Life in Grenada…   10/08/2021

We moved a little way east along the coast on Monday, to Le Phare Bleu marina. It’s on the western arm of Egmont Bay, and is named after an old Swedish lightship anchored here, which has a blue lighthouse on top of it. The south coast of Grenada is a succession of bays, separated by headlands protruding into the sea. It’s a lovely coastline, rocky and much of it covered with mangrove trees which grow down into the water.

Le Phare Bleu marina is small, has a little hotel attached to it, and is very social. Numerous conversations with fellow sailors, a great mix of people. The catamaran next to me is Americans. The man told me they are from Kansas – a place so far inland that it’s not the obvious origin of sailors. The woman told me today that she’s a school teacher and an ex-US marine. Like me, they have only been sailing for two years. They have a 14 year old son and 7 year old daughter with them. Their daughter spends her days running around with other kids, all wearing swimsuits and going wherever they want, into the pool, into the sea, running along the jetties in the marina, hopping on and off boats. It’s great to see kids being free – no health and safety here, and yet they all seem so alive!

A young American guy who came along for a chat today had also only been sailing for 2 years. He high-fived me when I said “same”! We talked about learning by doing and having one advantage: not being over-confident about our skills. (In our modern world, that does seem rare!). He’s sailing with his wife and two small kids. 

Apart from fellow sailors, I had the owner of a welding company onboard this morning, measuring up for building a structure on the back of the boat. One aim is to have davits from which to lift the dinghy out of the water. Secondly, to create a frame over the back of the boat on which two more large solar panels can be fixed. He also proposed a sort of cage on the side which will hold the life raft, and make deployment easy should it ever be needed. 

Being a local, the welding man was very interesting on the subject of local life. I said that Grenada is obviously a pretty safe place. He said yes, and it’s because the community won’t tolerate crime. It’s a small island, population about 110,000 and people know their local communities. If a crime is committed, the police find out who did it in a few hours. And if they don’t act quickly, the local community will. If it’s a serious crime, especially one against a woman or child, the police beg locals not to take the law into their own hands…

It’s interesting hearing things like this – it’s a look under the surface. What you have is an “old-fashioned” society, where the community is basically self-regulating, morality is strong and there is no tolerance for people who hurt others. The Caribbean is very laidback and easygoing, but underneath there is this steel. I said that Antigua felt safe too. He said yes, Antigua and St Vincent are very similar. He was not the first to refer to Trinidad and it’s violence, much of it drug-related, saying “we don’t want that here”. 

He then took me to his truck, where his wife was waiting, so that I could meet her. I’d had a long telephone conversation with her last Friday – she’s Grenadian, but was born and grew up in West Ham, east London – and sounds like it! She was making fun of me for being posh, from west London and therefore going to be in Le Phare Bleu marina – which when pronounced in the French way does sound awfully posh! A delightful woman – outspoken, funny and as sharp as hell. 

I told her how I was struck by people here laughing so much – and that it really took me “home”, growing up among the Zulus, who always seemed to be laughing and singing. For me, there’s always something so familiar about black women, I think because as a baby I was looked after by a Zulu maid. My mother did say that she was “wonderful with you, she was so patient, and would carry you around for ages until you were quiet and never got cross with you” (suggesting that my mother delegated to her a lot of the time…). So in the strangest way, it feels a little bit like I’m coming full circle.

Maybe that is what travel is about. Not a journey forward into the unknown but, in encountering new things, re-discovering things forgotten, hearing the echoes of the past…