Return to the Grenadines and to Grenada

The S/V Charlotte D arrived in Bequia, The Grenadines (http://www.svgtourism.com/ ), on Mar 15, 2009. Located at 13 00.1’N 61 14.6’W the anchorage at Admiralty Bay is one of our favorites.












Driving in Bequia is typical of the islands we have visited. Here’s how it is. Use of horn is frequent, generally to indicate a vehicle’s presence or as a greeting, rarely in anger. Shouting to and from vehicles is common, road rage is not. Priority at intersections is not always clear. Pedestrians expect cars to avoid them rather than the other way around. Driving is a social activity, with open windows, slowing down or stopping in traffic lanes to buy mangos or to chat with people driving in the opposite direction. Because roads are so narrow, delivery trucks halt traffic to unload. Blocked drivers just wait calmly. What else could you do?

The fish market at Bequia is always a show. A blown conch shell announces arrival of the fishing boats onto the beach, and the fresh catch is sold within minutes.




The complex of fish market, vegetable market and “boutique” stalls was funded by the taxpayers of Canada.

Pleasingly, breadfruit came into season while we were in Bequia. This one was roasted on our coal pot, but rolled off the grill and escaped into the bay while being turned. Never fear. Catherine swam to recover it and finished the cooking.

Cooled and peeled, it was made into a delicious “salad” (red bowl) to go with rice, green beans and mahi-mahi steaks from today’s visit to the fish market.


The red meat market operates on the street one day a week. Freshly butchered pork and beef is available, along with frozen whole roasting chickens. The tenderloins, sirloins and filet mignon all go to the local restaurants, but nice chops, chucks and ribs are sold on the street at a good price.

Buy it early in the morning and cook it soon, because it is not refrigerated!

There seems to be a concentration of live aboard cruisers with young children at Bequia.

Many of these kids live full time aboard cruising sailboats, or are here for the winter months. These boat urchins are home-schooled, and have the beach and the bay as their “backyard”.

What a wonderful range of experiences these kids have! It seems so much more appealing to be swimming and running on the beach in the sunshine than to be logging hours per day of television in a darkened room. The S/V Picton Castle is a school ship, mixing academics with sailing experience

This brief video of dancing kids may whet you appetite for more steel drum music which is in the longer video later in this blog.





.At Bequia we attended football games (known as soccer in some parts of the world) on a Saturday. They are energetic youngsters happy to ham it up for photos. Girls and boys participate in equal numbers.










The cricket match on the next day was also fun, with beers 3 for EC$10. (approx Canadian $4). We still do not fully understand that game.

Maria's French Terrace in Bequia (http://www.marias-french-terrace.com/ ), with WIFI, has live music several times a week, so naturally we timed our internet sessions to coincide with the live music whenever possible.

The internet is very useful to us not only for communication (email, skype), but also for preparing income tax returns (we downloaded tax programs and tax slips), banking, weather forecasts, and researching for our cruising. We do not receive or send any paper mail between November and May. We no longer subscribe to a cellular service.

We celebrated St Patrick's Day at Jack's Bar on Princess Margaret Beach, Bequia with Guiness and Heiniken (it's not an Irish beer but at least it's in a green bottle. On that day he was Peter O'Gallagher!





Catherine is still practicing her fiddle because she knows that perseverance is the best substitute for talent. This was one of her earliest efforts for this tune. So, you get to hear a master artist in her formative stage. Sorry for the wind noise in the audio on this video.

Click it and be amazed!


On Mar 23 we departed Bequia and sailed to Petit Nevis (12 58.4’N 61 14.9’W). Here are ruins of the former whale processing station, including remains of the steel pots for rendering blubber.


Whaling is still carried out in The Grenadines, limited to hunting from small sailboats. We observed the hunt in progress while we were underway from Petit Nevis toward Mustique, and it appears to us that the whales have a pretty good chance of surviving. S/V Limbo in the collage above is the style of boat used for the whale hunt and also for the island regattas. The owner of this particular boat is proud to be a frequent winner. He said, “It’s not bragging if you actually did it!”.



We made a brief stop at Charles Bay, Canouan (12 42.5’N 61 19.7’W). We appreciated the dinghy dock of the Tamarind Beach Hotel and their internet access (http://www.tamarind.com/ ).

The island tour of Canouan by taxi was enlightening. There has been massive resort development (Raffles for US$980/day in winter months!). The employment offered has been welcomed, but the change in the character of the island causes some to be uncomfortable. For example, the expansion of the airstrip to handle jet traffic involved removing one large hill to bury one large coral reef, and one long white sand beach. Mount Royal was to become a nature preserve, but is now incorporated into the private resort. Strangely, the resort, although appearing completed and looking very posh, presently has very few guests (http://www.raffles-canouanisland.com/ ).

