Ft Shirley and Loss of a great Schooner

 

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.