We’d been fooled by those cute little tourist maps before. You know the ones that have the cartoon huts that say eat at JOES HAS CRABS which appears to be right next to two-for-one at THE SPIGOT BAR, see our ad around the border of this map. We understand that it may not be perfectly rendered to scale but it seems to me that “right next to” ought to be at least in the same county.
Being the seasoned travelers that we are, we thought that a dry run would be in order. Nothing is worse than a long walk to a pointless dead end. With this in mind I pumped up the dink, yes it’s leaking, ran up to Grand Anse Beach where a rickety pier can be used to tie up your dinghy. It’s best if you throw out an anchor off the stern to try to keep the dinghy off the pier. We walked along the beach until we both said, “that’s enough” headed towards the coastal road with the goal being to discover where The Mount Cinnamon Resort is located because we have tickets to the Caribbean Jazz Festival that’s using their grounds as a venue.
When we deemed that we were close enough, we started towards Prickly Bay to try to gauge where and how long it would take to get there the following morning. The cruisers net on VHF had announced that Sunday at 7:30am the F1 Grand Prix of England would be on the Marina’s wide screen TV. We got halfway there and decided that we would be well served to save a little for tomorrow morning, especially considering that we’d have a late night and a long walk back home after the Jazz Festival.
Sunday morning dawned rainy and overcast. This may complicate matters. We launched, baled, and pumped up the dinghy.
Ran a mile up the beach in the pouring rain to Grand Anse Beach’s rickety pier, secured the dink, and started walking up the coastal road fully expecting to see one of Grenada’s mini buses heading towards Prickly Bay. Lots of busses but not one was heading our way. There’s a ridge on the way over to Prickly Bay…lets call it K2, it’s not on the map. After summiting we found ourselves in the middle of day two of the celebration of The Fisherman’s Birthday. I have no clue what this is alI about but it appears to drive Grenadians to delirium and drink for days on end. Wanting no part of this Marce snapped this surreptitious photo.
With just a few more blocks to gain the country road to Prickly Bay, which is virgin territory for us, I began to ask anyone up at this hour how much farther to the marina, but I really can’t understand the average Grenadian and no one on this island can tell you how far anything is, they just say, just there, straight on up the road. We’ve already found out that this could mean anything. With miles to go and time running out we decided to just put our heads down and push.
With fifteen minutes to spare we pulled out two bar stools at the Prickly Bay Marina and slumped down on them. HEY…where is everybody? HEY, more importantly the TV isn’t on and where’s the guy that turns it on?
Mere minutes before the lights go out an Aussie shows up and he has a phone number. Marce gets to work and I’ll have to defer to her to explain what she did but in no time she had the F1 Grand Prix of England live on her IPad! How does she do it? Soon a small crowd of Yachtie F1 fans gathered around our iPad to watch the race. Even our friends from Flying Cloud showed up. We are not alone! Breakfast specials were served, with hot coffee and a small crowd of enthusiastic knowledgeable gear heads made all the pain worth it. I think we’ll do it again.
