St Davids Harbour

We left Port louis Marina yesterday morning for a short motor sail around to St Davids Harbour which is where Grenada Marine are based who will haul our boat and store it for the hurricane season. Well what a ride!!! It was slow progress as we were heading into the wind with tide with us so the combination of wind against tide created some big steep seas and we crashed our way up and down the waves. It was a good job the mileage was not great as Peter was finding it tough going. It took us 3.25 hours to do 10 miles. Anyway we are here now and the harbour and anchorage are lovely. The surroundings are idyllic and well worth the journey getting here. There is an upmarket resort with a few small cottages on the hillside next to Grenada Marine and apart from that there is nothing here so superbly peaceful. Last night we had the best sleep since arriving in Grenada. We had sailed around with the dinghy on the davits so it was easy to drop the dinghy and go ashore yesterday to explore and check out the facilities at Grenada Marine. The boatyard is not busy at the moment and there is plenty of room for storing boats and it is very well protected being surrounded by wooded hillsides. The staff are very friendly and the bar is actually full of workers who had just finished work as it was around 5pm. There is a small chandlery here but stocking the essential items you might need if you are working on your boat. We also talked to a French boat owner who confirmed that this was indeed a very good place to leave your boat as they have good 24 hour security as well as being a protected place. Apparently during the last hurricane in 2005 only 10 boats out of 200 stored here suffered any sort of damage so that is good news. He also told us the other hurricane shelter in Grenada is Spice Island Marine and they had numerous casualties as boats tumbled on top of each other. So...this is where we shall leave the boat for the hurricane season. Before we left Port Louis we did hire a car for the day and visited Belmont Estate which is the main tourist attraction in Grenada and where there is a large cocoa plantation. So we learnt how to turn cocoa benas into cholcolate and got to sample the dark organic chocolate produced by the Grenada Chocolate Factory! We also took the opportunity to visit a supermarket on the way back so we could stock up with bulky items whilst we had a car to transport them back to the Marina. We have paid for 2 nights mooring here at the ridiculously cheap price of US$6 per night!