As this is a new blog and this will be our first entry and we will try and backdate all the other letters as well as add all our photos to this site .... if I last working on it that long. Its all very new and my patience is old. A very big thank you to Paul - Sandy's nephew in Brisbane - for setting up this blog for us.
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| Leaving Rodney Bay in our wake |
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| Old house and informal shop |
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| Walkway along the beach and restuarants |
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| Street stalls |
The Grenadines are made up of many small islands that lie between St Vincent and Grenada and provide some of the best sailing and bays for anchoring. Even though this was out of season there were many boats around, mostly cruisers with only a few charter boats. We reckon that this was a great time to be there as the weather was great and there was plenty of room off the islands and in the bays to anchor compared to winter which is prime time and it all turns to chaos. Cruising around here so late in the season is fine as one can do a day run down to Grenada or if necessary Trinidad to escape any major storm coming in from the Atlantic. Grenada is normally relatively safe and that is why we stopped here... but always with an eye on the weather.
Spent a couple of nights In Bequia which has a little village around the harbour area with its market and small shopes. There are some pretty and also some very basic restaurants along the beach area where you could get a fair meal at a reasonable price. The best value on most the islands are the local dishes at the local shops where you can have an enjoyable and very tasty meal quite cheaply. The more up market resorts and restaurants cost a fortune. From here we then moved down to Canouan Island
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| Canouan island. Small village with town jetty. Ferry at jetty on the right. A beautiful calm anchourage with only a handfull of yachts |
which was very pretty and very few boats at anchor. There was an expensive hotel on the beach and a little village but very little else.
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| Boats anchoured between Horseshoe Reef and the Islands at Tobago Keys |
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| Beautiful turquoise water around the reefs |
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| Tabago Keys |
Next we sailed down to Tobago Cays. These little islands are protected by a massive reef system and we anchored between the islands behind Horse Shoe reef. The water was clear and the snorkelling good.
Saw a few turtles and lots of lovely fish. The one evening we sat up from 02h00 onwards to watch the falling stars as the earth was passing through an asteroid belt and it was well worth it as the next two nights we had cloud cover. On the day we left here the water turned a green colour and has
stayed that way all the way down to Grenada. It has only recently been clearer here. This is apparently caused by the massive river systems along the South American coast that pump millions of tons of fresh water into the sea. The main current comes up the coast and flows through the islands into the Caribbean Sea at 2-3 knots. This results in some interesting effects around the islands and on ones heading between the islands. From here we went down to Salt Whistle Bay
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| Salt Whistle Bay early morning sunrise after a stormy night |
where we spent time snorkelling and even filled our water tanks with the overnight rain. The photo was taken at sunrise after a night of heavy rain and thunder and lightning. We were to learn that these storms got a lot worse than this. Lightning as you can imagine with a 60 foot /19m mast is a real scary deal. From here we cruised across to the west side of Union Island to Chatham bay that again had nothing but beautiful trees and bush and a bay full of fish. We caught a lovely 2-3kg trevally/jack for dinner that night. Great way to enjoy a birthday dinner....it went from ocean to pan in under 10 minutes. There were only four yachts in the bay, one of whom we knew. Great place with a few local “restaurants” on the beach open when there are enough yachts around but little else. Winter this bay would be loaded with charter and cruisers alike. There are no roads in or out of this bay.
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| Chatham Bay on the west side of Union Island |
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| Chatham Bay on the west side of Union Island |
The next day we took a tiki tour around and after heading in a few different directions decided to go for Clifton on Union Island. We saw what we have now looked up as a Pigmy Killer Whale which is reasonably rare playing on the surface. We motored around it for some time but it would not let us get too close. Rainstorms and thunderstorms are common this time the year and we have sure been getting our share of them. This was one of our reasons for our tiki tour as we were trying to avoid a big rainstorm. We were headed for the middle of the downpour at the bottom of this cloud. We sailed around this one!
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| Rain storm comming in over Clifton at Union Island |
As it was just after anchoring our fair 10-15 breeze increased to 34 knots followed by a down pour which lasted about 20 min. and then everything returns to normal. Clifton is a pretty little town and one of the larger villages in the Grenadines. It is also the last of the islands that belong to St Vincent so we would sign out here to go to Caracao which belongs to Grenada. The people on all of these islands are very friendly and as the islands are so small everyone knows everyone else. They are used to tourists and know how to charge for their produce... however they do smile and are cheerful as they do so. The little market here was different as it was made up of a number of colourful shacks.
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| Colourful little market in Clifton on Union Island |
The town had a pretty centre and the anchorage was rather pleasant with a restaurant on the reef.
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| Clifton town centre |
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| The colourful bakery and shop near the wharf in Clifton |
One evening we had a big storm at sunset that made pretty viewing. We got one shot of the lightning but it was blurred......
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| Evening storm... what a lightning show |
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| The break in the clouds above Clifton |
Not much there and a few days later went back to Hillsborough Bay and moored on a buoy in the national park off Sandy Island with our friends on Merengue who we had first seen up at Bequia and finally met at Salt Whistle Bay. It was beautiful here and the snorkelling was good. We spent a lovely quiet time here as again most the buoys were unoccupied. We spent one more night in Tyrell Bay before heading south again to
Grenada. The weather was a mix of good winds with a few blasting rainsqualls to no wind after the rainsquall and then when the wind fills in again it’s from the south and slowly veers around to the east again, to say the least we had an interesting day all round. We decided to go to weather of the island to stay in the wind as the wind shadow on the lee of the island is pretty large and one has to motor a lot of the way. We stopped at St David’s bay which is the first suitable bay one reaches from the north. It has a haul out a restaurant sail maker and rigger but nothing else. We stayed a few days, but the swell started to push into the bay so we decided to move on down the coast. We next anchored off Hog Island in a pretty little cove that was completely sheltered. We could now really relax as we were on the outer edge of the hurricane belt in a protected cove. We could still move to other bays around us and there was a hurricane hole that we could shelter in. For the first time in ages we have supermarkets available to us and marinas all over. Most the people here were cruisers staying away from the hurricane areas and everyone is helpful and friendly. This would turn out to be one of our best stops yet from a social point of view. It’s all like one big happy neighbourhood this time of the year. Our joys and hard slog we will share with you in the next letter. Till then stay happy and free! Oh ... by the way, you may write and give us all your news and happenings it’s been a little dry on the news front.
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| Tyrell Bay on Carriacou the first of the islands that belongs to Grenada |
As we mentioned earlier in this letter the main storms that we have to watch for in the summer are the hurricanes, hence the winter season for sailing in the Caribbean. They start at A for Alex and we are already on R for Richard. A lot of these curled up to the north before hitting land. Most of the tropical storms that hit the Caribbean start over the African coast and meander out into the Atlantic ocean where they slowly organise themselves into a tropical wave around the Cape Verde islands. These waves will form a low and begin to rotate as they head west to the Caribbean. We were watching these from out there to make sure that they were headed north of us as they are immensely powerful systems that wreak havoc as they go through. Thank goodness most of the islands were spared any damage this year. One storm made it through the northern Leeward and Virgin Islands (Cat 4) and a few yachts were sunk or damaged, but fortunately no loss of life. As these systems pass us they continue to develop and some new systems even form in the western Caribbean and go on and damage Mexico and the USA. We are still very wary of anything brewing out in the Atlantic, but the trade winds have been starting to blow and that’s a good thing.
That’s it for now
All our love to you
Colin and Sandy
