Martin Northey’s Blog

From left to right: Michael, Selwyn, Richard, Alex (Principal and Chief Instructor of the School), Victor and Andell

I have recently returned from Grenada in the Caribbean where I spent three days examining 4 Yachtmaster candidates and one coastal skipper candidate.

It took one very long day to get there flying from Gatwick to Barbados where I spent 5 hours then a very short flight to Tobago and then an even shorter flight to Grenada.  I arrived at Grenada at 7 pm and despite spending 7 weeks in the Caribbean 4 1/2 years ago when I visited St Lucia, Dominica, Guadalupe, Martinique and Antigua,  I was quite surprised by the heat and humidity.

An island just off Grenada where we anhored for lunch one day

I probably might not have heard of Grenada had it not been invaded by the Americans in 1983.  This caused quite a stir at the time in Britain because the newspapers informed us that President Reagon hadn’t informed Mrs Thatcher of his intention to invade Grenada which was a member of the British Commonwealth. However, the people in the photograph above told me that there was a British aircraft carrier standing off the island throughout the invasion which suggests that the British government did know rather more than they officially admitted at the time!

I was very impressed with everything that I saw and everyone that I met.  All the Grenadans were incredibly friendly and rightly proud of their achievements as a totally independant country.

St Georges - capital of Granada with its natural harbour

Grenada was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1498, but there was no one settled there until 1627 when the island was given by Charles 1 of England to his cousin the Earl of Carlisle.  However, no serious settlement was established as a result of active discouragement by the population of Caribs who themselves had invaded Grenada from Venuzuela in the 13th century and killed Granada’s indigenous population who were known as Arawaks. In 1654 the French settled in the island, and in 1674 it become a French colony.

Another view of where we anchored for lunch one day showing a rustic beach bar

In 1762 during the 7 years war the British invaded Grenada whose people put up no resistance because they were unhappy with French rule and felt that they might be better treated by the British. In 1763 at the Treaty of Paris Grenada was formerly handed over to Britain and has remained British ever since apart from very brief periods during our wars with the French. The culture however has remained very French, with many of the locals still speaking fragments of French creole, likewise during the time it was a French colony the African slaves were introduced to the Roman Catholic faith which they have continued to follow and the Catholic church plays an important role in the community.

A secluded house near a beach surrounded by rain forest

In 1833 slavery was abolished and this had a dramatic effect on the economy of Grenada, until then sugar cane had been the main crop, the ending of free labour meant that profits from sugar production which was very labour intensive dropped to almost nothing. Plantation owners began to grow cocoa and nutmeg which were more profitable than sugar.

Grenadans served bravely in both world wars, many came back from the second world war with left wing political views and in 1967 Grenada gained her independence but with Britain still responsible for her defence and foriegn affairs. Total independence from Britain came in 1974 under their first Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy. His goverrnment was overthrown in 1979 in a coup by Maurice Bishop and his New Jewel movement. Assistance came from Cuba and the USSR and Grenada began to make progress in agricultural reforms as well as in improvements in medical care and education. With Cuban labour and machinery a new airport was constructed. 

Victor, Selwyn, Alex & Michael

On October 13th 1983 Bernard Coard and his wife  led a coup against the government of Maurice Bishop with the backing of the Grenadan army, Maurice Bishop had massive support from the people of Grenada and when he attempted to resume power he and his entire cabinet were executed by soldiers of the Grenadan army.

Bernard Coard put the island under martial law. The overthrow of Maurice Bishop’s government which was considered to be moderate, and its replacement with the Coard’s extreme left  regime worried President Reagon and his government. On October 25th 1983 at 5 am the United States invaded Grenada with 8000 troops, many people considered this to be an over reaction as Grenada placed 1,500 miles from the United States could hardly claim that Grenada was a threat.

Michael and Victor sheeting in the main during a man overboard exercise

Since the American invasion Grenada appears to have achieved political stability, however an economical setback occured in September 2004 in the form of Hurrican Ivan which damaged or destroyed 90% of the houses on the island. In the 5 years since then Grenada has recovered with remarkable speed and seems to be going from strength to strength.

