Windward Islands

The Caribbean is divided into 3 groups, the Virgin Islands in the north, the Leeward Islands in the middle & the Windward Islands in the south. The windward Islands go from Martinique, St Lucia, The Grenadine Islands (St Vincent through to Union Island, including Tobago Cays), through to Grenada (which also has several small islands including Carriacou). The main language is English, except for Martinique which is French.

St Lucia is one of the largest English speaking islands in the Windward’s, approx 30 nautical miles long & 15 nautical miles wide. It is very mountainous through the centre & lush with tropical rainforests. The main crop is bananas which are grown on the more gentle slopes of the coastal fringe. It’s very easy to get around the island as they have mini buses that travel regularly between the main towns.

We spent Xmas Day at Rodney Bay, St Lucia, with 2 other Kiwi boats, Red Herring from Nelson & Legend II from Bay of Plenty. There was also an Aussie boat that joined us, Vagabond Heart, so 16 people in total. We had a great day that started at 11am on the beach for drinks & nibbles, followed by games. The games consisted of Petanque, Egg & Spoon Race, Egg Throwing Competition & then a game which involved 2 lengths of string & ended up rather messy in a scrum!!! It was a lot of laughs & 11 year old Alice from Vagabond Heart said “I never knew adults could be so much fun”. Everyone came back to Sali for a delicious Pot Luck Dinner -turkey, ham & leg of NZ lamb, with all the trimmings & some scrummy deserts.
It was an early start on Boxing Day to head down to the southern end of St Lucia to collect Mandy (Pete’s daughter) from the airport at Veux Fort. The next day we went north again to the Pitons where we spent a couple of days snorkeling & visited the town of Soufriere.
We left St Lucia on 29th December & started our journey south through the Grenadines, with an overnight stop at the southern end of St Vincent before reaching Admiralty Bay on the island of Bequia. This is a very popular place to celebrate New Years Eve (or Old Years Eve as the locals call it) & there were at least 150 yachts anchored in the bay. We spent the evening on board Sali with our friends David & Julia (English) on “Daq Attack”, along with James, Marion & their crew member Michael (Irish) on “Balu”. Mandy & Michael went ashore to check out the festivities & ended up dancing with the locals in a bar that had a live steel band playing. Midnight was marked with a big fireworks display & a number of parachute flares were let off around the bay, we were amazed that there were no boats hit with the flares as they drifted down to land in the crowded anchorage. We spent a few days on Bequia enjoying the local fare - rum punch & roti (curried meat & vege wrapped in a tortilla). Although Bequia is one of the smaller islands in the Grenadines, they cater well for the yachties which is there main source of tourism. However everything is generally expensive as they have to import all their goods, including fresh fruit & veges which come by ferry from St Vincent. We experienced several heavy rain showers at Bequia; they don’t last very long but heavy enough that we managed to top up our water tanks 800 lts in 1 hour.
On the January 3rd we headed out of Bequia in another deluge of heavy rain, with winds gusting up to 35knts. Thankfully it cleared up when we got out of the bay & we had a good sail over to Canouan Island. A large part of this island has been brought by Italians who have set up a flash resort with a casino & the local airport has a continual stream of Lear Jets coming & going. We had brought a book with all the dive sites on for the Windward’s, unfortunately for us they omitted to advise the co-ordinates for the dive sites so we spent some time searching around for a ship wreck near Mayreau Island & eventually had to enlist the help of a local to locate it. We got kitted up & went for a dive on the wreck which was well worth while. The sea life was incredible; it was like being in an aquarium. We saw all sorts of fish including barracuda & a stingray. We also saw a family of crayfish, unfortunately for us it’s a marine reserve so the crayfish were saved from our pot. The next morning was rather a rude awakening when a ferry started tooting at us at 7,15am to get out of his way; we were anchored too close to the dock. They actually did us a favour cause it meant we got an early start for the short trip around to the Tobago Cays. These are a group of uninhabited sandy islands, protected by a big horseshoe reef and have been turned into a big marine reserve. There were around 50 boats anchored there along with the usual local boats selling their wares to the cruisers. We were unable dive without a guide, however the snorkeling was fantastic out on the reef with 80ft visibility. We saw a sleeping shark & swam with the turtles which were plentiful & all sizes.
After 2 days at Tobago Cays it was time to move on, our next stop was Union Island. We anchored at Clifton Bay on the southern end of the island. Here we did a reef dive in search of the elusive crayfish, instead we saw a 5ft grey nurse shark that came over to investigate us, luckily he wasn’t too interested in us!!! It wasn’t the only shark we saw, in town they had a pool with about half a dozen sharks, a turtle & crayfish. The pool is beside a bar & there’s a table & chairs in the pool where you can have a drink – if you dare……
On 9th Jan we arrived in Hillsborough on the island of Carriacou. We had to “clear in” here as this island is part of Grenada, unfortunately as Mandy was due to leave us from Grenada we had to keep moving. We did however make time to stop for a dive at Isle de Rondel, a small island between Carriacou & Grenada. Once again the sea life was fantastic & we finally managed to get a nice sized crayfish (the 1st of many hopefully). By the time we arrived at St Georges Bay in Grenada it was dark, the sun sets at 6pm, so we had to anchor out in the bay which was a bit rolly. The next morning we moved into the lagoon which was pretty crowded, but luckily we managed to find a spot to park up. There were a couple of other cruising boats here that we knew, Balu (Irish) & Reborn V (Australians). We had met Reborn crew, Cameron, Natalie & their children Oscar, Stephie & MacKie, last year in Italy, so it was great to see them again after all this time. Unfortunately Mandy didn’t get a chance to see the island before she left on 12th Jan, Pete & I did a tour of the island with the Reborn crew which was very interesting. We went to the nutmeg factory, rum distillery, chocolate factory & Anandale waterfalls. It’s a very lush green island & the driver showed us a lot of fruit & spices that are grown here– no wonder it’s called the “Spice Island” It’s also one of the more affluent islands, as evidenced by the flash cars & palatial houses around the coastline.

We spent the rest of the week catching up on chores & provisioning up for Karen & Miles’ arrival on Friday 16th Jan. On Saturday we took them to visit the local markets before heading down to the southern end of the island where we negotiated our way in the rain through the many reefs to our anchorage at Hogg Island which is connected to the mainland by a bridge. This was a delightful calm anchorage, despite the rain squalls that were coming through frequently. There are a number of bays along this coast, some of which are un-navigable by yacht so we went exploring in the dingy. We were hoping to do some snorkeling (or sprokelling as the Irish call it), however because of the many mangrove swamps along this coast, the water was too murky to see anything. Our anchorage had around 20 boats of all nationalities, including another Kiwi boat. We met it’s owner Phil who like several other cruisers in the bay he arrived in the Caribbean 10 years ago & never left. There is a lovely sandy beach with a “Rum Shack” where all the cruisers congregate on a Sunday night for drinks & a BBQ, consequently we joined in for a drink & game of petanque – the Kiwis V’s the English (Miles & Karen). We decided to be kind & let our visitors win (year right!!) but watch this space for the rematch……..
We’re now back in St Georges Bay lagoon & have just enjoyed a tasty fish dinner, Pete caught 4 small fish last night on his fly line at Hogg Island. We will be heading off on our journey north again tomorrow & will drop Karen & Miles off at Bequia Island in a couple of week’s time.