St. Vincent & the Grenadines

We actually first got to St. Vincent at the beginning of August but we basically got checked in and then headed further South.  It was quite the ordeal getting the dogs checked in.  First they could only check them in at the southern end of the island so we had to sail from St. Lucia which was only about 23 miles but then we had to go an additional 18 miles to the southern end of St. Vincent.  After all I heard about how difficult it was to check the dogs in, I decided to start early to get the permit started so about 10 days before we were expecting to check in I emailed the vet all of our paperwork.  I didn't hear anything for several days so I called the vet to see what the status was (I was glad that Dr. Brian in Guadeloupe was able to give me her cell phone number)  When I called it happened to be a Friday and she was home sick. but she told me to make sure to get an export permit from the last island we visited, which I did.  She hadn't even looked at the paperwork yet.  So we ended up staying in St. Lucia a couple extra days waiting for her to review the paperwork.  We decided to head to St. Vincent on Monday thinking that she would be able to review everything by the end of the day.  But we never heard anything.  So I tried calling her while we were sailing and she informed me that I would need to redo the permit application.  Well, we pulled into Blue Lagoon on Monday afternoon and the dogs could not go to land, which she strictly informed me.  We finally got everything completed correctly and she met us on Tuesday afternoon.  The dogs were very happy to finally get to land, but they did exceptionally well and were so very patient through the whole ordeal and having to stay on the boat when they were so close to a beautiful beach.
This is the main reason we decided to not go to Grenada unless we absolutely have to because it is very difficult to bring the dogs back into St. Vincent once you visit Grenada because St. Vincent is rabies free where Grenada is not.  We would have to find a vet in Grenada, have the dogs examined, test for rabies, which would also mean obtaining a titer test.  SO, please pray that a hurricane doesn't come this way to chase us down to Grenada.
At least now that the dogs are checked in we are able to visit all the islands throughout the grenadines and there are quite a few.  We spent some time in Bequai, Union Island, Mayreau and Tabago Cays.  They are all so beautiful and so very different.  We've been to Union Island and Tabago Cays before  on a bareboat about 3 years ago but it is nice to visit them again and being able to spend as much time as we want to on each one.
We are currently back in St. Vincent.  We came back mainly so we could do some serious provisioning.  The other islands have small markets but St. Vincent has some really large supermarkets and the prices are quite a bit better.  It is just a real pain to cross over from Bequai to St. Vincent.  It's not so bad when your going south but coming back north crossing the Bequai channel can be quite bumpy and the current is unbelievable.  While it only took us about an hour and a half to go south from St. Vincent to Bequai, it took us close to 3 hours to go back.  We've spent about 5 days here back in Blue Lagoon, which is a pretty nice place with a beautiful beach and convenient to catch a bus to Kingstown, which is the capital and a fairly large town.  I wasn't really sure what to expect from St. Vincent because we always heard that there was a lot of theft here and not a really great place for cruisers but we have not seen anything like that.  All of the people have been incredibly nice and helpful and the island is beautiful.  I am really enjoying St. Vincent but we are going to head back over to Bequai tomorrow and cruise around more of the Grenadines.  We should have plenty of time to see the majority because we will probably be around here until the middle of October.  But I will take you along on our visits to the islands so you can enjoy them along with us.

St. Vincent:

The reef just outside Blue Lagoon

Max & Lexie's beach that they get to walk on 3 times a day while in Blue Lagoon

A sunset in Blue Lagoon

Union Island:

This is Happy Island which is a bar on its own island in Clifton Harbour

The square in downtown

Tabago Cays:

Sydney the boat boy who sells T-shirts and sarongs

Bequai:

Main Street

The walkway around Admiralty Bay

One of the restaurants in the bay-Gingerbread House

Mayreau:

Salt Whistle Bay

In Tobago Keys

Well Karen has been writing the blogs lately. So I guess it’s my turn. We are in Tobago Keys in the Grenadines. This is one of the truly best places on earth. It is beautiful. The color and clarity of the water is incredible. The water is a bright turquoise. It has some reefs on the inside which are a deep navy blue. The contrast is amazing. There are four islands inside a 5 mile circular reef. One of the islands is a turtle preserve. We snorkeled the preserve yesterday and saw 6 turtles and two huge stingrays. One was a spotted eagle ray the other was a southern ray.

Today we are going to snorkel the reefs. There is just a load of undersea life around here so who knows what we are going to see.

The boat has been running good. I haven’t had to work on the engines in 5 or 6 passages. That may not sound like a lot but it is. I used to have to work on them after even a short trip. But we are still making some rookie mistakes. We took off with out a line secured. Another time we didn’t secure the dingy when anchoring.  We still need to do some more checking before we do anything nautical. But we are getting better all the time. When I think how I used to sail when I first got the boat I’m kind of amazed that we got so far. I guess ignorance is bliss, because I was certainly ignorant then, but we still sailed around and had a good time.

