We're FREE! Now What's Our Hurricane Tactics? [Sailing Kittiwake Ep. 117]

We are officially out of quarantine! Really nice to be off the book. These clouds are looking a bit threatening. So in terms of hurricane or tropical storm options down here in Grenada itself, what would we be looking at? I'm Elena and this is Ryan. In 2017 we left the UK on our first boat, Kitty Wake. We lived on Kitty Wake for two years. Then Skua came along. She's a Tayana 37 from 1976. We live on Skua on a budget and work online to keep traveling by sailboat. In 2020 we crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean. Now we're exploring this beautiful part of the world. We are officially out of quarantine! Today we went ashore, we did our Covid tests. We are both negative. And then Ryan did all the formalities. So we are legal. Totally, fully legal in Grenada. So now we're gonna go celebrate. I'm gonna go to shore finally. Have a look at the beach that we have been staring at for two weeks. Hey Mr. Boobie! Has your first night not in quarantine going? Yes, sweet. It's a lovely spot, huh? Really nice to be off the boat. As much as I love our boat and I love being on our boat, it is nice to get off it after you've been on it 14 days in Orleans Creech. So yeah, nice little spot to chill out. Sun's getting a little bit cooler. And yeah, really nice beach. Good morning! Today we are out of here. We are leaving this anchorage. Just got the flopper stopper up. And we are headed towards those really cool deep anchorages that look a bit like fjords on the other side of this headland. And yeah, it's really exciting. I can't wait to start exploring. We are still rolling like crazy. So where are we off to exactly? Probably Prickly Bay. So we're going to go down this way around the headland, which is the southwesternmost point of the island. And then a couple of miles up that way. It's probably not far from where we are, but you have to go all the way down and back up again, obviously. So yeah, it's quite a famous, well-known kind of place, but apparently it's quite dead at the moment because the bars are closed. And yeah, people hanging out here all summer want to go for somewhere to drink, want somewhere to go for a drink. So apparently it's not too busy, which suits us fine. Hopefully we'll be able to do some kayaking and paddleboarding. And I don't know, maybe there's some snorkelling there, isn't there? I'm not sure, I don't think so. No snorkelling? No. Well, hopefully we'll get plenty of snorkelling once we get up to Carriacou. Awesome. It's another beautiful day, so lovely. Now that we are out here, there's also a really cooling breeze, which is really awesome. And we've got our hatches open, so that hopefully once we are in Prickly, it's going to be nice and cool down inside the boat as well. This looks more like the UK or some northern country than the Caribbean. It's kind of weird. Really green and rocky. There's still no wind, so we can't raise the sails. But we just had no choice. We had to leave the quarantine anchorage because it needs to be a quarantine anchorage. So new boats are coming in and doing their quarantine. So we didn't really have a choice. We had to leave this weekend. But it's nice to be out here and it's actually quite nice for it to be cloudy. The sun is not shining super hot on us. We're only traveling a 10 nautical mile distance, a bit less than that, maybe seven. So it's no big deal. We've got plenty of diesel. Got your fishing line out? Yep, got the new little Rapala lure, which when you speak to people seems to be quite successful. So that's what I'm using, especially as we're going quite slow at the moment because of the current and the wind against us. What are you hoping to catch? Hopefully a Spanish mackerel, which is what we caught near Carriacou, I guess. And it was really good. It was really tasty. It didn't have scales. It wasn't that hard to bring it on board. It was the perfect fish. It made really nice fish tacos. So I'd quite like to catch one of those. Or maybe a barracuda, as we've never caught a barracuda. People love it down here. I know the barracuda do have ciguatera, but apparently down here it's pretty safe, especially the smaller ones. So a small to medium barracuda would be clever. Nice. So far Grenada feels a little bit similar to SVG, but a lot more developed. So it's kind of like nice to be able to do your shopping in one supermarket and find a few shops. It's kind of helpful. And we'll see what these famous anchorages are like. We've heard about them so many times, so we're kind of curious. Looking a bit threatening. Hopefully there's no squalls while we approach. But we're really glad we didn't raise the sails. This here is True Blue Bay and it looks pretty empty. So it's a good backup in case Prickly is a bit too busy. All right, this is us. It's looking pretty nice. I expected something looking less Caribbean than this. It looks really nice. Not a bad anchorage, huh? It's really nice, I'd say. Not very rolly, but there is a rumour that it can get rolly in here. Not a rumour. It can get rolly in here, but so far so good. It's quite deep. We're anchored in 10.5 meters, but yeah, we've got plenty of change. There's no beat. The holding looks really good, yeah. Yeah, amazing. The water is not very clear though, so it's a nice colour, but you can't see