We're now officially one month into hurricane season here in the Caribbean. Traditionally, anywhere south of 12 degrees south latitude has been considered safe from hurricanes. St George's, Grenada, where we are currently anchored, is just a few minutes north of 12 south (you do know that a nautical mile is defined as one minute of latitude and that a nautical mile is 1.15 statute miles, right?). Anyway, marine insurance companies have always denied hurricane coverage unless you are south of 12degrees, 10minutes north latitude, which is why people tend to leave their boats in Grenada, Trinidad, and Venezuela during hurricane season.

All that changed in September of 2004 when Hurricane Ivan struck Grenada, damaging an estimated 90% of all structures, wiping out nutmeg, banana, and cacao plantations, and laying waste to all of the boats that were in storage, on the hard or in the water. Hurricane Ivan went on to do a number on the gulf coast in Alabama. It even looped around over the Delmarva Peninsula, back into the Atlantic, around Florida, and made landfall once again in the Gulf of Mexico in Texas. A pretty nasty storm in just about all respects. I remember seeing pictures of the marinas here in southern Grenada, with the vast majority of boats toppled from their stands "on the hard", lying like fallen dominoes and the boats in the water looking like the aftermath of enduring a heavy-duty washing machine cycle.

We've been playing the odds by taking the month of June to travel from Dominica to Martinique, St Lucia, and through the Grenadines to Grenada. Hurricanes rarely form this early in the season, and as I mentioned, hurricanes rarely hit Grenada. This isn't as foolhardy as it might sound, as we've been within a day or two sail of Trinidad the entire time, and Trinidad has always been considered hurricane-safe. Like southern Grenada used to be. Hmmm. Trinidad is out of the trade winds and into what's known as the ITCZ, the Intertropical Convergence Zone, what used to be called the doldrums. The ITCZ is known for relatively light winds, very warm temps, and endless thunderstorms. But it takes wind to get a hurricane started, so that's why Trinidad has always been considered hurricane-safe. Of course the ITCZ boundaries move throughout the year and Trinidad isn't entirely hurricane-safe.

Fun weather facts to ponder.

Since last I wrote we traveled through the Grenadines, meeting with on 3 occasions our friends Mike and Lori who were on their annual sailing vacation in a chartered catamaran. 5 adults and 5 pre-teens/teens on their boat, plus another boat with another 8 folks on it. Can't imagine making decisions with that many people! But they seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely, despite the windy and sometimes rainy weather we've been having. We anchored together on Bequia, in the Tobago Cays, and in Clifton Harbor on Union Island. Actually, it was more happenstance than not, as we weren't trying to travel with them, but it was nice to visit and chat.

The Tobago Cays are still pretty spectacular, though there's a lot more charter boats than there were 18 years ago when I was last here. The snorkeling was very good including right off the beach at Baradel Island where we snorkeled with half a dozen green turtles. Marine parks with serious rules about no fishing, no taking of turtles, no taking of anything really do make a difference.

We passed relatively quickly through Union Island, where we checked out of St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Carriacou, where we checked into Grenada. We spent a couple of nights in Carriacou and then yesterday sailed south to Grenada. Our first "big" passage in a while. Since we'd gone from St Lucia to Bequia we hadn't been doing more than an hour or two sailing between anchorages; the trip from Carriacou to Grenada was all of 4 hours and 30 miles! :-) And now that we're no longer bashing into headwinds we're managing some quite nice sailing. We were beam-reaching at 8-9 knots in 15-20 knot winds from Carriacou to the northern end of Grenada.

One of the interesting things about that passage is sailing over an active seabed volcano! It's colorfully called Kick-'em-Jenny, and it rises to within 150 meters or so of the surface, about 8 kilometers north of Grenada. It last erupted in 2001, and the government has a 1.5 kilometer exclusion zone around the volcano, just in case. It's purely voluntary, though we did our best to avoid it. We sailed about 2 miles to the east of it and once I have the latest Google Earth .kmz file up on the site you can see exactly how close our track was to the volcano.

We arrived in St George's yesterday around noon and are anchored in the lagoon. St George's is a very pretty city, some say the prettiest in the Caribbean. The residual damage from Hurricane Ivan is still very visible, with many structures still ruined and a large church without its roof. Today was laundry day for the industrious half of us, internet access day for the other half. We'd been nearly 4 days without and beginning to suffer withdrawal.

Oh, nearly forgot. I was going to write a bit about the U.S. invasion of 1983. Recall that there'd been a coup here in 1979, putting into power a Marxist-Leninist government, supported by the Soviets and the Cubans. In 1983 the deputy prime-minister staged his own coup, overthrowing the previous government, and killing the very popular prime minister and half his cabinet. Ronnie Reagan took the opportunity to get rid of a commie western hemisphere government under the fairly feeble pretext of "protecting" US citizens enrolled in medical school here. We sent in the marines, the rangers, and the Navy SEALs which kicked out the Cubans, arrested the coup leaders, and turned control back over to the governor-general (the Queen's appointed representative, given Grenada is a British Commonwealth nation). Free elections ensued, the baddies are all still in jail, and the economy has boomed ever since. Most Grenadians I think were happy, happy enough to declare October 25 as a day of thanksgiving. The Europeans and the Brits and the Soviets and the Cubans were all furious. But the furor died down relatively quickly and most Americans took some pride in the first "positive" U.S. military action since Vietnam.

And some people wonder why the more paranoid in the Caribbean worry about American invasions. We do rather seem to make a habit of it, treating the area as our own backyard, even if it's really our neighbor's backyards.

We'll probably move on around to the south side of the island tomorrow or the day after and then wait for a good weather window before undertaking the 80-mile passage to Trinidad. We'll want to get there by a week from Monday, so as to have a full working-week to get the boat ready to be pulled out of the water and put on the hard for the remainder of hurricane season. We're flying to the bay area just a week from Friday, so things will be happening quickly. Come to think of it, we'll probably want to get there late this week!