Previous adventures have taken The Usual Suspects to St. Lucia and Martinique, extensively through The Grenadines, and even through a hurricane.  It was decided that Grenada would be the destination of choice for this year’s annual fall trip to the Caribbean.  I had heard many good things about Grenada.  It is described in the Doyle Guide as “a spectacularly beautiful island, with lush green mountains, crystal waterfalls, golden beaches and the fragrant spice trees that give the island its epithet “Isle of Spice.”“

The plan was to quickly work our way south from St. Vincent through The Grenadines, where we would visit with old friends and inflict the usual damage to our livers.  We would then sail on to Grenada and park there for at least a week.  That would leave plenty of time to tour the island and check out the many anchorages on the south coast.

Rather than consume two valuable vacation days motor sailing (upwind) back to St. Vincent, it was decided to arrange a charter skipper to deliver the boat back for us.  We would fly out of Grenada.

“The Usual Defects” consisting of Round Man, Tiny, myself, and G. Paperman made up the team.  Paperman’s wife Shayron would join us in Grenada, where they would take up land-based residence in a hotel.

The icing on the cake was a plan to spend a few days in Barbados on the way down.  We would finally visit the Mount Gay Rum Distillery and realize a lifelong dream.  To sailors, this distillery is as important as The Vatican.  Round Man called ahead and booked us for 13 consecutive half-hour tours on Friday, November 24.  We would actually be in heaven and would be able to prove it, if challenged.

Just Not Meant to Be

Life started to unravel for us six weeks before departure, when we learned that we could not get booked in at the Salt Ash Beach Apartment Hotel in Barbados.  There was no room for us at the Inn.  Our dream of saying, “I’ll have another Banks, thanks” to Eddie, the resident bartender, would have to be put on hold, at least for now.

The entire Barbados plan crashed and burned a few days later when Air Canada “cancelled” the Thursday November 23 flight to Barbados.  Life as a Monopoly airline in Canada has its privileges, in that you can “zap” a flight that’s not overbooked 150% any time you like - and get away with it!  Air Canada officials advised us that if we did not like it, we could always leave the planet.

Now forced to fly on Friday, it meant that the Mount Gay Rum Distillery tour was off because they are not open on weekends.  I think we have a good case against Air Canada if we filed a lawsuit.  Maybe we could get Johnnie Cochrane. We could seek millions in compensation for “pain and suffering”.   Any Magistrate who enjoys a good Rummer would side with us.  

In the end, we opted for “Plan B” -  a few days touring the island of St. Vincent.  Heck, we’ve been down there countless times and had never seen the island in daylight.  Who knows what kind of trouble we could get ourselves into?