windward islands 2

11th February Vieux Fort - Wallilabou, St. Vincent

11th - 12th February, Wallilabou on a buoy, line ashore

13th February, Wallilabou - Port Elizabeth, Bequia

13th - 17th February, Port Elizabeth on a buoy

18th February, Port Elizabeth - Charlestown, Canouan,

18th February, Charlestown, anchored

19th February, Charlestown - Tobago Cays

19th - 20th February, Tobago Cays anchored

21st February, Tobago Cays - Clifton, Union Island

21st - 22nd February, Clifton

23rd February, Union Island - Hillsborough Carriacou - Tyrrel Bay

23^rd- 24^thFebruary, Tyrrel Bay, anchored

25^thFebruary, Tyrrel Bay – Port Louis Marina, St. George, Grenada

25^thFebruary - 2^ndMarch, Port Louis Marina

3^rdMarch, Port Louis Marina – Prickly Bay, anchored

4^th- 6^thMarch Spice Island Marine, on the hard

6^thMarch, Prickly Bay – Port Louis Marina

6^th March – 3^rdApril, Port Louis Marina, in port (waiting for auto-pilots)

STOP PRESS

I'm back in St. Lucia (for the fourth time).

I left Grenada on the 4^th April heading for St. Lucia, Martinique, Dominica and Antigua. I got as far as Martinique where I decided that one auto-pilot which worked but which made odd noises and one spare auto-pilot which worked at a pinch but which could break down further at any moment was not enough for an Atlantic crossing.

I re-contacted the agent in St. Cyprien to get them to send a replacement for the replacement which was lost in the post (long boring story). I also asked Ali to look into getting a pilot in England then flying out with it to Antigua.

Then, on the 12^th, I got a mail in Grande Anse d'Arlet in Martinique, saying that the lost pilot had turned up in Grenada. I immediately hot footed (hot keeled?) it back to Grenada and collected it. I re-started for Antigua on the 19^th.

Now read on.

I've decided definitely to return to the Eastern side of the Atlantic this spring (if my auto-pilot problems are resolved). So I'm at the geographical midpoint of this Atlantic trip. Even if I'm nearer the end time-wise, this is as far as I intend to go this year. If all goes well with the return, I'll set off for Australia in the autumn. If not, I'll think again.

Partial “bilan”

Positive: the boat (except the auto-pilot, see below), the sailing, the route, the places I've visited that I'd never have visited otherwise, the friends and family who have come out to crew and share the trip, the people I've met on other boats

Negative: the auto-pilot (I've got four on board of which only two work: nearly a deal-breaker: could still be); too scared to leave the boat at anchor too long which has prevented me from visiting some places; cost: twice the budget I planned, mostly due to staying in marinas (see previous point) and partly cost of going too often into ship-chandlers and the cost of slipping the boat; starting to wish for something else than sun, green islands, turquoise water and cute little towns with ethnic food (never happy some people).

St. Lucia

Vieux Fort St. Lucia. Lou left, Ali joined. Well you knew that already didn't you.

St. Vincent

Due to the bad press that St. Vincent gets in other islands and the scarcity of marinas or good anchorages, Wallillabou was the only place we stayed. It is a small almost circular bay where you anchor or take a buoy and take a line ashore. We took a buoy belonging to Tony who owns the bar immediately opposite. Interesting guy to talk to. The wrecked building on the right is part of the ruins of the Pirates of the Caribbean set. I don't know what part of the film was shot here. Just by Ali's right leg and arm you can see the line ashore. There was only about 0,5m of water under the keel at low tide.

Bequia

Admiralty Bay, Bequia pronounced Beckway. Westward is on the far side of the bay on a buoy which belonged to a guy called Phat.

In the tiny whaling museum in Bequia. You have to ask the lady in the house above to open it for you. Apparently the Bequians have the right to fish two whales a year as long as they do it using the traditional methods using sailing boats and hand harpoons. The museum, despite being locked, has one side open to the air and light. I don't know how much longer the displays will be legible

The whaling boat at Bequia. The blunt thing is a cover on one of the harpoons. After they kill the whale,they have to sew up it's mouth to stop it sinking while they tow it ashore. I don't think that this is a particularly humane death for the whale. They might prefer to be blown apart by explosive harpoons from Japanese factory ships. Or not hunted at all.

