was horrified to see these pretty animals in a state of rigormortis over a barrel, about to be BBQ'ed. Apparently they are a local delicacy and we were invited back to try them once ready...needless to say we didn't make a return trip but I did take photos to show my friends and family back home.

The snorkelling round Tyrell Bay is quite good and a short dinghy ride away we found a great reef teaming with wildlife. A big ray was chilling out on the bottom and the reef walls had a whole community of crayfish. Having heard the tales of his Dad pulling these out by hand, Dylan tried to entice these creatures out of their hidey holes and ended up holding a broken off antennae. We had lentil curry that night...

Having spent 3 days anchored here, we decided to set sail for Union Island via Hillsborough to clear out of Grenada. Our first contact with Customs and Immigration and a topic close to Dylan's heart so I shall leave it to him to fill you in on the next chapter of our story!