14th January, Port St. Charles - Carlisle Bay

14th - 15th January, anchored in Carlisle Bay

16th January, Port St. Charles - Rodney Bay, St. Lucia

17th - 20th January, Rodney Bay marina

21st January, Rodney Bay - Le Marin, Martinique

21st January, Le Marin marina

22nd January, Le Marin - Grande Anse d'Arlet

22nd - 26th January, Grande Anse d'Arlet on a buoy

27th January, Grande Anse d'Arlet - Le Marin Marina

27th January - 01 February, Le Marin marina

2nd February, Le Marin - Rodney Bay, St. Lucia

2nd - 4th February, Rodney Bay marina

05th February, Rodney Bay - Marigot Bay, on a buoy

06th February, Marigot Bay - Souffriere

06th - 08th February, Souffriere, on a buoy

09th February, Soufriere - Vieux Fort

09th - 10th February, Vieux Fort, anchored

Barbados

We anchored in Carlisle Bay. It is quite difficult to find a good holding spot at the north end of the bay near Bridgetown centre. The bottom appears to be fine sand over coral gravel with the odd lump of coral sticking up. It took us an hour to get the pick satisfactorily planted.

Carlisle bay is a long crescent of white sand and quite acceptably turquoise water. The backdrop is less pre-possessing with warehouses and car-parks near the town and scruffy high entropy beach bars offering 3 beers for 10 Barbados dollars further down. Further down still is a rather attractive building which we took to be the yacht club, a low wooden building built out into the bay on piles rather like the 18 Foot League in Sydney. We didn't get that far down.

Carlisle Bay. Not your standard tropical paradise.

It is a rather long row into the Carenage from the anchorage and there is no dinghy dock as such, just the odd ladder leading up to the promenade on the north side where you can tie your dinghy with no security whatsoever.

We really liked Bridgetown. Apart from the one street of touristy shops it is pure local with scruffy upstairs bars, dry goods stores, bakeries (which are also bars) and lots of little bars where they have local food already prepared in trays.

We ate fried fish at Sister Sandra's Fish Fry in Baxter Road. As they weren't open when we arrived, we had a couple of the excellent local beers and spiced ribs, chips and macaroni pie as an entree at a place across the street.

I like Caribbean cooking.

Sister Sandra's Fish Fry, Baxter Road. Best fried fish in Bridgetown.

We saw St. Michaels Cathedral, cool and protestant, with its group of Herbert tombstones in the churchyard, tiny 18th and 19th century graves of babies whose ages were given sadly in months and days and memorials to British Regiments who all seem to have died from yellow fever.

A lot of 'Erberts in the graveyard of St. Michaels Cathedral

We spent hours looking for a bar with WiFi only to find at the end of the day that Bridgetown has free WiFi in the town centre. We spent the last few hours of daylight sitting in Independence Square internetting like mad and left the next day.

Carlisle Bay. View from the bar.

We sailed up to Port St.Charles and took a buoy and annexed in, rather than risk getting smashed on the visitors dock again. The Port St. Charles marina is not a very convenient place to clear in, having no place you can tie up safely, however, the customs and immigration are the friendliest I encountered in the Caribbean so far and the Port Master didn't charge us for our night on the buoy so I can't complain.

We had a last meal of Barbados cooking from a food van parked down the road from the marina and set off for St. Lucia around 14h00.

Port St. Charles. No artificial flavouring or colouring.

St. Lucia 1

We did the hundred odd miles to St. Lucia in eighteen hours or so reaching the whole way under heavily reefed main and genoa.

St. Lucia is much more spectacular to approach from the sea than Barbados with tall cloud covered mountains in the middle. Rodney Bay is a very recognisable anchorage with Pigeon island at the north and a view down past Castries to the northern Piton in the south.

Approaching Rodney Bay at dawn. Due to the ARC one of the most photographed landfalls in the world I would guess.

The marina is in what must have been a salt water lagoon before they dug a channel and cut down the mangroves. The marina was worryingly posh looking. The pontoons all look new, each one has the photo and name of the dock master on a kind of lectern at the inner end. The port office is flash with air conditioning and a flat screen with tourist information on it and languid and rather humorless people behind the desk.

Clearing in is efficient (and rather friendlier). It takes a while but at least, there are carbons between the four copies of the clearance document (in Barbados, I had to fill in the same document three times). Barbados is the only place where they had a doctor to give the boat a health clearance and you had to go through health, customs and immigration. At Rodney Bay you go through customs, immigration and the man who takes the money.