Whew! Back to more ecologically friendly subjects. This is Old Hegg in the Old Hegg hawksbill turtle sanctuary. He is the first turtle that the owner brought in. He would have been released except his shell is too short and he wouldn't survive in the wild (well that's what the guy said). They can't put the adult or even adolescent turtles in tanks together because they fight so Old Hegg gets a teeny paddling pool sized tank all to himself. The turtles are collected as eggs, hatched and raised in the tanks until they are big at which point they are released into the wild. I can' remember how long this takes but it's years.

A hummingbird in Bequia. For some reason Bequia seems to have more wildlife than all the other islands. I couldn't say why. We saw turtles, a 2m long green iguana, big land crabs, Boobies, Frigate birds. We saw all these things separately or together on the other islands but not in the same numbers.

A Bequian two bow. Lots of kids sailing in the bay. Their technique might be a bit unconventional but they sail well.

Canouan

There are no pictures of Canouan. The anchorage is so windy that I didn't feel safe leaving the boat. We spent the night with the gusts howling in the rigging and the boat tacking violently from one side to another. The dinghy spent half the night flipping over and over until we dragged it up on deck. In the morning despite having nearly 50m of chain out in 5m of depth on a good sandy bottom, we had dragged 10m or so. Not a nice anchorage Charlestown Bay.

Tobago Cays

Tobago Cays. Blue water, blue sky, reefs and teeny islands. On the island nearest to the anchorage, there is part of the shore roped off as a turtle sanctuary though we didn't see any turtles (about the only place we didn't). The island is full of iguanas; we saw about ten, green or khaki coloured with big frills. Amazing. What do they eat? Why haven't they all been eaten?

The boat on the left is Dina 2, one of the boats we crossed the Atlantic with (that is, we crossed at the same time from Cape Verde to Barbados and even spoke to each other by VHF for the first few days). We saw them on Bequia and later on in Grenada. Really nice meeting up with them again. As well as being nice people, Kent and Lis are very straightforward about what it is like crossing the Atlantic in a small boat. They are leaving Dina 2 in Grenada on the hard and flying back to Denmark for the summer.

Union Island

The view from the north of Union Island; Mayreau closest, Tobago Cays to the right and Canouan in the background.

The anchorage at Union Island. Actually we were on a buoy. Well I say buoy, it was more a collection of plastic water bottles. I dived to see what they were attached to and the stuff underwater was quite solid looking.

There are no kite surfers in view at this moment. Most days there were two lines of kite surfers kite surfing the shallow water just behind the reef in front of the boats. Some of them were good, some less so. The less good ones tended to get blown down between the anchored boats. I was constantly worried that I would come back and find a kite surfer dangling from the mast, or worse, the VHF aerial and the wind indicator a twisted mess and no kite surfer in view. This actually happened to Salty Shores, a boat I met later in Grenada, though the culprit did actually show up and paid up (nearly).

If you are looking for a local experience, don't go to Lambi's restaurant. The clients are mainly German tourists, the food is OK but three times as expensive as equally good or better food at other places and the steel band is dismal. They played “Little Bird Way Up in Banana Tree” for half an hour wearing expressions of desperation. Possibly they couldn't think of the end while we, in the words of Groucho Marx, couldn't think of anything else.

We hired bikes on Union Island and rode right round the island in one morning. We saw Chatham bay which is the other possible anchorage. Nice looking but a bit inaccessible. A couple of beach bars but no roads down to it.

Carriacou

Tyrrel Bay on Carriacou which is part of Grenada. Lots of yots.

You can't clear in at Tyrrel bay but my charts, uncharacteristically chatty about Carriacou, said that most people anchor in Tyrrel bay and bus or taxi up to Hillsboro where the customs and immigration are. Strictly speaking this is illegal but it (the chart) said most of the time it's OK.

I intended to do this but on the way past Hillsborough, I thought better of it and turned in to Hillsborough Bay. I regretted it almost immediately as we were motoring straight into the wind and a heavy rain squall came up and soaked us. The anchorage at Hillsborough is exposed and with the wind, the waves and the rain, it was not a pleasant place. It was even less pleasant when we found that while the customs was open, the immigration was shut for lunch and wouldn't open until 13h00, then 13h30.

I finally got cleared in. Hillsborough has a big pier and the only place you can bring a dinghy in is a slab of concrete half way out with one big rusted iron cleat on it. Two dinghies were fastened to this as well as mine and, in the process of wrestling my dinghy out past these two, a wave came up under the nose of my dinghy, the wind caught it and it flipped over backwards on top of me. Luckily, the crew of one of the other dinghies was on the dock and they hauled me out and righted the dinghy. I don't know what I would have done otherwise, the dock was too high to climb out onto unaided.

