Lots of good stuff to report. Grenada is beautiful, an easy place to slow down the pace. Relaxed? We're practically comatose. We're in St. George's, anchored in the Lagoon (burbs), round the corner from the Carenage (downtown), and there's free wifi, and it works most of the time. We have downloaded Skype and a bought a headset, and we can communicate verbally with family and friends via computer with reasonable success and do it very cheaply. To call a Halifax phone from our computer is about 2 cents a minute, and it's free to call computer to computer -- www.skype.com. It's close to brilliant. (I passed a telephone booth today and I just walked on by, no fluctuation of pulse or blood pressure. No urge to pick it up, just in case!) There's a Scotiabank here, right on the corner of Halifax Street. There's a Halifax Harbour, about 5 miles north of here, just a dent in the coast. There's a grocery store with a dinghy dock about two minutes away, ditto for Island Waterworld, a hardware store, the yacht club (showers, laundry), and the bus service to anywhere else is sublime. Shiny red 15-passenger vans go by all the time, honking like madmen at potential riders, and if you give them a nod or raise your hand, they haul over and pick you up. For $2EC, about 80 cents, you go as far down the road as you want, deafened by a wild assortment of music for the duration of the trip.

Our first walk around town was last Sunday, and being a deeply Christian place, everything was shut up except for the churches. The old stone churches lost their roofs and were heavily damaged by Hurricane Ivan -- so were about 90 percent of the homes -- so you hear the music and the high-energy preaching from unlikely places. The second floor of a big store downtown was rocking with praise as we walked by, and at street level, an elderly and very inebriated couple slumped in a doorway managed to raise their hands and wave them in the air to the sound of the hymns. Another mellow fella, Herman, offered to take us on a tour of the island. Given that it took him three tries to write his phone number on a piece of paper, we put him off. On regular weekdays, the place hops. It's a busy harbour, a prosperous town, and yes, at certain times of the day, there's gridlock.

We watched the World Cup at the Tropicana Club (more exotic than it sounds - I got a lot of bug bites) with a bunch of other cruisers: four boats from Italy, three from France (or French islands), a bunch of Canadians, and an assortment of Brits, Germans, Americans and a lot of locals. Very exciting game. The Italians in the group were over the moon.

The St. George's market is a treat. They're geared to the local regular fruit-and-veg-buying public, but they're quick to leap on a foreigner and peddle souvenir baskets of spices. "Come over here baby and talk to me! I'm warm and friendly!" Bought a bag of nutmeg from her. I figured I'd deflect one of the ladies over to Randy, suggesting she speak to him about spices cause he's the cook. She looks waaaay down her nose at me, nice trick, given that she was 5 foot nothing in platform sandals, and I'm rather more than that in my flip flops. "And what do YOU do?" she barks, "You give him good nookie, girl?" So of course, we had to purchase two spice necklaces from her. The staff at Sobey's should try this.

The lady at the bookstore let us know which local paper we should buy, and then filled us in on the story behind the arrest featured on page one - "teacher arrested for murder of wife." She knew them both and she had that man tried and sentenced well before the paper hit her front stoop. Small town, close-knit community, and we heard all the details.

Update on the laid-back dog population. I should have mentioned that they wake up when the sun goes down, and they bark all night. Not as many goats here, but the chickens are a constant. Even the urban roosters start at 3 am.

There's a place in the Carenage called something like the Greatest Little Liquor Store... also an agricultural supply store. Bird seed and wine, one-stop-shopping. We bought Chilean Cab-Merlot by the case for just over $3 bucks a bottle. The world has gone mad.

The Spiers family on Aldora left for Bonaire several days ago, but I helped Dave set up a blog before he left (http://aldora-dave.blogspot.com). From there, they're headed home to work for three months, then back to the boat. We also said goodbye to the folks on Paanga yesterday, Marcus and Marjolijne (not Mary-Helene as I was spelling it) -- they're headed to a marina to haul the boat and back to Canada for a bit. We had the neighbours over for a drink on Saturday: the Paangans, Kim and David from Amanzi (Toronto), Stewart and Tara on Mange Tout (UK), and Joe, Patricia and their three-year-old son Marvin from Switzerland. That's a big party for this boat. Marvin took his parents home at his bedtime, but the rest of us cranked up the iPod and danced the floorboards loose. Great fun, lovely bunch of people, lots of laughing.

Now back to work. Randy is making his daily trip to Island Water World (like the Binnacle, he should be on a first-name basis with all the staff in another day or so). I should do the dishes. We still haven't decide whether to haul out here or in Carriacou, but we have to do it soon. After a week and a half, we're growing barnacles on the anchor chain, and we know that there's gooseneck barnacles on the hull, along with all manner of other growing things. Stay tuned.