Our July 19th, 40 nautical mile sail from St. Lucia to St. Vincent was very nice and without any of the drama of our last few passages. The seas were calm behind each island and we had a very fast sail in reasonable seas of roughly 6 feet in between. The north end of St. Vincent is a volcano named Soufrière (the third such in the Caribbean). It last erupted just over four years ago and it was interesting to see three canyons down to the sea where the lava and mud ended their journey leaving behind black and brown sand beaches. We stopped for the night in Château Bel-Air, along with several other boats. Because the islands in this area are so steep sided, there are very few places shallow enough to drop an anchor. Thus everyone tends to congregate in the same places and the locals know it. We had to pay off another boat boy who at least managed to not leave big paint dings in the bows of our boat. But we did have to ignore his protestations regarding where to anchor as we could not set where he wanted us. But he agreed that our spot was just fine and left us alone after that. Several locals paddled out on either very dilapidated row boats or half inflated paddle boards to peddle a few pieces of fruit or trinkets. This is not particularly unusual although the folks in this town certainly seem much poorer than we have encountered in a long time. It became a concern when a guy showed up well after dark asking to take our trash. Theresa was already ready for bed and was quite disconcerted to have someone just appear in the darkness. I watched as he moved on to several other boats and then friends of ours on another catamaran with two small children got ahold of us about 9:30pm and said they were so freaked out by all the people hanging around their boat in the darkness that they were considering leaving and sailing through the night. They ended up leaving early in the morning, but I don’t think they got much sleep. We followed soon after and arrived at the island of Bequia, a small island just south of St. Vincent.
Bequia (Beh-kwē) is a perennial cruiser favorite and many boats spend long stretches of time here. We thought it was interesting that in the customs and immigration lobby there is a sign making it very clear that all of the moorings in the bay are illegal and likely unsafe, and therefore you should not use them. But yet a majority of the bay is full of mornings! From Princess Margaret Beach, where most boats anchor, all the way to town there is a very nice half mile long walkway along the water. One section of it is steep stairs along the face of the cliff, but it makes it very easy for boaters to get back-and-forth to town on foot. At the very western end of the island is an old hippie colony called Moonhole. Still a few folks living the “free“ life without many of life’s luxuries in the 19 home private community.
One afternoon, we decided to walk a couple miles up (literally) and over the island to the far side and visit the whaling museum. Under international whaling treaties, the people of Bequia are allowed to take up to four whales per year. Most years they get none but just a month before our arrival, they had taken a 45 foot humpback that reportedly dragged the boats most of the way to St. Vincent before it died. Everything has to be done entirely by hand, from the row boats to the hand-thrown harpoons. As with most of the indigenous exceptions to the ban on whaling, they use literally every part of the whale and the entire island population is involved one way or another. We had left our dink at the dock in front of Jack’s bar and were accompanied by a stray dog we nicknamed Jackie. For the next couple of hours all the way to the museum and then to The Sand Bar, she stayed with us. The bartender told us the dog’s real name, which we can’t remember, and after that Jackie decided to stay behind.
On July 26, we took the 0630 ferry to St. Vincent. We found a great hotel restaurant for a proper English breakfast and then got a water taxi to Fort Duvernette, a remarkable British fort on a tiny island just outside the main city of Kingstown. Built in the 1770s to protect the sugar warehouses, there is a very questionable staircase hacked into the rock leading up to two levels of cannons and mortars 190 feet above the water. Building this place and then getting the guns to the top must have been an extraordinary undertaking. As we arrived, our water taxi driver, who was sharing a joint with his friend, dropped his sunglasses into the water. He promptly jumped in to retrieve them but came up smiling! You can’t help but notice that there are names and dates carved into the concrete steps all the way up. They all date to April and May, 1969 — clearly the last time any maintenance was done!
Later that afternoon we picked up our son James, who stayed with us for a week of sailing all the way to Grenada. We stopped in Mayreau and John sampled some dried sea moss, which the locals cultivate for food, rum flavoring, and soap. It was extraordinarily salty and as chewy as boiled squid. We spent a couple of days in the Tobago Cays which have more turtles per square foot than any place we’ve ever been. We also got James into the water for his first ever nighttime snorkel — but it was a bust as we really didn’t see many critters at all. But many nervous laughs were had!
We tried to visit the tiny sand spit island with a thatch umbrella known as Mopion, but, as happened to us eight years ago, we were hit with a strong squall and could not get the anchor to set so abandoned the place. We still have not set foot on it. So we moved on to Carriacou island. Last year, the eye of hurricane Beryl struck here as a category four causing massive destruction. 95% of all buildings lost their roof or were completely destroyed. We took Ginger, our dink, into the mangroves where about 80 cruising boats were destroyed. The government has done a massive cleanup effort here and there was almost no evidence of any of that now, 14 months later. Late afternoon we tried to check in at the customs office, as this is part of the nation of Grenada, but we had completely forgotten to check out of St. Vincent and the Grenadines! We had just been caught up in visiting little Islands and everything is so close together it’s easy to forget which country you’re in. So, we had to sail back to Clifton, Union Island (two hours) and checked out of there the next morning. Eight years ago, we had found the market in town to be one of the nicest, most high-end in all of the islands. We bought some very nice wood carvings, along with fruits and vegetables then. Today there is virtually nothing there. Not only are all the buildings gone, but it appears the entire grassy park, including trees was blown away. There is a lot of rebuilding going on but it will be many years before this place is anything like it was. At noon on July 31 we properly celebrated/mourned Black Tot day, the anniversary of the day in 1970 when the British Navy ended 330 years of issuing an ounce of high-proof rum (diluted with two parts water, a.k.a. grog) to every sailor every day. On the way to Grenada proper we sailed through the exclusion zone of the underwater volcano Kick ‘em Jenny. She is known to belch so much gas during eruptions that the water directly above for about 1 km around loses its density and potentially the ability to support a ship! Fortunately, she was behaving on this day.
One Comment