through it. So I had to dive down quite deep to actually be able to see the anchor digging in. But yeah, it seemed to dig in really well and yeah, really comfy. Nice breeze. Yeah, it's perfect for now. Yeah, fantastic. Just what we need. So lunch is crackers with... Ryan's having cheese. I'm having cucumber, maybe ricotta. See if I want to open it. And there's some cream cheese over there. Pretty nice. And then we have a bit of watermelon, but all expensive watermelon. So what's going on with the weather? It's not very good. It's not like dangerous or it's going to be super windy or anything, but where we are in these southern bays in Grenada... So at the moment we're in Prickly Bay, which is one of the most western ones. There's... They're quite open to the south and there's these tropical waves. There's a whole series of them at the moment, which are coming across, which are the kind of meteorological features which turn into tropical storms and hurricanes. And although all those tropical waves are passing way to the north, so they're not bringing strong winds down here, they do bring southerly winds. So the winds are coming directly into these bays on the south coast of Grenada. So we're thinking rather than hang around here, we might just pop up to Carriacou where there's much better anchorages that are protected from the south, like Hillsborough and even Tyrell Bay seems better protected than down here. And it looks like a really nice island. We have good snorkelling. There's some other like smaller islands as well that we saw on the way down when we sailed down to Grenada. And they're all in the kind of Grenada archipelago. So Grenada, Carriacou and Petit Martinique plus some other smaller uninhabited islands that we'd really like to check out. So that's kind of our current thinking is just to go back up to the north a bit. And then, I mean, it's still good in terms of like the hurricane plan because we can still escape down here if we need to. But it just means that we'll escape from these southerly winds or the southerly swell mainly. It's also quite squally, which is a little bit annoying, especially if they come at night. But it's no big deal. It also might be time to take a good look at the hurricane options we've got down here, don't we? Because of what Chris Parker said this morning. Yeah, he said that there's going to be more systems affecting the Eastern Caribbean now, which is what you'd expect, you know. The water is warm now. Everything's heating up. And the conditions out in the Atlantic from the Cape Verdes are more conducive for development. So we can see more systems. At the moment, they all seem to be passing to the north, which is good. But yeah, we do have some other options down here for hurricanes. And obviously, being further south is generally better with the normal caveat that there are hurricanes like Hurricane Ivan that can come this far south. Generally, the further south we are, the better. So in terms of hurricane or tropical storm options down here in Grenada itself, what would we be looking at? So if there was anything scary, then the main hurricane holes are Port Egmont or Egmont, which is basically just an enclosed mangrove area, which could be really good because I don't think they put ferries in there. It looks like proper 360 protection once you're in the mangroves, I think. Yeah, it goes through a big dog leg. So it should be really well protected. And we looked up, we researched it using this article from Hurricane Ivan, which said where boats managed to survive. And basically, the marinas and boatyards, everything was destroyed, I think. But in Egmont, some boats survived. And I think in Calvini Harbour, which is another kind of enclosed area. So they would be our two main options down here on the south coast. And then there are mangroves in Carriacou as well, in Tyrell Bay. And we've heard that they get very busy and that they anchor ferries in the middle of it, both of which means it's probably not going to be great. But at least it means that Eleanor and me can take some valuables and get off the boat and we'll be fine. And if all of the mangrove areas are really busy, there are marinas and boatyards throughout Grenada and in Carriacou. So they could be potential backup options, but we'd have to face the reality that the boat would probably get a lot of damage. But I mean, it's better to have all these options than being in SVG, where the only real option was that really expensive luxury marina, right? Yeah, but that luxury marina, I think was actually kind of good because they set it up kind of like a canal and you were allowed to tie your boat up in the middle. So that would have been a better option than the marinas down here, I think. But storm surge is not accounted for in any of these marinas? No, I think the docks in Port Louis do float up. I'm not sure they would float up if it got really high. But yeah, that's the risk, isn't it? The storm surge, if you're in a marina and the water just keeps coming up and up and up and up and up. Yeah, hopefully it won't happen. But yeah, got a few options at least. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, subscribe and click on the bell button. Your support is essential to keep these videos coming. So consider joining our Patreon crew or sending us a PayPal donation. See you next week.