Commodore
June 22, 2020

Sand storm over 3000 miles away has turned Pole Pole brown!

We woke up and found Pole Pole had changed colour overnight, to a reddy brown colour. It must be true, it looked like fine Sahara sand. It has got into everything, all the stitching on the sails, in the ropes, every nook and cranny. We can only hope for a good rain storm now to clean it. It is another white out day, we can’t even see the neighbouring islands anymore.

I had a terrible night and have a throbbing ear, so Rowan managed to call the medical clinic at Hillsborough and got an appointment with a doc at 9:30, which I was very grateful for as I know I need to sort my ears out before all our flights home which are only just over a week away now. We took Jeldi Jeldi over to Hillsborough which is quite a long way into the wind, which was pretty bouncy. I had hoped that might unblock my ear but no such luck. Very efficient clinic run by Americans, with a doc visiting 3 times a week. It was all incredibly efficient, the doc was an older American lady, who was very sympathetic and flushed the wax out of my ear. She wasn’t really interested in the inflammation and implied that would settle down with the blockage removed. It was a very worthwhile $60 Eastern Caribbean dollars about $22 US dollars.

We had a little visit to one of the many tiny shops along the Main Street, the deli being the most enticing. Stocked up on proper twinings tea bags (what a relief), smoked tuna and a few other treats.

We had always planned to move on, so we set sail for Petite Martinique, part of Grenada, but a lot smaller than Carriacou. The island looked quite densely populated judging from the amount of houses and fishing boats. Opposite was a gorgeous private island that has a very smart hotel on it. It actually belongs to St Vincent but because it is so close to Petite Martinique, apparently you can visit no problem. It looked idyllic and in normal times allows boats to anchor and come on shore for meals. However it was closed, it obviously is not reopening at the moment after Covid which was very sad as it had beautiful beaches. We tried anchoring off the island but there was quite a swell and very hot without much breeze. Rowan phoned the hotel and they said we could anchor but we were not allowed on shore, even to walk on their beaches, so we decided all round it was better to go and anchor across the way at Petite Martinique so at least we were in Grenadian waters and could not get into trouble.

En route some gorgeous little beaches.

Petite St Vincents, private island.

We joined the fishing boats at anchor at Petite Martinique.

Rowan went out and snorkelled on the reef, he said it was not as good as Sandy island and that the other side of the reef looked good but that it was very tricky to get to with the current and breaking waves. There was a totally sandy white Island about 200m long without anything on it except a thatch umbrella, which looked more like an art installation than anything else. Sadly the white out from the Sahara sand, did not give it a blue sky background which would have made it look even more idyllic.