Eight Nights in Prickly Bay

 As peripatetic as we are, to spend eight nights in one place is unusual. The first four were previously reported and included Lene’s stay at LaSource and our crash.  The next three nights involved live music. The first was at the Prickly Bay Marina, where we had had our laundry done earlier that day. We met with Alan (but unfortunately not with Lisbeth whose back hurt), had pizza and salad and Roger had happy hour drinks. (One could call the happy hour custom a form of alcoholism training.)  This meal was accompanied by a six person steel drum band, and, after an interlude of stage changing covered by a DJ, an American old style Rock band. A group of older men played for us.

Next day we were picked up in a van, together with seven other volunteers from Prickly Bay and other bays and taken to the community hurricane shelter of the town of Mt. Airy to serve as tutor-readers for about 20 kids.

They had a heavy dose of prayer, a bible story reading and a special feature this week was the appearance of two young ladies from Mt. Airy, currently associate attorneys in different law firms in St. Georges. They were very well dressed, well spoken and delivered a  well targeted address: “You can be what you want to be if you study and read a lot.” After a muffin and juice (snacks for the kids and “tutors”) we were driven back to our pick up points. Our cost was only $5EC per person, which goes to the charity, with the cabbies having volunteered their services for a good cause. During the cab ride, we got introduced to Steve & Donna Constantine. They had sailed down here in the Caribbean 1500 the year before we did and indeed were the owners of Summer Love, an Amel  55, the boat on which Dave Hornbach, who crewed with Roger on his trip to Tortola, had crewed that prior year. So we had a mutual friend and we all sang Dave’s praises.

Our next night, after cleaning a lot on the boat (the fenders and the heavy plastic coated yellow electrical shore power cable look like new) we met with Mike and Audrey at the cross bay competitor of the Prickly Bay Marina’s tent kitchen restaurant – De Big Fish, adjacent  to Spice Island Marina and the Budget Marine store.  Here happy hour beers are three for $10EC ($4US) and the music was Island Calypso/Reggae/Hip Hop.  A singer named X-tasy accompanied by his drummer and keyboardist entertained. The group worked continually for more than two hours with no “breaks” between “sets”  -- no union rules here. An elderly black man (probably not older than Roger come to think of it) in a white shirt and with rubber hips shook and swayed to the music throughout the show. We thought that he was not officially part of the show.  Also not part of the show was a young black lady in a skin tight maroon dress who after a while, fortified by several Carib beers, shook her “booty” better than we had ever seen booty being shaken before.

Our third consecutive night of music was of a different order: a fund raising concert of the St. Georges University Chorale and guest artists.  It was held in Charter Hall, on the campus, which could have seated 500 students. The auditorium seats had swing down desk tops.  About 300 people paid $30EC ($12US) for admission to the concert. The music was predominantly  Beethoven, including the chorus of the fourth movement of his Ninth Symphony.  The orchestra to accompany the chorus and guest soloists, however, consisted of a piano teacher at his instrument, six kids aged as young as twelve with violins and one man with a horn. The organizers and promoters of the concert were quite proud of themselves and such a collection of amateur singers and instrumentalists on such a small island was a big accomplishment for them. They were particularly proud to have presented what they called “the first Grenadian performance of  Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony”. Several honorable people in the government and diplomatic positions were present.  As with the kids in their open air school house the day before, we heard the Grenadian National Anthem fervently sung.  Not all of the performers were very talented and there were problems with the placement and sound mixing of the microphones, but Beethoven’s joyous music and Schiller’s text (translated as “all men are brothers”) made it an extremely pleasurable evening.

Following the concert, we dined again with Mike and Audrey at the Dodgy Dock, finally having the opportunity to patronize that restaurant. The torrential rain that fell just before we ordered desert caused us to relocate to an area further from the edge of the elegant tent covered dining pavilions.  I had Callaloo soup and chicken breast stuffed with Callaloo in a nutmeg sauce which was quite delicious. They grow nutmeg and other spices on this island, nicknamed the Spice Island, and a nutmeg is included on the national flag. So they make the most of what they have, putting nutmeg into jams, jellies, liqueurs, syrup and anything else into which it can fit.

Today we filled up the fuel tanks and took our friend Marti on a day sail.  We got a late start due to problems in hoisting the dinghy, in untying the snubber line and in raising the anchor, but all of these were nullified by even greater delays because the fuel pump needed to be repaired. At last we sailed south for an hour in about 17 knots of wind with reefed main and small jib before tacking and going back, both ways on close to a beam reach. It felt really good to just be sailing again. But when we got back on anchor and lowered the dink to take Marti to her car, we were tired. We had planned to then go on to another Bay, further east, to meet up with Alan and Lisbeth, but stayed here in Prickly Bay our eighth and final night.