The Rodney Bay marina is comfortable, well run and, by Mediterranean standards, cheap at around 60 ECD's a night, (there are about three ECD's to the euro; 20 euros) water and electricity extra. You end up spending a lot more than that however, because the shops and bars are phenomenally expensive. We had a meal in a restaurant in the marina on the first night and it cost around 80€ for a meal and drinks. (in fact, the Windward Islands are all expensive; at best you pay as much for food as you do in France and in some cases much more; a 275mm bottle of beer costs 5 ECD's in a shop in St. Lucia which is around 1,40€. Funnily enough, the price in a local bar is practically the same)

Rodney Bay marina. Pricey looking but not really that expensive.

It is difficult to get fresh vegetables as nearly nothing seems to be grown locally. The only local Caribbean produce is sweet potatoes, yams and hairer and even less appetising relations of yams. Local St. Lucian produce seems to be limited to capsicum, cabbage, chinese cabbage and green beans. There is not even very much local fruit except bananas and banana like objects (BLO's). Everything else is imported from the US and Canada or even further afield. There was a produce market in the marina on Saturday mornings. This was also limited to bananas and BLO's, mangos (of which there is apparently a glut in St. Lucia during the season) and odd other things like parsley. I bought a large bunch of BLO's thinking they were green bananas. They were plantains which in my opinion have almost no taste no matter how you cook them. I made a soup with some of them while they were green and fried one or two then they started to get ripe and yellow then almost immediately went black and squishy and I threw them out.

We had a rather cheaper and more fun meal the next night in the Jambe du Bois restaurant on Pigeon Island. We walked there through the town of Gros Islet which is where the local people live and is rather tatty and shacky in spots and reputedly not very safe off the main drag at night. The beach is owned for part of the way by a big ugly resort who have cut a channel into a lagoon behind the hotel (or maybe just tidied up an existing channel). There is a guy to take you across in a boat. It's free but the guy is only there until 18h00 after which you have to go round by the road.

The Jambe du Bois is in the national park where the fort is and you have to promise the park attendants to go straight to the restaurant and not look at the sights on the way; daft. The restaurant is an eccentric wooden structure with even more eccentric wooden furniture on the terrace some of which looks like Alexander Selkirk's take on Renny Mackintosh. There was a band ; Lulu Bergasse; a white St. Lucian with a pianist and a violinist. They did covers. You picked a song from a list like a Chinese menu and they played it. They were pretty good.

There was a crowd of rowdy women there celebrating a birthday. Dany cracked on to one of the women and I had to take the taxi back to the marina alone. (sorry Dany, this is the dramatised version).

Jambe du Bois.

The next day, I cleaned the boat and Dany took a tour of the island. I was coming back to St. Lucia to pick up my sister Louise and I wanted to save some of the sights for then.

Martinique

We crossed over to Martinique in a freshish NE breeze which dropped off as we approached Le Marin. I was planning to anchor at St. Anne but the sight of about a million other yachts with the same idea scared me off. We went into the marina at Le Marin. The entry is tortuous between barely covered reefs and not something I would want to do at night. Just to show you how bad an idea this would be, there are two wrecked yachts on the the reefs.

The marina is biggish and packed. We were shoe-horned in next to another boat which had big sun awnings which shadowed our boat too. French flags and voices everywhere. With our new high standards, the showers and toilets were barely acceptable. The (French) guy next to us said that Grande Anse d'Arlet was nice and there were free buoys there so we left next morning.

Diamond Rock. Allegedly commissioned as a warship by the British. Hmmm.

We had a relaxed run down the south coast past Diamond rock and up the west coast with the wind bending round to follow us. As advertised, the Grand Anse was nice and the buoys were free. There was a mass of boats here too but the anchorage is quite beautiful. There are no massive hotels, just a few beach bars, quite low key and laid back. Turtles swim between the moored boats, grovelling around the bottom or coming up to take three breaths before diving back down.

Grande Anse d'Arlet Martinique. Turtles not shown for clarity.

We walked over to Petit Anse d'Arlet the next day with an American guy called Rod who is on a Catalina 44 from Fort Lauderdale in Florida. We had a great meal at a restaurant there and got lost trying to take a walking path back across the headland. On the way there, two locals had advised against taking it as, as they said, it wasn't "bien balaye". And they were right.

Church at Petit Anse

Dany left the next day, taking a taxi to the airport. The boat will seem strange without him. Rod left the same day to go down to Le Marin to buy some batteries.

The trek back from Petit Anse. Rod decides that if we don't get back soon we will have to eat Dany (but we should probably wait to see if we can get some macaroni pie and rice and peas to go with him).