Going back to the reason that I was in Grenada, my candidates throughout the three days gave me a fascination account of the history of their island plus numerous accounts of their life there which encouraged me to learn more about Grenada and its people which I have achieved by buying a book called ‘Grenada - A History of its people’ by Beverley A. Steel, to whom I am most grateful for many of the facts that I have included in this article.

Selwyn taking bearings to fix our position

My examining of the 5 candidates finished at lunchtime on the third day when we celebrated their having all passed by having a wonderful lunch in the cockpit to which they all brought delicious contributions of food. In addition they brought for me presents of wonderful locally made chocolate, cocoa balls, cocoa tea, guava jelly and nutmeg syrup for me to take home to Portugal.  I am very grateful to them all for their kindness, sadly the two chocolate bars are finished already, but I will be enjoying all the other things for some time to come.

Andell and Richard on the first day

If I am invited back to Grenada again to examine, I will be asking Selwyn Maxwell, who in addition to being a professional skipper also offers tours round the island, to take me on a tour of the island for a day or two. I am looking forward to that enormously.

John just after his lifejacket had inflated accidentally

I very recently examined four yachtmaster candidates for an RYA Sailing School, where the candidates had done a Yachtmaster Practical Preparation Course, it takes two days to examine four candidates and so I had time to get to know them and was naturally keen that they should all pass the exam.

They had just three days of their yachtmaster preparation course to practise for the practical aspects of the exam, there is not time in a preparation course for the Instructor to give the candidates theory tuition, it is assumed that candidates will have prepared themselves by completing a theory course (preferably RYA) either on-line or by attending a shore based course.

I do not make exams difficult, there are however certain things that they must be able to do effectively such as, a ‘man overboard exercise’ - ‘picking up of a mooring’- ‘anchoring and weighing anchor’ all usually under sail. Otherwise, they need to show that they can arrive at and leave a pontoon under engine.

In addition they need to be able to complete a navigation exercise at sea, often just going to another harbour, but perhaps finding a specific position at sea just using bearings and a depth on the way. Otherwise I tell them that my general criteria is ‘would I trust this person to take my grand children (if I had any) across the English Channel, would my grand children enjoy the passage with this skipper and if they were unfortunate enough to fall overboard would the skipper be able to pick them up under sail (if perhaps the boats engine would not start) before they got hyperthermia?’

It is also necessary for candidates to prepare an imaginary passage plan in the English Channel, I supply the charts and a pilot book for this exercise.  Whilst it is not a pre exam requirement for candidates to have completed an RYA Shorebased course prior to taking the exam, my experience has been that candidates who have not done an RYA Shorebased (theory) course often have an incomplete knowledge of the RYA shore based syllabus, sadly two of the candidates in this recent exam had not done any RYA Shorebased course and as a result their passage plans were not up to the required standard, I was not therefore able to recommend to the RYA that they be awarded the Yachtmaster Certificate of Competence, despite their sailing skills being very good.

The third candidate whilst excellent in every way unfortunately experienced an accidental gybe during his time in the exam as skipper and helmsman, sadly if this should happen to a candidate I am not able to recommend that the candidate be awarded a Yachtmaster Certificate. The only way to prevent this happening is to always have a gybe preventer fitted when the wind is more than about 30º abaft the beam.

The fourth candidate John Davies who is Principal of The Menorca Cruising School & Charter was well prepared for the exam and passed, he had completed an RYA shorebased course and so his passage plan was excellent. His exam was not however totally without incident, whilst winching in the genoa the toggle attached to the gas cylinder in his lifejacket caught in the winch, triggered the gas cylinder and his life jacket inflated, it certainly gave me a fright and it must have given him an even bigger fright! The photograph above is of John just after his lifejacket inflated!

I was very dissappointed to be able to only pass one candidate out of four, it would have given me enormous pleasure to have passed more of them and if possible all of them. People want to take the Yachtmaster Exam  because it is the most respected yachting qualification in the world,  but candidates must realise that the reason that it is so highly respected is because the standard required is very high and they must know every part of the syllabus of the ‘RYA Sail Cruising & Yachtmaster Scheme’ in order to pass the exam.

