Trinidad/ We made it!!!!

[N10d40:80, W061d37:88]

We left Grenada Saturday afternoon at 4:00 and sailed 85nm to Trinidad,arriving Sunday morning at 10:00. We had perfect sailing conditions with a beautiful full moon and 18 knots of wind (Just what Crossroads loves), until the middle of the night. At 2:00 am when Glenn took over after my shift we had a squall with 30 mile an hour winds and a wind direction closer to right on the nose - as usual. The wind stayed in the 20-25 knot range for the next several hours, making the ride a bit lumpy for those below trying to sleep. We were making good time though with speeds over 6 knots. We entered the cut around 9am against a 2.5 knot current and managed to get into a slip at Corral Cove Marina a day earlier than our reservation. Two tired sailors called it a night at 7:00 and slept like rocks in air conditioned comfort. We fly to Memphis this Saturday for a month visit, we are looking forward to seeing everyone. Thanks for all your support. We are extremely proud that we made it to Trinidad, there were days I wondered if we would really get here.

Thanks,
Michele and Glenn

link to guest blog

Last friday we went to Gouyave for their weekly fish Friday. Jill from Delilah has a nice write-up on it and her husband Dean wrote about the Hash run we all did the next day. They write real pretty so jump to: http://svdelilah.blogspot.com/ for their text and here are a few more pictures. Are we getting lazy or what?

Some Tourist Stuff

Sometimes the best way to get an overview of the latest island’s attractions is to dress up like a tourist, grab your camera and do the all day tour. A dozen boats got together and chartered a 25-passenger van to tour Grenada for the day. The van is owned by a man named Elvis, although the king himself did not actually guide our tour. Our guide was great and explained a lot of history and interesting sites along the way. He also has a theory that most of the animals on the island are brown. We would get the usual tour stuff: “On your right is the island’s land fill” along with: “and on your left a brown dog… and goat, also brown”. A black and white dog with some brown on its face also counted as a brown dog.

Stops along the way included: an old spice plantation, nutmeg pressing house, chocolate factory, rum distillery, lunch and of course, a waterfall. The spice plantation had a brief lecture on processing spices but no real tour. Our herb lecture in Dominica was lots better but he had more time and a smaller group. The nutmeg house was more interesting since it is still in operation. Nuts are purchased from farmers, dried, shelled, sorted, sized, tested and packed for export all pretty much by hand. Not much has changed there in the last hundred years. The chocolate factory was a very small operation with solar power running antique machines from all over the world. It was like a working museum that actually produced a product. A delicious product! Another working museum was the Rivers Rum Distillery. A waterwheel powers the sugar cane squeezing machine and the juice flows down an open concrete trench to the boiling vats. It is then hand-dipped from vat to vat until it flows to a series of big stills that would cause a hillbilly’s heart to leap. The heat for boiling and distilling comes from burning the dried, squeezed sugar cane as well as some wood. And the end product… paint thinner. The stuff was pure alcohol, moonshine; a tiny sip was more than enough for all of us salty sailors. They do not export. The waterfall was small but pretty and featured a Rasta guy that we were supposed to tip for jumping off the top.

We saw a lot of hurricane damage from the past few years and learned what a “Jenny house” is. They are small, two room wooden houses provided for temporary shelter after hurricane Jenny struck the island 50 years ago. They seem to hold up rather well and have even survived big storms since.

The Elvis tour bus dropped us back at the yacht club and 24 sailors returned to their floating homes, tired and a little bit better educated on the beautiful island of Grenada.

Glenn

Serendipity

The other day I was headed off to the chocolate factory with the crew from Delilah and Amanzi, or so we thought. We decided to stop by the office of tourism to check our directions while Kim and David of Amanizi said hello to someone they knew that works there. So we said our hellos and we are off to the chocolate factory when we heard Danny from the tourism office yelling to us on the sidewalk to come back. He told us of a sociologist; Jane Belfon who is sharing the history of Grenada with a group of his staff. He invited us to the seminar. Jane was an amazing speaker! She was just what I had been looking for. We discussed the history of carnival; former slaves started it as a stress release. The slaves watched as their masters hosted huge masquerade balls. The wearing of the mask during carnival has a much deeper meaning than just dressing up in a costume. She said you can hide behind a mask and do anything you want. So this tension release with paints, masks, drums and dancing has evolved from the history of slavery. She also talked about how the history of slavery was passed down orally, “each on tell one” (c’est qui tend parlez l’autve ba tend do demandez l’autur - for you French speakers.)

Grenada was governed by the French from1650-1763. In, 1763 the English took over and governed the island. In 1779 the French came back and in 1783 the English came back. In 1994 Grenada declared its independence. Therefore the language has evolved over the years with a broken English and French influence. Actually their language is a fascinating piece of their identity. Because of my work with Facing History and Ourselves, I loved this seminar. When it was over we went to eat Roti’s at the Nutmeg restaurant and discussed the seminar. For you chocolate lovers, we didn’t make it to the factory that day but we did go the next day.

I want to encourage all of you to visit our friends website: www.floatingclassroom.com
Kim and David (Amanzi) are using their website to connect the classroom to the Caribbean. They have lesson plans, with cross-curricular connections to Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies.

Michele