Fort Shirley was a nice hike and the people friendly. I took
this picture of these little girls playing while there on a school outing they
were all running around with Flamboyant tree seed pods like swords since they
are over a foot long. Their mother asks if I could send her a copy as she had
no pictures of her girls. No one there
had an email address I could send it to so I have an actual mailing address to
send her a few copies to, she thanked me profusely. Today I bought grapefruits
from Christian in his old metal boat which he rows around all day from boat to
boat drinking his box of wine. Not a bad deal, product for free, old boat, drunk
all day……hmmm. Anyhow these grapefruits are so good, so sweet you just eat them
no sugar needed, I have to stop or I’ll get sick.
On another note I was saddened to hear of
Raindancer’s name sake hitting a reef off of Phare Bleu on the South end of
Grenada, as you can see in the chart picture there are a lot of reefs in this
area. You can see Clarks Court Bay is
only a few miles from there which is where we were staying in Grenada. For
those of you who don’t know I had sailed in the Caribbean 1500 with Ron and
Joanne Lipscombe the former owners of a big wooden schooner named Raindancer in
2002 and again in the BVI. She was hit by hurricane Ivan in Grenada in 2005 and
severely damaged. I had just purchased the Mason 43, and Ron and
Joanne were devastated and sold her pretty much as a salvage. Not knowing if
she would ever sail again I ask them if I could name the Mason after her to
honor her. But the new owner undertook a
reconstruction of her which took years and hundreds of thousands of dollars and
brought her back to her former glory. It’s
such a sad end to come back yet again just miles from where Ivan did his best
only to be lost on the reef last week. Here
is a link to an article about the sinking,
http://osharpe.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/the-beginning-and-the-end/
Now Raindancer has to live up to her legacy for sure and sail the seas with a her great name with pride.
Now Raindancer has to live up to her legacy for sure and sail the seas with a her great name with pride.