There and Back Again

Now blogging from memory, 3 months ago.

We needed to get down to Grenada, and didn't want to wait for Monday to get a pre-departure PCR test. So, hired a car and tried to find somewhere on Martinique that would give us PCR tests, on Saturday. There was another storm on the way, and we were keen to get out of the way of it. This was harder than we expected, most places could only do antigen tests. Eventually we got pointed to a tiny little neighbourhood clinic, staffed by a single nurse, who let us in minutes after they were supposed to close for the weekend.

Tests done, we enjoyed Martinique a bit, getting some ice cream in town, and went up into the mountains above Fort de France to hike to a waterfall near Arboretum de Balata.

It was a lovely hike along the river to the waterfall, and a good swim. We decided to take a different route back, and ended up "bundu-bashing" along a long-closed path through the jungle. It took a few hours, but we made it back down before dark, returned the car, and had a final day with our friends on board, before heading back down to Grenada.

The trip back down wasn't daunting, because we'd just done it. But with just the two of us, we'd be taking watches on our own.

I don't recall too much about the sail down, other than seeing the perseid meteor shower, behind St. Vincent.

We anchored in Tyrell Bay, exhausted, and waited for our PCR tests to come through, so we could check in. Unfortunately, Martinique was going through a real spike in COVID-19 cases, and ours were backlogged. It took a couple of days and tricky French phone calls to get our results, and get back into Grenada, delaying our haul-out even further.

Navionics Track