 Oh man, salt water is a beast. I remember when Wild horses got its first taste of salt water, way back on the lower Hudson River. We noted the occasion with a high five, stating proudly that “Wild Horses is now a salt water boat.” It seemed like such an accomplishment at the time. How cute, and wildly naïve, that seems now.
These days, “cute” is not how I would describe our dealings with salt water. It is a bear, a beast, an annoyance. It is expensive and incredibly time-consuming. Nothing turns our smiles upside down faster than a salty dinghy ride, especially when we are headed out to dinner. Not only are you wet from the ocean water, but you get a lovely salt stain across your clothing as time progresses. Notice I didn’t say “as it dries.” That is because fabric doused in salt water doesn’t dry. It feels wet and looks stained until the next wash. Ugh. But salty rides to dinner are closer to the “annoying” side of things. The time-consuming and expensive bit is what it does to our stuff. Whether as salty ocean water or as salty ocean air, it literally gets into everything and, as a result, those things start to break down.
Our decks (and everything on them) are affected the worst. On good sailing days, salt water crashes over our bow regularly, soaking everything. Every exposed surface gets the salt water treatment. Yeah, salt water gets two thumbs down. We tried to stay on top of the damage by giving our boat gear a fresh water rinse every so often. Rainy days would help but, to be honest, there just wasn’t enough of those rainy days. Our stainless steel would get treated with metal polish and, a few weeks later, more rust. Locks, zippers, electronics – these got some attention with rubbing alcohol or WD-40 when they stopped working. After over a year of being splashed by salt water and exposed to salty air, Wild Horses was losing the salt water battle. The icing on the salt cake was when our metal “water” and “waste” tank covers seized. That’s right. We couldn’t pump out waste and we couldn’t add water through our top decks. Thankfully, we were able to use a penetrating oil and elbow grease to open our water tank covers. The waste tank covers, however, were toast. Both had to be replaced. Clearly, our approach to managing the salt water wasn’t good enough.
With our recent stay at Rodney Bay Marina in St. Lucia, we were given some great “salt water cleaning” lessons by Anthony and Gaza, the two guys we hired to get Wild Horses ship shape. They have cared for and cleaned hundreds of boats and emphasized that prevention is key when you are dealing with salt water. Most important, they stressed, is that the whole boat needs to be rinsed down with fresh water after every single sail. Yikes! That takes a lot of fresh water. It is a good thing we have a water maker! The good news is that we departed from Rodney Bay, St. Lucia with a beautifully clean, polished and salt-free boat. From now on, it will stay that way with a little (or a lot) of prevention. In fact, as soon as we arrived at our anchorage in Le Marin, Martinique, the whole boat got a fresh water rinse. Yes!
We have been in Martinique for four days, having arrived here on Thursday November 23. It was an easy clearing in process, being a French island. No pet permits here! In fact, we don’t even have to declare the dog. Easy! French islands are also our favourite for the food and wine. Baguettes, pain au chocolat, cheeses, fresh fish and wonderful sauces. Yum! Plus, the adjacent towns are so quaint, with a lovely European vibe. And, this particular anchorage has lots of marine stores in easy walking distance. We have finally picked up several boat spares and replacement parts that have been on our list since last spring. Tomorrow, we leave Le Marin and head a few hours north to another anchorage in Martinique. More quaint towns, beautiful vistas, and great food and wine. We are one happy crew!
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 This has been an exciting week for the crew of Wild Horses. Our weather window for moving north early in the week was holding steady so we knew it was a great chance to get some miles under our keel. Our boat buddies on Caretta, Kemana and Rode Trip were also keen to get going. They had planned to clear into Union Island, St. Vincent & Grenadines (SVG), which is just a few hours north of Grenada. Unfortunately, Wild Horses would need to have a different sail plan. By Sunday, we still hadn’t received our pet permit for SVG. We finalized our “Plan B” sail plan to, sadly, bypass SVG and split away from our boat buddies. Well, I should say “almost” bypassing SVG. Our new plan was to sail 50 miles to the North Western corner of SVG and “Q flag” for the night before weighing anchor and sailing the final 50 miles to Rodney Bay, St. Lucia. What does “Q flag” mean? Well, it is when you anchor within a country’s territorial waters but you do not clear in. Instead, you leave your yellow Quarantine flag waiving throughout the night. It is a great option if you only have to be in a country for 24 hours (the time limit for Q flagging) and you have no need to go ashore. Absolutely no one can go to shore? Yup. Um, what about Ocean? Well, we have a pee pad set up on our bow for her. At anchor, she will use it if she needs to. Great! We have our plan! Early Monday morning, Wild Horses, Caretta, Kemana and Rode Trip met outside of the Tyrell Bay Customs & Immigration office promptly at 0800, opening time for clearing out. About 0900, the customs agent arrived, obviously fully embracing “Island Time”. It took us about an hour to clear out and then we were off! All four crews planned to go to a scenic anchorage called Anse La Roche on the North West corner of Carriacou, Grenada for the night. This is a pretty little anchorage that is known for hosting a spectacular beach BBQ. We definitely didn’t want to miss that! Although we had already completed the clearing out process, Grenada allows you 24 hours to leave their territorial waters so stopping at Anse La Roche would be the perfect stop for us and shave an hour off our trip to SVG the next day.
Well, we were happy to have made that decision! Not only did we get to spend more time with our boat buddies but we were treated to an amazing beach BBQ at Tim’s. This is a little beach side set up that provides a five-star family-style BBQ meal. For $100 EC a person ($50 CAD), we had a feast of lobsters, Lambi (aka Conch) stew, BBQ chicken, salad, stuffed potatoes and lots of rice, all served on beautifully laid out tables with lovely tiki lights providing the perfect ambiance. It was an incredible evening! At the end of the evening, we bid farewell to our boat buddies and prepared for our early wake up call to head to SVG the next morning.