I stayed on at Le Grand Anse until the Sunday doing nothing except updating my blog for the Canaries.

Grande Anse d'Arlet Martinique. Still no green flash.

St. Lucia 2

I stayed in Le Marin marina for a few days to try to get the broken batten fixed which I did by buying 4 metres of batten material and an end fitting (the batten itself is 40cm long). I now have lots of spare batten material. I sailed back down to Rodney Bay marina in St. Lucia on the Saturday to meet my sister Louise who was arriving on Sunday. I took advantage of the free day to buy an outboard as I reckoned I would need one for the islands between St. Lucia and Grenada. It cost me US$1100 for a 2 horsepower Yamaha two stroke which merely made me scream.

Louise arrived on the Sunday. She arrived by plane at the international airport in the south of the island then taxied it up to Rodney Bay which cost her around US$95. This is a significant amount compared to the airfare and is a bit of a scandal. There is no bus from the airport in the south to Rodney Bay which is in the extreme north. You could probably do it by public transport by getting a cab from the airport into Vieux Fort then buses from there to Castries then from Castries to Rodney Bay, but it would be a hassle with all your bags.

We went out to Le Jambe du Bois that night where there was a jazz band manfully competing with the conversation. We tried to walk back by the main road and were given a lift from about half-way by a driver from one of the hotels on his way home. He insisted we get in saying it wasn't safe to walk at night. We wondered how safe it was to get into a car with an unknown person but we were a bit re-assured by the fact that it was a very flash 4x4. He refused a tip. A nice guy.

We motored down to Marigot Bay which is a rather crowded but pretty inlet south of Castries. We wanted to moor in the inner bay but it was packed. Contrary to the info in Chris Doyle's guide, there is no anchoring in the inner bay now and the anchorage on the south side of the outer bay is all buoys too. We ended up taking a fantastically expensive buoy in the outer bay; 80 ECD's. The “village” around the marina is rather artificial and uninviting (and was mostly closed anyway) so we climbed the hill behind the bay to a village with a view and had a beer.

Marigot Bay St. Lucia.

We only stayed one day in Marigot Bay and headed for Soufrière the next morning. We were met by a small boat about a mile before the bay who wanted to help us tie up. We managed to avoid his help by saying we were going to a buoy at Harmony Beach. Chris Doyle says you should call “Benny” at Harmony Beach on the VHF when you arrive and a boat I met in St. Lucia said he had done this. Benny must have been asleep or out of town because he didn't reply. In the end a voice which I assume was the Soufrière Marine Management Area ranger said there was space at the Batcave, so we went there. Dadadadadadadada Dadadadadadadada.

Batcave moorings from across the bay. You can see the batcaves in the cliff to right of centre.

Before we got to the mooring buoy there were two small boys in boats fighting each other to be the one who passed us the rope. The Batcave moorings are kind of close to the shore and there was quite a lot of wind and swell running so I was quite happy to have somebody to pass us a line (especially since Lou had never done that manoeuvre before). One boy (a rather red eyed, stoned looking, incoherent boy) succeeded in chasing off the other and passed us the line. He wanted 10 ECD's

We took the annexe into the dinghy dock near the Hummingbird restaurant. Another guy appeared who said he was the guy who looked after the dinghies. He didn't say whether he was also the guy who nicked the dinghies if he didn't get paid.

The rangers came around later for the fee for the mooring, 30 ECD's. All in all, Soufrière is an expensive place to stay, what with the mooring fee, the boat boy fee and the dinghy protection racket fee.

The Batcave mooring (so called because of a fissure in the cliff face which is just full of bats; not big Australian fruit bats or teeny European bats but kind of middle sized bats) is rather rolly and the boat tended to align itself nose to the wind but tail to the chop which made for noisy nights. Added to this, the mooring are rather close together and a succession of big catamarans came and hooked on to the buoy offshore from us and loomed hugely over us during the night.

For all that, it is a very beautiful place with a spectacular view south towards the Petit Piton.

Lou and a Piton.

Our stoned boat boy came back next day with a friend because we had said we wanted to visit the volcano and the waterfall. I can't remember what huge price they wanted for this, US$70 or something, but we decided that it was reasonable and did it. The volcano was only mildly interesting though the guide was very nice and told Louise all about her hysterectomy but the waterfall was not the waterfall we were expecting but another inferior waterfall although it was warm and you could swim in it. Altogether, the visit took around an hour and a half including the water taxi from the boat to the shore so we felt mildly ripped off.