Bond and his Qantums of Solace

We went to see the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, this afternoon. I should have realized that a film with such a ridiculous name wasn’t going to be any good.  I have always been a James Bond film fan and have thoroughly enjoyed them all, this one was awful.  I found it impossible to identify any kind of story line and very difficult to follow what was happening. As ever there were lots of characters who were clearly bad guys and one good guy who had been M’s bodyguard for 5 years who turned out to be one of the bad guys, but it wasn’t clear to me as to who they were working for or why except that they were going to make a fortune selling water! Which makes a change I suppose from oil or nuclear bombs!

There was a very exciting boat chase in which several ribs were destroyed by James Bond who was driving a metal dory.

If I had been the manufacturers of Aston Martin I would have been very upset that their car could not loose an Alfa Romeo which throughout the car chase was just feet behind. There was a lot of action which was made dramatic by the fact that the action shots were far too close up which no doubt reduced the amount of stunts that actually had to be done.

To be more positive, the acting was brilliant. But even with good acting I was so bored  by the interval that I nearly went home, the very weak story began to hang together a bit in the second half and there were some spectacular explosions, a couple of the girls were quite good looking and sexy but not nearly as attractive as Ursula Andres in Dr No or Pussy Galore in which ever one she was in.

James Bond used to be funny and had some interesting characters such as Q, Miss Moneypenny, Jaws etc. This film wasn’t funny at all and had no interesting, amusing and eccentric characters. When we came out of the film I really felt that we had wasted 11 euros, arriving in the underground car park my slight depression caused by the really pathetic film plunged to an even deeper low as a result of Christmas carols being played over the loud speakers, yes b….y Christmas carols on November 15th!

One of our many escorts

I see Dolphins often at sea, in fact on two occasions in the last two months I have been asked by clients to find Dolphins, on both occasions I was successful - much to my relief!  I may of course have found Porpoises, because sadly I don’t know the difference, I have just gone on line to find out more about them, looked at photographs of each and am still none the wiser. What I have learnt however is that there are 6 different Porpoise species and almost 40 different species of Dolphin, looking at pictures on line and comparing them with the ones on this page served only to confuse me more.

Surfacing alongside us at speed

From October 13th to 16th I went on a four day cruise to Morocco and Spain in a Sunseeker Manhattan 52. Having checked the weather forecast which gave us near perfect conditions for our cruise, we left Vilamoura on Monday at about 9 am heading for Gibraltar, we had filled up with diesel the day before and also had telephoned the two marinas to try and book a berth. Queensway Quay told us that their marina was closed because of damage to the marina in a storm two days before and Marina Bay asked us to telephone when we were about an hour away.  About half way to Trafalgar we passed some Dolphins and I have to confess that I missed them because I was sleeping at the time.

Two dolphins swimming alonside us

Soon after passing Cape Trafalgar we telephoned Marina Bay Marina and were told that they were closed because an oil tanker had gone aground on Europa Point, split in half and lost a large quantity of oil. We decided to stay well away from Gibraltar to avoid getting oil all down our waterline and as soon as we were past the traffic separation scheme we altered course to pass east of Ceuta and then go on down to Marina Smir on the Meditteranean coast of Morocco.  Arriving late in the afternoon at Smir, we checked in and soon after went out to dinner in a restaurant in the marina. The next morning my two companions went by taxi to Tetuan to see round the town which they enjoyed and arrived back at the boat at about 4 pm carrying a carpet each! When I heard the price that they had paid which was extremely reasonable I wished that I had gone with them. 

They had gone right under the boat and appeared on our port bow

We left Marina Smir at 5 pm with 50 nautical miles to go to Puerto Banus our next port of call. We had arranged to have dinner at 8 pm at a restaurant in Banus and so went rather faster than we had the day before, arriving at our destination in less than two hours. Only slowing down when about 10 miles south of Banus when we were surrounded by hundreds of Dolphins. 

We left Banus at about 1 pm the next day having filled up with fuel, the fuel guage was showing 1/4 of a tank left, which was really not too bad after a total distance of 220 nautical miles.  Our next port of call was going to be Cadiz so we set off towards Europa Point and in almost the same position that we had encountered Dolphins the day before we found them again, but this time not 100s but 1000s!  More than I had ever seen before, the day before I had not taken any photographs but this time I did. They were clearly feeding but not so hungry that they didn’t want give us a show by swimming alongside, under and in front of us and often leaping out of the water. 