At 0615 on Tuesday morning we had weighed anchor and were headed to Chateaubelair, an anchorage on the North Western tip of St. Vincent. We had perfect 25 to 30 knot winds and a very comfortable sea state, all making for a beautiful sail to Chateaubelair and an early arrival time of 1415. On our arrival, the boat boy we were advised to hail (by our boat buddies on Kemana), paddled up to us and helped us choose the best place to anchor and also brought us fresh tomatoes and oranges. Fabulous!
The next morning, Wednesday, we weighed anchor at 0615 and headed straight for St. Lucia. It was another beautiful sailing day as we crossed between SVG and St.Lucia. By the time we had passed the Pitons (the famous mountain range in the south portion of St. Lucia), the wind died and we had to turn on our motor. We were thrilled to find out, via our AIS, that another boat buddy, “Bitty Rose” was just behind us and also headed for Rodney Bay Marina. Fantastic! Once docked, we needed to get to the Customs & Immigration office so we could get ourselves and Ocean cleared into the country. Thankfully, the Government Veterinarian was there waiting for us. Ocean’s veterinary inspection was a quick once over and we were provided her official clearance papers. Yes! Dog, boat and people were officially cleared into St. Lucia.
It was still early afternoon when we finished clearing in so next on the agenda was getting our boat “ship shape”. Our poor Wild Horses has been a bit neglected in the waxing department and all the saltwater had started to take its toll. Anthony and Gaza to the rescue! These are two amazing guys at the marina who do exceptional waxing and detailing work on boats. Better yet, they were available to start working on Wild Horses right away. So far, they have washed and waxed our topsides, polished and de-rusted our all the stainless on the boat, cleaned all of our canvas and cockpit cushions and today they are washing and waxing our whole hull. Oh, and that is after fixing the scratches in our gelcoat from when we were dragged into during Tropical Storm Bret. Wild Horses will be looking shiny and new very soon!
We have been in St. Lucia for five days so far and will likely stay another three or four days. The country is beautiful plus we are enjoying being near good shopping and restaurants. Oh, and since we are at dock, we are loving having our air conditioner to give us a break from the 29 degree Celsius heat. Yes, St. Lucia is feeling like a mini vacation where everything we want is at our fingertips. Soon, however, we will be on the move again. We will likely be in Martinique by the end of the week, just about the time that our buddies will also arrive there. Enjoying our blog and want to know where we are going next? Click on the buttons below!
Wild Horses arrived in Carriacou, Grenada on Oct 28th and we immediately started to prepare for our trip to St. Vincent & The Grenadines (SVG). The first island in SVG is just a few hours away and we were excited to start island hopping our way through the beautiful waterways of the Grenadines, including Union Island, Canouan and Bequia. Cue “screeching stop” sound. After almost two weeks, we still have not received a pet permit to SVG for Ocean. All necessary paperwork was submitted, but we haven’t even so much as received a confirmation of receipt. Processing time is supposed to be three days. I have emailed several times to get an idea of the status of our application. No response. I have also tried calling (probably more than fifty times). No answer. Yeesh. It helps to know that I am not alone in this. I have met several other cruisers with the same experience. Only one was able to finally get someone on the phone at the St. Vincent Government Veterinary Office. They pleaded their case and was issued a permit. Hence, I keep calling the office with the hope of winning the Pet Permit lottery 😉. In the interim, we have been exploring the beautiful island of Carriacou. Last week, our boat buddies (Kemana and Caretta) and the three crew from Wild Horses took the city bus out to Windward, on the northeast region of the island. This area is ripe with wooden boat building and we were able to see a few in progress as well as chat with a few locals. It took two buses to get to windward and two for the return. In each case, we had to ask if Ocean could board. All but one gladly had her ride, albeit under our seats. She was a champ about it though! The one bus driver who resisted, complained about Ocean’s size, her fur and just about everything dog-like about her. But he finally still let her ride, even though he scowled his way through it. Funny thing though, since that day our scowl-faced bus driver has stopped twice to ask if we want a ride while we were walking Ocean along the street. I guess she warmed his heart a little bit!
We have also had some fun hanging out on a nearby beach, and checking out some local stores, events and great restaurants. And, with our days and nights getting a little cooler (just one or two degrees but we’ll take it), we have enjoyed some very nice walks around town.
Although we haven’t minded waiting a few weeks in Carriacou for our pet permit, there might be a weather window early next week to start moving north and we don’t want to miss this window. Cue “Plan B”. The next country north of St. Vincent is St. Lucia. This country is near and dear to our hearts as we visited a resort there several years ago. We absolutely fell in love with the island and the people and have been excited to visit on our own sailboat. On our way south, we had to skip St. Lucia (and St. Vincent) as Tropical Storm Bret was hot on our tail and we wanted to be the furthest south we could safely get. That was Grenada, which is south of both St. Vincent and St, Lucia. This past week, I requested the pet permit for St. Lucia. Not only did I get a “thanks for your email” receipt but I received the actual pet permit the very next day. Yay! Our new plan now is to head to St. Lucia. Sadly, our boat buddies will not be joining us as they, rightly so, will be exploring SVG. No worries though. We have plans to meet up with them either in St. Lucia or Martinique.
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AuthorVictoria is a hiker, dog-lover, blog writer and planner extraordinaire. Oh, yeah and she is kind of fond of living on a boat. Categories
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