I have a fast and mostly uneventful downwind sail from Bequia to Carriacou’s Tyrrel bay with an overnight and customs clearance at Union Island. “Mostly” because I manage to fall asleep while on autopilot and wake up from the shouts of a closely passing catamaran. From the looks of it I didn’t honor their right of way and they had to change course to avoid a head-on collision. Oops, that is not only embarrassing but downright careless. Solo sailing!

I have been debating if I should sail all the way to Grenada where Matt lands tomorrow, Thursday. But knowing we’d have to sail all the way back upwind, I opt for the ferry instead. JACE stays at anchor and I get up real early for the 5am ferry, which I manage to almost miss. I have some time to kill in Grenada, which I do both sightseeing and shopping for bread at two bakeries.

Matt’s flight arrives at 3p, a bit ahead of schedule and it is so good seeing my old friend. For those who don’t know: Matt was my grad school roommate in Madison, Wisconsin, where we both got engineering masters degrees. Matt now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his then-girlfriend, now-wife Suzy, also a very good friend. Apparently, upon hearing of my solo sailing situation she told Matt something along the lines of “sounds like he could use a friend and you could use a break”. Matt is one of those friends you don’t need to see very often and still the friendship has endured and stayed very strong over nearly thirty years.

I am so excited to see him and show him my little world. The taxi brings us to the ferry port where we have enough time for a welcome drink and a quick snack. The ferry leaves at 5p and takes nearly 3hrs. It’s the tropics in winter, i.e. the sun sets at 5:45p and it is pitch dark at 6:15p and you feel it must be midnight by the time it is 9p. We drop our stuff onboard JACE and have dinner ashore and talk until late.

First night aboard goes ok, Matt is still getting used to the swaying, the sounds and different feel of shipboard life. We get up early and make a royal breakfast. You all know me! I talk Matt through our plan and assign him some duties, such as being my “anchor man” (no more running back and forth for me when weighing anchor, yeah!). First we just motor (light wind and short distance) around the headland and drop the hook at “Sandy Island”. I couldn’t go here last time as it was way too windy but today is calm and perfect for a visit. We take the dinghy ashore, walk around the tiny spit of sand and palm trees, and do some snorkeling. The place is like out of a travel brochure.

After lunch we leave and do some sailing. It’s a nice steady wind, enough but not too strong, and Matt turns out to really enjoy taking the helm and does a great job at it. Helming a big sailboat isn’t easy at first. Finding the sweet spot of wind and swell and dealing with the inertia of a 15 ton boat in shifting winds takes some getting used to and has many literally reeling the wheel back and forth. Matt gets it right away and is very calm and steady with just the right amount of anticipation and anti-cyclic steering action. He is a pilot and flies small single-engine planes in his free time and apparently there is much that translates between the two worlds. Anyway, Matt ends up taking the helm most of the next three days and I jokingly call him the human autopilot. What a nice break for me!

We find a wonderful anchorage at Frigate bay on Union Island and soon after our arrival a local fisherman sells us a good size Mahi Mahi, caught just an hour earlier. Dinner secured! Multiple, actually: today it is filets on the grill with veggie rice and on Sun we turn the other half into a giant pot of delicious fish curry.

We spend a lot of time talking, catching up on our lives. Like us, Matt and Suzy’s second of two also just left the house and we exchange our respective experiences, joys and struggles, as newly empty-nesters. We sit on the foredeck with fruity rum drinks, sweets and snacks, and talk until late while enjoying the amazing starlit night sky.

Saturday is pancake day and then a lovely upwind sail (Matt is really getting good at this!) to the Tobago Cays. Our first spot is a bit rolly, so we reanchor and now have a great and quiet spot right between two tiny islets. Matt goes for a snorkeling excursion to turtle beach and like me last week sees a lot of turtles, always an amazing experience. Dinner is an even greater highlight than yesterday: we go ashore and get treated to a massive lobster with all the trappings followed by banana cake for dessert.  Wow!

Btw, Matt also brought a bunch of “Christmas gifts”, stuff I ordered online in the US and had shipped to him. So now JACE is equipped with a Starlink satellite internet receiver (blazing fast) and my life vest now has a Personal Locator Beacon PLB (see earlier post “The journey has begun”) permanently affixed, should I go overboard while sailing solo. Thanks Matt for carrying all this stuff for me.

By now our days have a comfortable rhythm: early swim or shower, breakfast, get the boat ready, sail for a few hours, anchor, lunch, later coffee and cake (again, you all know me, and Matt loves his cakes just as much!), swimming, snorkeling, exploring, then drinks, dinner, and lots of talking all throughout. Sunday very much follows this pattern, leaving the Tobago Cays and sailing all the way around Union Island to Chatham Bay on its lee side, a very cool anchorage with a long beach for a walk and happy hour drinks and great music at Vannesa’s place followed by Mahi Mahi fish curry back aboard. Life is tough!

Our longest sail is on Monday. We leave our bay early around nine and sail south, pass all of Carriacou and go all the way to St. George’s, Grenada’s capital on the southwestern end of the island, some 40 nm. But it is a broad reach with the wind slightly from behind the beam and good steady wind, with JACE averaging well above 6 kn and the sailing being relatively easy. Upon our departure we run into problems with the anchor windlass again and therefore opt for a mooring ball in St. George’s. I will have to get that fixed before sailing on.

Matt’s visit is coming to an end. On Tuesday we take our time and do the last couple of boat projects (what a playground for two engineers!) and then take the dinghy to the marina and a taxi to the airport.

It was wonderful to have Matt here with me, to share my trip with him for a few days, and have so much time to talk. He assures me he truly enjoyed it and I do know him well enough to know he really did. That makes me happy. It’s been quite a trip for him from Michigan all the way here for just a few days and I know he did that really for me. So I am glad he did enjoy his time on JACE. We were so grateful to have him. The human autopilot will always be welcome here.