Our "lay days" (days on which we don't travel) have settled into a routine: We listen to various Ham and marine radio networks between 0700 and about 0845. During this time we eat breakfast, then start the engine to charge the batteries, heat up the hot water tank, cool down the refrigerator, and make a day's supply of fresh water. While we have hot water, Cathy washes the previous day's laundry by hand in a two-gallon bucket while I do the dishes (also, of course, by hand). Late morning and early afternoon might be spent reading, fixing some broken piece of equipment, snorkeling, scrubbing Sovereign's bottom, or going to town for shopping, e-mail, or sight-seeing. By 1600 we re-start the engine for the day's second round of refrigerator charging. We, like the refrigerator, are having trouble coping with ambient water temperatures in the mid-80s F, and air temperatures around 90 F. While the engine is running, we repeatedly jump off the boat, and then climb back aboard Sovereign, trying to get cool as the warm sun evaporates the seawater from our skin. With more hot water made, it is time for showers, a luxury we can indulge in daily because the extra engine time for the refrigerator at least has the benefit of letting us run the watermaker longer. We shut off the engine around 1700. Most evenings see some form of "happy hour", when we socialize with the other cruisers in the anchorage as we watch a sunset that is all too often obscured by clouds. Cathy makes dinner. We eat, then read a little, and are ready for bed. I usually awaken a few times each night, closing and re-opening the hatches as little rain squalls pass overhead, and checking our position against other boats or shore to make sure we haven't dragged anchor.
On our travel days during the last month we have been working our way through the Grenadines, a chain of small islands between St. Vincent and Grenada. Just to give you an idea of size, a "big" island in the West Indies might be 15 miles long. The smallest island we visited is smaller than a football field.
We sailed from Bequia to Canouan, a distance of a little over 20 miles, on June 3. We must have picked up a gremlin in Bequia, because as we left we discovered that both the watermaker and the electronic autopilot had quit working. Fortunately, we still had the mechanical wind vane to steer the boat, and Sovereign close-reached the whole way in 15 to 18 knot east-southeasterly trade winds.
Canouan has a beautiful barrier reef
Canouan is about
three miles long with a reasonably protected bay at the middle of its western
shore. The island is just starting to be developed as a resort, and
we saw lots of construction taking place at a development on the northern
part of the island. There is about a mile stretch of beach on the
windward side of the island that is still undeveloped and deserted.
The beach is protected by a coral reef lying about a half mile offshore,
and the water stretching between the sandy beach and the coral reef is
the vivid turquoise that only a four-foot-deep pool of tropical water can
attain. We walked along the beach and didn't see so much as the footprints
of another person. We spent two days in Canouan. In addition
to our hike ashore, we were able to repair the watermaker and the autopilot,
so we felt we had made good use of our time.
The crystal-clear water of the Tobago Cays
A short seven-mile
motorsail brought us to the Tobago Cays. These are a small cluster
of four uninhabited islands that are protected by a horseshoe-shaped coral
reef to windward, and a sprinkling of other reefs that keep navigation
interesting. Horseshoe Reef (as it is called) blocks the main force
of the swells that develop over the 2000 miles of ocean between here and
Africa, so that the anchorage behind them is mostly calm. At least
it would have been calm if the wind hadn't been blowing at about 20 knots
for most of the time we were there. In addition to the unseasonably
strong trade winds, atmospheric disturbances called tropical waves are
now rolling through the Caribbean every two to three days, bringing strong
gusty wind and rain showers. We moved Sovereign around behind the
island of Mayreau for a few days to wait out some of these tropical waves
before returning to the Tobago Cays. We re-anchored behind Horseshoe
Reef, and we could look out to the east over the reefs to an unbroken horizon.
It was a rare experience to be at anchor and yet have no visible land between
us and the fury of the ocean.