Saltwhistle Bay of Mayreau (12 38.8’N 61 23.3’N) is truly beautiful picture postcard perfect. The resort that has been here for 30 years seems to fit right in, and is still only 8 small villas, 6 booked when we were there (http://www.saltwhistlebay.com/ ).
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Windward Bay of Mayreau (12 38.2’N 61 23.3W) was our refuge during a period of large ocean swells propagating down from a powerful winter storm off the coast of Nova Scotia. We found a nice concentration of edible seaweed growing here. Yummy!


Ocean swells do not enter Windward Bay because the anchorage is surrounded by miles of shallow coral reefs and “flats”, all part of the Tobago Cays Marine Park (http://www.tobagocays.com/).

Petit St Vincent, also a privately owned island with resort charging the same rate as Raffles has one of the loveliest beaches that we have been fortunate enough to visit (http://www.psvresort.com/ ). We walked, ran, waded, sat, soaked, and lounged in hammocks in great enjoyment over several days.

Click on this video to see catherine (AKA Demi) in her daily beach run.



The anchorage at Petit St Vincent is clear turquoise water over a bright sand bottom and is irresistible for swimming.


Peter (AKA Scrawny) could not control himself (nor did he try!).



Later we put half of a red snapper and local butternut squash on the coal pot. The snapper had been marinated since morning with a lemon grass recipe, and the squash stuffed with brown sugar, real Irish butter and pecans.

Together with Catherine’s ginger flavoured coleslaw, they made a lovely dinner in the cockpit.

Chatham Bay of Union Island is always fun for us. The beach is lovely. Seckie and Vanessa continue to operate their comfortable beach bar, and also a water taxi and tour service (www.myunionisland.com/seckietours ). We enjoy patronizing their bar/restaurant and also socializing with them outside of business hours, when we can serve drinks to them!

We had a magnificent 40nm day sail from Petit St Vincent to Prickly Bay Grenada on April 3. This was a broad reach with warm wind ENE 15-18 knots and sea 2m ENE swell under bright sunny sky. Doesn’t get any better than that!

On our first Friday back in Grenada we lucked upon a happy hour with very professional steel drum band. We now know that they are a regular feature of Friday happy hours at the Prickly Bay Marina. We will attend again!

Click on this video to see why!

This is almost the end of our cruising for this winter. We are scheduled to haul out the Charlotte D on April 14 and hope to fly back to North America on April 21 to enjoy the spring and summer months in Cape Breton.

peter and catherine, aboard s/v charlotte d in grenada.

“The consent of citizens to be governed by laws drawn up for the common good is not consent for the state to act in ways that would be illegal or immoral if carried out by individual citizens.” Ursula M. Franklin

Report from S/V Charlotte D

Days in Martinique

We reached Martinique, French West Indies, on Feb 1, 2009 after a 93 nm, 20 hr sail north from Bequia, part of St Vincent and the Grenadines. On this passage we traveled the lee sides (west sides) of the Big Islands of St. Vincent and St. Lucia but did not stop at either this time.

In Martinique we used two nearby anchorages. The anchorage at St Anne is the more scenic. There is a most lovely, long beach (Salines Beach) with several good French restaurants and beach goers who follow the European practice of going topless. Check it out on Google Earth at 14 26.2’N 60 53.3’W, http://www.earth.google.com/

The anchorage at Cul-de-Sac Marin (14 27.6’N 60 52.4’W) gives access to facilities such as supermarket, auto parts store, chandleries, Customs and Immigration. While there we had our coolest weather of this winter. The temperature plummeted to nighttime lows of 20 deg C (68 deg F).

Our overall impression of Martinique is that it is civilized; so much more civilized than the English-speaking islands to the south. The residents are polite and tolerate our poor French with patience. The children in their school uniforms say, “Bonjour Madame. Bonjour Monsier.” as they make room for us to pass on the sidewalk. There are only a few stray dogs, no street litter, and no loud music on the beaches (except at Club Med). Magazines and newspapers are available in the smallest communities, even some English language newspapers like The International Herald Tribune. Some links for Martinique: http://www.martinique-bonjour.com/ and http://www.martinique.org/

There was a grieve general while we were in Martinique. Many establishments closed in support of the strike. Pas du carbourant could have been an inconvenience for us except that we arrived at Martinique with fuel reserves sufficient for at least two months at anchor. We did finally run low on gasoline for the dinghy outboard, so we rowed more. There was no FedEx, so we could not receive the ordered glow plugs for our diesel generator. Fortunately, les patisseries, les marches, y les restaurants remained open but with dwindling supplies and progressively more limited menus.

