carricou

to enter in this country you must first anchor in hillsborough on the lee side of the island (the west, protected from the wind) to do immigration and customs. as usual, it was blowing quite hard, but we were protected from it but not from some swell coming into the bay. we anchored, and because the bottom was rock and grass, it did not grab, again! we are just not having any luck with our anchor…. because we have a manual windlass on board (big mistake and the weakest part of our boat); we are lazy to pick up the chain too often…. we figured clearing into the country was a fast affair and did not reanchor, but instead let the boat slowly drag in this huge bay. scary plan considering that it started raining and the protected bay from the wind started producing these massive gusts from the mountain as the rain came down very hard, so our boat was dragging faster and faster. luckily the bay was empty and huge and we cleared in very fast (like one hour only which is speed of light in sailing and island times.) once cleared in, we moved to the more protected tyrrel bay on the south. here we were protected from swell and wind but still the anchoring process was not easy due to the many boats and the terrible bottom for our anchors. we had to try also several times with no luck. we were very frustrated at this point and decided to just grab a mooring from the locals. We have had the worse luck anchoring in the caribbean. it seems like a long process to which neither of us is looking forward to, which requires many tries and a lot of work, and always adds tension when every single cruiser at anchor stares at you coming in to do your anchoring thing, while acting very protective of their little space and frowning upon us if we come too close (like there is any real room to begin with). so our anchoring is not only arrival time but a stressful weird moment that requires a celebratory beer not only to relax and celebrate our arrival to a new port, but to also finally enjoy that we have that thing fixed to the bottom somehow.

but enough about the anchorage. in this island we were actually hardly on board. we went around the entire island (is really not that big) to the north and windward side to see the towns, and also to several beaches. for a total of 7 USD we rode on local buses all day listening to reggae of course and just enjoying the views. it is a cool place and so far we have found the people here to be the best, welcoming and charming. we also found the first decent fast internet place of the caribbean and were able to communicate with families and update the blog very fast while enjoying a great pizza and good beers.