2024-07-27 Trip to Carriacou - aftermath of hurricane Beryl

On Monday, we picked up Tracy, and motor-sailed up to Carriacou.  We got in early enough that we made a trip to her boat to see if there was anything left to salvage.  

There was not.  Tracy had left her boat securely tied in the mangroves, stripped of sails and such.  There were probably about 100 boats that had done the same, including our friends on Melelana, who had secured their boat in these mangroves before during storms.  The local fisherman also used the mangroves for secure storage of boats during storms.   

Tracy's boat Wanderlust flipped upside down, and landed in the mangroves and then caught fire and burned.  Another catamaran next to her also flipped upside down into the mangroves, but did not burn.  Our friends on Melelana flipped upside down, but landed in the water and partially sunk.  

We had to climb through the mangroves a bit to reach Wanderlust - or what remained of her.

Wanderlust is to the right of the upside down cat.  

You can see the bow arch, and trampolines, surprisingly not badly burnt.  Lagoon 45 upside down beside her not burnt at all, and friends boat Melelana upside down in lagoon, with black hull paint.

Tracy looking for any stuff

Some kitchen items survived, metal  and ceramic

The mast out in the mangroves.  You can see Dean navigating across the mangroves

Stern of boat, orangish color is rudderpost sticking up

All resin is gone, leaving fiberglass  fibers you can  just pick  up in strings

Melelana and another cat upside down in bay

The boats on land fared a little better, but not good.

We went back the next day, and picked up some metal items. A mast step, a block, and a cup holder, so at  least Tracy can  have a couple  mementos to take to her next boat.

Hung out for a couple days in Carriacou.  Tracy visited some friends who had a monohull ashore in the mangrove, but she was able to get her boat out - so good news there.

Thursday we had a very nice sail back to Grenada, and dropped the hook in Prickly Bay.  Prickly is not our favorite spot, as it is usually rolly, but it is super convenient to things, and Tracy has friends there as well. 

Couple of days on the boat just relaxing, and Kris working on finalizing our plans.   We are hot, and with Kris's phone dying, and then her computer dying we decided to fly back to the states early.  So flight changes, haul the boat earlier and insurance planning to be done.  

We have to get new insurance, and our previous insurance company is not renewing our policy, as they no longer offered our insurance plan and were changing it.  We have lithium batteries, and the new policy requires any boat with lithium to have purchased the batteries in the USA, which we did not, so they will no longer insure us.

We got several insurance quotes, but the one that works best for us, requires an new boat survey.  So we arranged to have the boat surveyed in Trinidad when we haul out, but this particular insurance company requires SAMS or NAMS certified surveyors, which our surveyor was not.  Although our surveyor was highly certified, but more by European standards, not US standards.  Hard to find insurance to insure you in the USA and abroad that is not USA based.

So we needed to find a new surveyor, and there is one, but in Grenada, so now we will haul the boat for 2 hours in Grenada for the survey, and then go to Trinidad and haul the boat again.

Long story short, Kris spent a lot of time on phone and emails and such to arrange all.

Tracy left this morning, to stay with the friends she was with before coming with us, as she is flying out soon, and wanted to consolidate all her belongings in one area and get sorted before leaving.

We will most likely change anchorages  now and  find somewhere less rolly for the next week until  we have  our survey on August 6th.