We do not understand fully the reasons for the strike. If interested, you could get more insight at http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/03/11/news/CB-French-Caribbean-Unrest.php

Danish Friends
We have repeatedly crossed paths with Rune cruising from Denmark aboard S/V Condor (http://www.sy-condor.dk/ ). Our first meeting was in Tobago. Subsequently, without planning it, we met again in Chatham Bay and at Bequia. Our fourth meeting was in Martinique where Rune arrived after picking up his son Bjorg and Bjorg’s mother Tina to cruise onward to Cuba and Jamaica.

Rune had a once in a life time experience in Martinique. He came down with hemorrhagic fever and renal failure from exposure to Hanta Virus. This is carried by aerosols of rodent excreta, saliva or urine, and also in dust or dried particles of the same. Hanta virus is distributed world wide where there are mice or rats. From the timing of presentation of his disease, he must have had the exposure in Barbados. He became ill at sea enroute to Martinique and spent almost a week in intensive care in a hospital in Fort de France. He has only praise for the quality of medical care in Martinique.

Engine Servicing.
It took me some time to figure out that failure of the glow plugs was the cause of the starting difficulties of our Onan generator. The replacement plugs were ordered just the day before the grieve general shut down the courier services to Martinique, so we have had to do without our generator since then. The drive belts on our Perkins propulsion engine where showing more and more wear, so three new ones were snapped on.

Replacement of bearing and seal for KISS wind generator.
Because of our lack of functioning diesel generator, our KISS wind generator became more important. Of course, just when it was most needed, the shaft bearing seized.

We were able to obtain replacement bearings and oil seal to fit; available from stock at a local chandlery. It was a two day job for Catherine and I because we had never done it before. We were successful!

Our Martinique anchorages had nice steady trade winds, so the wind generator provided 100% of our electricity needs, supporting even water-making.

Varnishing.
The dry season began while we were in Martinique. This is the time every year to renew some varnish. We applied 13 coats to grab rails, two companionway sliders, dorade boxes, cockpit coaming cap rail, and cockpit table.

Replacement of Stove.
We have been looking at French-made Eno stoves for some time and found one in stock for a good price at one of the chandleries in le Marin. It did take 3 days to get it moved from their local warehouse to store, but this gave us time to remove and dispose of the old stove.

To fit the new stove required making new standoffs for the gimble pivots and lock.

Now Catherine can once again bake bread!

Repair of Sun Shade.
Our Shade Tree Sun Shade has seen much use over the past 6 years and is requiring more and more repair. Several of the carbon fibre spreader poles have split or broken. These are a simple replacement because we carry spare poles. Unfortunately, when a pole breaks it usually punctures the fabric, so out comes the sewing machine.

Beach Time.
The lovely beach at St. Anne is not to be missed! We joined our cruising friends Wayne and Trish (S/V Rhythm of Life) for some much needed beach “therapy”. This included sipping cold beer sitting in the shade, and refueling at the beach front restaurants as well as wading and swimming in the warm bay waters.

Home-made ice cream is delivered to the beach by wheelbarrow.

Trish and Catherine patronized the vendors hawking les costumes de bain along the beach. The swimsuits were fitted on the beach and the vendor had a small mirror available.

Notice swim suits changed between the two pics above without benefit of "change room". This whole procedure was most amusing.

Catherine is very pleased with the gift from Trish of a kitchen mitt that will no doubt assist her cooking. Look at that design!

Shopping in Martinique.
In spite of the grieve general, we found opportunities for entertainment in shopping. The street-side vendor of fresh-made fruit smoothies was in business. The French baguettes are like none other.


The local fishermen continued to bring in their daily catch, announcing their arrival at the water’s edge by blowing a conch shell.

We often ate fresh Mahi-Mahi or Wahoo, but passed on Parrot Fish and the immature Snapper.

The open air vegetable and spice market is always fun. .

Cruising South from Martinique.
After almost 6 weeks in Martinique, we departed on March 11 for a lovely 5 day cruise south. This was a series of day-sails, anchoring at night. We were disappointed to find much waterfront construction underway at the formerly lovely anchorage at l’Anse Le’ Raye, St. Lucia (13 56.4’N 61 02.7’W). Of course, it will be an improved location when finished.

We had a most delightful sail down the west coast of St Lucia. The video below gives a good impression of the wonderful conditions, enhanced by the Pitons receding into the background and by Catherine’s fiddling (The Westfalia Waltz).

Click on the video below to be entertained!

We were pleased to discover the tiny anchorage at Petit Byahaut, St. Vincent. There is room for 3 or 4 boats maximum. We were alone there for two nights.

We are now lying at anchor in Princess Margaret Bay, Bequia, where the local blackbirds sing, “Beck-Way, Sweet, Sweet”, and it is!

Look for full details of our time at Bequia in our next blog!

“Prayer is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but doesn’t get you anywhere.” Gypsy Rose Lee.