Christmas 2011 Carriacou, North of Grenada

This year we think we’ll be spending Christmas in fairly remote Chatham Bay on Union Island belonging to St Vincent and the Grenadines-no shops, no wifi or cellular coverage, but a lovely beach and a few beach pubs with interesting names like Shark Attack! Thereafter we’ll be working our way up the chain of islands aiming to be in the Virgin Islands by March, where, hopefully Kate will join us for a week or 2. We got our 10 year USA visas while in SA, so we’ll probably head up through Puerto Rico & the Bahamas and enter the US in Florida. After that our plans are a bit vague but we’ll probably start exploring the western Caribbean next season.

2011 has been busy and exciting. We left St Maarten  towards the end of March and headed for the BVI’s via Anguilla. We spent a month there, loving the beautiful clear warm waters and the more temperate climate after hot and humid St Maarten. We also met up with many friends which is always fun.

At the end of April, we sadly had to start sailing back south to get back to the Grenadines before the hurricane season began in June. Our route was St Maarten (just overnight), St Barts, St Kitts, Nevis, Monserrat, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, St Lucia, Bequia, Mustique, Tobago Cays, Chatham Bay, Carriacou, and finally Grenada where we were booked to haulout at Spice Island Marina in August. We spent an awful month in the boatyard preparing Sheer Tenacity for her stay through the hurricane season.

We returned to Cape Town for September – October. It was really great seeing family and friends again after 2 and 1/2 years! Unfortunately, a lot of our time was taken up with medical issues, dentists etc. and we didn’t get to see everybody we would have liked to. Please forgive us if we missed you. Steve and Kim are now living in the Cape so we were able to see them a lot. We stayed with Kate and her 2 gorgeous tabbies, Sam & Max, in Tamboerskloof. She is still with Merrill Lynch and working way too hard! All the family are well……….we met our new grandnephew, Max, from the UK, for the first time and just missed the birth of our grandniece, Jessica Mary. It was the first time in years that the whole family was together in the same city, so we took the opportunity to finally lay Pam’s (Rod’s mum) ashes to rest in the Garden of Remembrance, Christ Church, Constantia.

We returned to Sheer Tenacity in the first week of November and launched after antifouling and checking everything was in working order. It was lovely being back on the water after the heat and insects in the boatyard. We have been in Carriacou for 2 weeks (and celebrated our 3^rd year of cruising…..we left Hout Bay on 3 December 2008) and will sail across to Union and Chatham quite soon. We are still really enjoying the cruising life, though we miss SA and family and old friends enormously!

May you have a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones and we wish you everything good in 2012.  

With our love and very best wishes

Rod & Mary aboard Sheer Tenacity