The Tobago Cays are the gems of the Caribbean. The snorkeling there is incomparably the best we have seen. We went snorkeling every day, sometimes twice a day. The coral was healthy (which is rare) and diverse. There were huge brain and fan corals five feet in diameter, a wide variety of sponges, anemones, urchins, and, of course, the fish. Virtually every reef fish that is found in the guidebooks was present here, too many to mention. For us the highlight was a school of about a hundred blue tang that passed by us, displaying the full range of colors of that species, from slate gray through midnight blue to an almost electric blue. The water clarity was also excellent, so the colors of everything underwater were bright and vivid instead of washed out. The fabulous conditions in the Tobago Cays were wonderful to experience, but they also served as a comparison to all the other places where we have snorkeled. It reminded us that so many coral reefs have been irreparably destroyed. We can only imagine what the other reefs of the Caribbean must have been like before man's impact on this fragile ecosystem.
On June 10, we motored past the reefs fringing the difficult southern entrance to the Tobago Cays, raised sails, and had a leisurely eight-mile sail to Chatham Bay on Union Island. Except for a few shacks of fishermen along the beach, there is no sign of human habitation ashore here. We shared the anchorage with a half dozen other boats. We went for walks on the long beach, and spent evenings swapping sea stories with other cruisers. On the 14th, we motored over to Clifton Harbor so that we could complete the formalities of clearing out of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and on the 15th, we sailed for the island
of Carriacou.
Grenada immigration stamp, for the "purpose of shore leave"
We cleared in with
Grenada Customs in Hillsboro, Carriacou, but immediately moved the boat
around to the better-protected harbor of Tyrrel Bay. Carriacou is
a somewhat larger island than the rest of the Grenadines, perhaps six miles
long, and it boasted a boatyard as well as a few shops with a meager supply
of canned goods and a large selection of liquor. It also had a butcher
that had been recommended to us by some other cruisers. After getting
almost all of our meat out of cans for months, the prospect of real red
meat was too much to resist, so we trudged up the steep hill to the shop.
Unfortunately it was closed, so we tried again the next day. Typically,
fresh fish and meat are purchased in open-air markets where a hunk of what
you want is hacked off with a machete, and no effort is made to shoo the
flies away. We were unexpectedly surprised to find a clean shop with
freezers lining the walls, and a butcher who had worked in Europe for years
before coming home to his native island. We bought a three pound
roast and two pork chops (he was out of ground beef), for $EC 26, about
$US 10. For those of you who can run out to the supermarket and buy
whatever you want it may not seem like much, but I have really enjoyed
our last few meals on the boat, dining on the rarity of what we refer to
as "solid meat".
Sandy Island
We took a side
trip one day to Sandy Island. It is the kind of place people think
of when the phrase "desert island" is mentioned. It is about a 100
yards long and 20 yards wide. It is mostly sandy beach, with a small
grove of palm trees in the middle to provide a little shade. It is
the kind of place you dream of having all to yourself. Unfortunately,
about 10 other boats must have shared our dream: we were all anchored
off the tiny island. We spent the day combing the beaches and snorkeling
the reefs off the island. An hour before sunset we hauled up the
anchor and returned to Tyrrel Bay for the evening.
On June 18 we raised anchor and headed for Grenada. Grenada is one of the "big" islands of the West Indies--about 15 miles long and seven miles wide. The best anchorages are at the southeast corner of the island, rather than on the west side as is usually the case of Caribbean islands, so we sailed along the eastern, or windward side of Grenada. The trip was about 33 miles, all of it in uncomfortable six to nine foot seas. We ducked in to the harbor at Hog Island, glad to be out of the swell.
From what we have seen so far, Grenada is much like the other "big" Caribbean Islands, though perhaps a bit better off. In our few excursions ashore so far we have seen many nice houses and no shacks, which is a little unusual for these islands.
Grenada marks the end of the island chain of the Lesser Antilles. From the Virgin Islands in the north to Grenada in the south, these islands are scattered in an arc that covers nearly 400 nautical miles. Since it is now hurricane season, our cruising options are limited to areas outside of the hurricane belt. From here that includes Trinidad to the south and
Venezuela to the southwest. We plan to stay in Grenada for a few weeks before moving on to one of these other destinations. While we have enjoyed the islands, we are now looking forward to seeing what Caribbean South America (the area once known as the "Spanish Main") has to offer us. Yo ho me hearties!
Smooth sailing,
Jim and Cathy