{"id":7521,"date":"2025-08-28T20:12:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T02:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/syfrenchkissinglife.com\/?p=7521"},"modified":"2025-08-28T20:12:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T02:12:20","slug":"st-vincent-and-the-grenadines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/syfrenchkissinglife.com\/?p=7521","title":{"rendered":"St. Vincent and the Grenadines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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 Soufri\u00e8re (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 Ch\u00e2teau 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\u2019t think they got much sleep. We followed soon after and arrived at the island of Bequia, a small island just south of St. Vincent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bequia (Beh-kw\u0113) 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 \u201cfree\u201c life without many of life\u2019s luxuries in the 19 home private community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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\u2019s 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\u2019s real name, which we can\u2019t remember, and after that Jackie decided to stay behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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\u2019t 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 \u2014 clearly the last time any maintenance was done!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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