We have done very little this month as we have been waiting, interminably it seems, for our replacement solar panels but they finally arrived on the 27th and Mike has fitted them. Hooray. We can now, hopefully, finally run the freezer without having to turn it off overnight (as long as the sun shines). See Mike’s page for the full details.

Two other things have caused us headaches this month. Firstly, Pat’s debit card was somehow compromised and a couple of transactions went through which weren’t hers. The trouble with reading your on-line statement is that transactions don’t show immediately and Pat could see that there was an amount of £144 outstanding and couldn’t think what it could be. A couple of days later two transactions showed a £20 payment to T Mobile in the UK then £124 to a restaurant in London! She knew immediately that there was something wrong and phoned Nationwide. It turned out that they had detected and blocked several more suspicious attempts, all via the telephone or over the internet. We never ever hand over our debit cards to restaurants where a lot of these frauds happen, only in shops etc. where we can keep an eye on them while they are being ‘swiped’ or at ATM machines. We can only think that one of the machines in St George’s was the culprit. Nationwide immediately stopped the card and repaid the £144 ( good eh? Thought it was only credit cards where you were compensated). The replacement card is at present back with Sheila and Pat is using our joint ‘boat’s account card at the moment.

The other disaster was that Pat’s new(ish) Pentax underwater camera that she has had since last summer but had never used in the sea, had it’s first underwater experience when we went snorkeling at Grand Anse and it immediately let in water and is now busted! It is annoying but it hardly seems worth sending it back after 9 months use. The previous Pentax went the same way but at least she got a couple of years out of that one until it succumbed to a watery grave! She will be looking at a different make when she hopefully goes home this year. The photos this month are mostly from her Samsung phone. Mike now has a posh underwater camera and he took some shots of the sea creatures growing on our hull.

We haven’t taken too many photos this month anyway as we haven’t really done too much apart from the usual shopping, cleaning, washing of clothes, boat maintenance etc. Life on a boat isn’t all play you know! Mike says he has worked harder since retiring than he ever did at his job. Ha ha. We have gone on three more hash runs, the first at Concord on the west coast, then St David’s on the south coast and last week at the River Antoine rum distillery near Tivoli up on the north-east coast. You may remember we visited Grenada’s oldest distillery (1785) last year with Sheila and Jim.

We did one cultural thing and visited the Grenada museum in St George’s one Friday night and watched a group of drummers who played different Caribbean and African drums. They were very entertaining and we had a nice meal at the Bistro afterwards.

So we haven’t a lot to report this month. Now we have the solar panels we will be heading north through the Grenadines to St Vincent, an island we want to explore more than we did last year. Hoping that nothing else goes wrong before then! We have been moving anchorages between Clark’s Court Bay, Prickly Bay and St George’s.

A few pictures and three little movies below (the quality is not too good, sorry).

See you next month.