The next day, we visited the botanical gardens on foot and for nothing. This waterall was much nicer though the walls were coloured yellow from the volcanic chemicals in the water but you weren't allowed to swim in it. The rather dilapidated white painted concrete tubs which were what the thermal baths turned out to be didn't look too inviting so we stopped regretting having forgotten our bathers. The botanical gardens are great, full of really interesting tropical plants and shady and quiet too.

At last, the right waterfall.

Extra-terrestrial flowers in the botanical gardens at Soufrière.

We didn't go and anchor between the Pitons, despite having paid the fee to be allowed to do so because I though it would be too rolly, so we headed straight down to Vieux Fort where Lou was catching her plane. Again we motored, much to Louise's disgust as she wanted to sail but the last half of the trip is directly into the wind and I didn't feel entirely sure about the anchorage at Vieux Fort and wanted to have the option of going back to Soufrière.

I should say something here about the pilot I have been using in the Windwards. It is the Sailors Guide to the Windward Islands by Chris Doyle. It is quite a complete guide with lots of pretty good maps of ports and anchorages, but it is obviously financed by the advertisements for local restaurants, shops and services which take up about one third of the space and the encomiums for them, which take up two thirds of the text. This leads to two problems. Firstly, no restaurant, boatyard or shop is bad or gives poor service. Secondly, no port, bay or anchorage is dangerous or inadvisable for inexperienced sailors. They are all equally good (though occasionally some might be subject to swell). Anchorages which are stated to be too dangerous for anyone except locals with good local knowledge( in an ancient Donald M. Street Jr. cruising guide which I have a copy of), are considered perfectly good by Chris Doyle. I suppose Ms. Doyle, having taken a merchant's money to advertise their shop, can't very well turn round and say that the only anchorage within thirty miles of it is unusable.

I have therefore rather lost confidence in the Chris Doyle guides which is a pity as they are in many ways good, with lots of other information than just sailing stuff. However, if Imray bring out a guide to the Windward islands with up to date information, I will buy it and I'm sure lots of other people will too.

The anchorage at Vieux Fort turned out to be fine with a smooth bottom which held fine for the time we spent there. With the easterly and south easterly wind we had while we were there it was also very steady. The view is not pre-possessing but the fishing port is a good place to leave your dinghy (though there is a dinghy minding service here too albeit run by a rather nice guy who I didn't grudge too much giving a tip to).

Vieux Fort from the anchorage.

A not very re-assuring thing on the first day at Vieux Fort was the sight of a real live water spout going past to the south and west of the bay. I was very glad to be to windward of it and it disintegrated and disappeared after about ten minutes. I told myself that water spouts couldn't move far over land and so we were probably safe in the anchorage.

Waterspout off Vieux Fort.

Vieux Fort is rather run down from the tourist's point of view. At least one of the restaurants recommended by Chris Doyle has shut and the others don't look too long for this world judging by the number of clients. We ate in Pat's bar which has a huge car park and exactly two tables one of which was occupied by the owners. As advertised, the owner snapped at us that we would have to wait while she cooked our lunch and that she DIDN'T SELL CHICKEN. The food was pretty good though Louise has rather a problem in the Caribbean as she is vegetarian. She got a plate of mixed vegetables which she said was nice. In one restaurant in Soufrière, we told the waitress that Louise didn't eat meat or fish and did she have anything she could offer us? She said they had cheeseburgers. That being said, at a restaurant just next door we asked the same thing and the woman at the counter said they had ----- and ------ and -----, a whole list of names. We said we would have that and Louise got a plate with four or five local dishes, all yummy and all vegetarian.

Vieux Fort may be a bit tatty at the edges but it has some fine pictureskew buildings.

We had a nice though hot walk to the eastern side of the spit which Vieux Fort is built on. There we found the first tropical beach looking beach I have seen since being in the Caribbean. There is a lagoon with a place to hire kite surfs and it is obviously the local beach where families come as the water is relatively protected.

Again, you could probably wangle a bus to the airport from Vieux Fort town, though you would have to ask a Castries bus to take a detour and pay something extra, but it was a Sunday again and there was hardly a bus in sight. We took a taxi which cost 30 ECD for the ten minute journey.

By careful planning (aided by the fact that Virgin has exactly one flight in and out per week and the same plane does both of them), Ali arrived on the flight which came in just before Louise's flight out. We had a meal at the airport restaurant, (more local food at normal prices) and Ali and Louise chatted while I went to customs and immigration in the airport (you have to go backwards through customs and immigration to get there, a novel experience for me) and cleared us out. So Ali spent about one hour in total legally in St. Lucia. A fast visit.

We spent Sunday night at the anchorage in Vieux Fort and set out the next day for St. Vincent.

Windward Islands 1