One of the guys was the skipper of the boat and he very kindly offered to tow me back out to Westward. I arrived back a drowned rat and it was still raining. There were no serious consequences. Ali who had been left on the boat, helped me to dry off. All the papers and passports were in watertight bags and my brand new outboard, which I assumed drowned, after a summary cleaning, started first pull of the cord. Thank heavens for two strokes.

I heard later from Kent of Dyna 2 that they can be nasty at the customs. When he was there, a boat he knew tried anchoring in Tyrrel bay and bussing up. When the policeman (the immigration is in the police station), asked him where the boat was, he said Tyrrel bay. The policemen said, well you will have to bring it here to Hillsborough and when the guy objected said, in that case, I'm going to keep your passport until you bring the boat here. The obvious answer would be to lie when he asks you where the boat is. You can't see the anchorage from the police station and I have never known yet a customs or immigration official in the Caribbean to ask to see the boat or to come aboard (though you often pay a fee as if they had). But I would not be able to lie. I would be sure “THE BOAT IS IN TYRREL BAY” would be printed across my forehead.

Tyrrel Bay is very quiet (Despite the millions of boats. Where are their crews? Are they all huddled aboard hiding from the immigration? There is one very good bar with a deck overlooking the bay where they make the best rum punches in the Caribbean. After two of those, we were too drunk to get the dinghy off the beach and we sat on the sea wall and watched the sun go down and, at last, saw the green flash. Honest!

Although you can't see them, this tree is as full of hummingbirds as a wild rosebush is full of bees in spring

Grenada (at last)

Rugged looking Grenada. Not as mountainous as St. Vincent but quite a big island even so.

The Carenage, St. George's (St. George's what?). You can see the three churches. All three had their roofs torn off by hurricane Ivan. The catholics have got the roof back on theirs (the red one on the hill, but the Anglican church is open to the heavens (it looks oddly like a Madrasa) and the Presbyterian church is little better than a ruin.

Millions of nutmegs at the nutmeg factory in Gouyave. Have you ever seen a fresh nutmeg just out of the fruit? The nuts are glossy black and the mace is a bright pinky red tracery covering it. Like some kind of art nouveau illustration for Alien. Gouyave is a very quiet fishing village 13 miles north of St. Georges. When Ali and I visited it by bus mid-week, it was very, very quiet.

Three Sister's Falls? Six Sister's Falls? Some number of female sibling's falls anyway. We hired a car and went round the island. We didn't see Annandale falls as three million people from a cruise ship wanted to see it at the same time. We saw the crater lake and more cruise ship tourists. We saw the X Sister's Falls with no cruise ship tourists because you have to walk half an hour and they are all TOO OLD. We saw the chocolate factory (not really the factory, Belmont Estate where they collect the beans, ferment them and dry them before sending them off to the actual factory). We had a very nice lunch at Grenville (beef soup, yummy!) and had just the time to see Sauteurs, where the Indians all jumped off the island rather than be governed by the French, and then dash round the south of the island and walk on the sand at Grand Anse.

Ali left (snif) catching a LIAT flight from Grenada to St. Lucia, taxiing down from St. Lucia's local flight airport which is in the north to Vieux Fort in the extreme south where the international airport is and having to spend a night in a hotel at Vieux Fort before catching her flight to the Youkie next day.

I took Westward down to Prickly Bay and after spending one night at anchor there took her into Spice Island Marine to have the bottom cleaned and re-anti-fouled and the oil in the diesel and the sail drive changed and some other maintenance done on the diesel.

Happy with the paint job, not happy with the mechanical work. In the end, the only bit they managed to do was the oil change, I had to supply all the filters and even the sacrificial anode and they managed to break off in the engine block a stud holding the air filter on, then had to drill it out, re-tap the hole, drill and tap a hole in the other part etc.. My (nearly) new engine! And all to take a filter off which they hadn't realised had to be replaced as a single unit, which of course they also didn't have. Not great experts on Volvo engines are SIM.

Jim and Anechy from Salty Shores who were moored beside me at Port Louis marina in St. George's with their guest Glenn at the Gouyave Friday night fish fry. They kindly invited me to go up with them. We were all rather ill the next day, not because anything was off, on the contrary, the fish is all super fresh and mostly yummy, but because there is not a single thing which is not deep fried. Might as well be in Scotland.

Another nice crew I met in Grenada was Paul and Debbie on Werplayin (sorry guys, no photos). They are Canadians. Lots of Canadians and Scandinavians in Grenada. Wonder what they have in common?

Windward Islands 2