At one point we saw something that I had only seen before on National Geographic TV, the Dolphins were swimming and leaping out of the water in a circle and in the middle of that circle the fish were contained in a tight cylindrical shape from about a metre blow the surface to a depth of about four metres, we unintentially motored within about four meters of this tightly packed column of fish and could see the Dolphins were taking it in turns to swim at speed into the fish catching them in their mouths as they swam through. Sadly the photograph that I took of this amazing spectacle did not show the fish because of the reflection on the completely calm water.

Tanker aground and split into two parts on Europa Point

After probably an hour of motoring slowly and taking photographs we carried to Europa Point where I took the photograph to the left of the tanker aground on Europe point that we had heard about the day before.  I have since heard that the ship was ‘in ballast’ at the time of colliding with Europa Point and the oil lost was its own fuel oil

After a fast and uneventful passage down the Strait of Gibraltar and up to Cadiz and no more Dolphins we arrived at Puerto Sherry at about 7 pm after travelling 102 nautical miles from Puerto Banus. We had hoped to go into Puerto Americas but were told on the telephone that they did not have a berth large enough for us, so we went on to Puerto Sherry where we there were several berths large enough.  I had not been in Puerto Sherry for about 13 years and was surprised to find that the buildings surrounding the marina were still in the same unfinished state that they were last time I was there. 

An alongside acrobatic display

We left Puerto Sherry at about 9.30 am and with just 95 nautical miles to Vilamoura we expected to arrive at about 1.30 (Portuguese time) but when about 15 miles south east of Cabo St Maria, we came across another enormous group of Dolphins and probably spent an hour and a half cruising with them and taking photographs.  We arrived back at Vilamoura at 3.30 pm, the fuel tank guage was again showing around 1/4 so we filled up with diesel while we checked in at the marina reception.

Reflecting on the last four days, the boat had performed faultlessly, the weather had been perfect, we had visited interesting places, spent time with interesting and amusing people and had seen Dolphins everyday - it was a really enjoyable cruise.

Having put my rubbish in the rubbish container at 8.40 am on a day in April 2006  I was walking back to my garage to get my jeep out in order to drive to spend the day instructing from Vilamoura Marina. Failing to notice a bollard that I must have walked past thousands of times, I tripped over it, cut my leg open and blood shot out of the gash like a burst water main!

30 minutes later I was in Albufeira hospital being stitched up. This was my first experience of a Portuguese Hospital, as I walked into the reception area without even breaking my stride (limp) I was ushered down a short passage and into a room where I was asked to lie down on a bed and within a minute my cut was being bathed and pain-killing injections were given followed by the cut being stitched up with about 15 stitches.

Half an hour after my arrival I left the hospital with a dressing on my leg, a prescription for antibiotics and instructions to keep the leg horizontal with an ice pack on it for 7 days! Plus I had to go back every other day for about two weeks to have the dressing changed.

The reality of my situation was that I cancelled my work for the next two days, but managed to work after that.

On my arrival at home I installed myself on my sofa with an icepack on my leg, and my lap top across my lap and began to make some changes to my web site (www.martinnorthey.net)

Having made a couple of important changes a great friend telephoned just to say hello, he had sent me details of ‘blogging’ a couple of weeks ago, but I did not realise what it was all about and had hoped that I would soon have an opportunity to talk to him about it all so I could understand a bit more about blogging and its advantages for me.

So there I was, with nothing to do for the next two days and realised that it is a heaven sent opportunity for me to find out all about blogging. So perhaps even this accident didn’t happen by accident! 

All this occured 2 1/2 years ago, I have had a blog since then, but admit that I did not update it at all after the first burst of enthusiasm. This blog is a brand new one, and instead of being totally separate from my web site it is part of it and I will endeavor to keep it up to date with my thoughts and anything of interest that I have been doing.

Reflecting briefly on the treatment that I received at the ’Centro de Saúde’ in Albufeira - It was excellent, both the speed with which they stitched me up after my accident and the treatment that I was given for the next two weeks, which I was able to have at a time that was convenient for me. Portuguese people are the first to critisise their health service, but following that experience I have the highest praise for the health service in Portugal.