Port Louis Week 3

Hi everyone,

We've now been in Port Louis Marina in Grenada for about three weeks.  The time has flown.  Lots of boat jobs completed, some fun with cruiser pals and some local exploring.

Grenadian sunset

Our first few days were consumed with fitting our new Lifeline Lithium batteries as previously posted.  We also explored the marina and the local area.  High on the agenda in the marina were the showers and the pool.  Both are very nice indeed!  The Victory Bar in the marina is a nice restaurant with friendly staff.  There's a very nice bakery on the access road into the marina.  And the nearest supermarket, only a 5 minute walk away, is pretty good.

Marina office

The pool

The Merry Bakery

We walked into St George's for a look around the national capital.  It's a 20 minute walk around the bay.  Some of the architecture in St George's is early Victorian and quite impressive.  The local boats moored around the edge of the bay are very colourful.

View across the bay while walking to St George's

Colourful local boats

From the town we walked up the hill to Fort George.  Nice views.  The fort houses the Police Headquarters and the Police training academy, but tourists are welcome to look around.  A tour guide certainly helped finding some of the better hidden parts of the fort.

View from Fort George

Exterior of Fort George

View of Port Louis Marina from Fort George

Canons at Fort George

The US invasion of Grenada followed the shooting of the previous Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and others.  Their imprisonment and execution took place in the fort and the bullet marks can still be seen in the wall near a plaque.

Plaque commemorating those shot in 1983 at Fort George

Fort George tunnels

A group of OCC yachts were in Port Louis Marina together, with some also anchored in Prickly Bay.  We all met at the West Indies Brewing Company for dinner.  Twas a great night with the crews of Ari, Cerulean, Favourita, Walkabout, and Zelda. 

West Indies Brewing Company bar

West Indies Brewing Company loos - with repurposed kegs

More recently we walked to the top of a nearby hill with Chris of Aussie sv Ari.  Good exercise and great views from the top.

Relaxing after the hill climb

View north over the marina

View to the south

In amongst all the above we've completed a number of maintenance tasks:

• Replaced old AGM batteries with new Lithium (described here)
• Replaced old battery chargers with Lithium compatible chargers
• Rearranged circuit breakers on the instrument panel
• Cleaned, inspected and remarked the anchor chain, removing several rusting links
• Applied patches to wear spots on the mainsail
• Stitched canvas patch onto the goalpost canvas rain catcher to improve its efficiency
• Oiled the on-deck woodwork
• Cleaned and stowed the SailingGen hydro generator and Torqeedo electric outboard

We also got help from local company Triple Services to repair our fridge.  Over the previous few months it had become unreliable - turning into a freezer for a few days then not working at all for a similar period.  Tevin of Triple Services came down with his crew and fixed it in a couple of hours.  The moisture filter was replaced and the system regassed.

Tevin of Triple Services fixing the fridge

We're carefully monitoring and testing our new battery system.  It is connected into our SignalK system which records all the data.  The graph below shows a week of testing starting with 3 days running on solar only, then charging with the mains charger, then 3 days of the mains charger 'topping up' the batteries occasionally.  A brief engine run is in there too - shown by the orange Start Battery Voltage trace 'spiking' in the top graph.  So far so good!

A week of battery trials

Trust all's well where you are.