It looks like we are going to be in the Grenadines for a while. There are a lot of islands to explore down here and I plan on checking them all out. We may not even get to Grenada. That is unless a hurricane chases us down there. Since it is now August I check hurricane central every day. If there is any sight of a hurricane coming near us I will not hesitate to duck down to Grenada or Trinidad. But other than a hurricane I don’t have any reason to go to Grenada.

Karen at the cays

Me and Karen at the cays

                                                               It doesn't get much prettier

On the way to the cays

St. Lucia

Friday we made it to St. Lucia.  We decided to stay in the marina at Rodney Bay since  it was so reasonable.  It was a bit of a challenge to get the dogs checked in because of course I’m always missing some piece of paper that they need.  I tried to do everything ahead of time via email but it’s still a challenge.  The dogs always cost more to check in than the boat and us together but I’m sure they enjoy visiting all of the islands too.  I guess St. Vincent is even harder so we may just end up leaving them in St. Lucia-just kidding, they’re with us through it all.  We were only going to stay in St. Lucia for two days but since it was a weekend, we had to get an export permit from the vet and she wasn’t able to get it to us until Monday.  So we stayed an extra day, which wasn’t bad.  I could get used to staying in a marina with the warm showers, pool, wifi….. but I would probably miss sailing and seeing all of the other wonderful islands and I’m sure it would get boring after a while.  
If this first picture looks familiar it’s because you probably saw it on Pirates of the Caribbean if you saw the first movie.  I guess it was filmed here.  

Monday night we headed to the south end of the island so we could get and early start to head to St. Vincent.   We stayed in Laborie bay, which is a small fishing village.  It was a really friendly place with a nice beach.  

Wes caught a nice Mahi on the way to St. Lucia and Max thought it was very interesting

This guy sales herbs, fruits & vegetables from his boat.  He even grows some of it on top

The beach in Laborie Bay where we anchored last night

Martinique

We made it to Martinique on Friday and stayed in St. Pierre Friday night.  In 1902 the volcano on Mt. Pelee’ erupted and wiped out almost the whole town of St. Pierre.  There were 30,000 living there at the time and about 1,000 escaped and 2 men lived through it.  One was a cobbler and the other was a prisoner that was being held in a concrete cell.  He was still burned pretty bad though.  There were probably 12 boats in the harbor and all but one of them was demolished.  The one that made it through limped away with a few passengers. There are several buildings remaining that were made of concrete and they have rebuilt some of it but not much.  

Saturday we sailed down to Fort De France which is the capital of Martinique and a largely populated area.  It was awesome because we met a huge pod of dolphins on the way and they swam with the boat for a while.  It’s so fun to watch Lexie with the dolphins because she is so fascinated with them.  Max is oblivious.  I don’t think he even sees them in the water or even when they jump out of the water or maybe he just doesn’t care.  

We were going to head out today (Sunday) and sail straight to St. Lucia with our friends on Cosmos Mariner but when Wes went to start the port engine it wouldn't start.  He thinks the water pump is out so we may just be stuck here in Fort De France for a few days.   

Mt.Palee-volcano

St. Pierre-that's our boat just on the other side of the dock

The theatre that was destroyed from the volcano

The cell where Cyress was staying and survived the volcano erupting

DOLPHINS!!!

Fort De France

The fort in Fort De France

Wes's fish he caught on the way to Martinique-it was pretty yummy

The beach at our anchorage in Fort De France

Roseau Dominica

We spent the last couple of days in Roseau and had a great time.  We hired a guide named Sea Cat to take us and the 5 other people from the three boats we are hanging out with on an island tour.  The island is much different than the the other islands we've visited because it is mainly volcanic.  There aren't any sandy beaches that we could find but mainly black pebbly beaches.  But the island is really lush and green full of trees and bushes.  Sea Cat showed us a bunch of different trees and bushes which we got to sample most of it-almond, cashew, star fruit, tamarind, cherries, cinnamon, nutmeg and a bunch others that I can’t remember.  We swam through a cave and came out at a small waterfall. Then headed to Trafalgar falls, which was awesome.  Then we spent time in the hot pools that are right below the falls and are really warm from the volcano.  It was a great way to see the island.  

Today we are heading to Martinique, another French Island so I am looking forward to the wonderful breads, cheeses and wine again.

View of the bay and the cricket field from the top of the hill

Sea Cat opening an almond

The cave we swam through

The waterfall at the end of the cave

This tree fell on a school bus during Hurricane David in 1979.  The left the tree because it was still alive and growing.  Thank goodness there wasn't anyone on the bus at the time.

Wes swinging from the trees

Trafalgar Falls

Relaxing in the hot pools

Off to Dominica

We Left Guadeloupe on Saturday the 11th and we were going to sail as far as Marie Galante which is a sister island of Guadeloupe about 15 miles SE of Guadeloupe but the wind was in our favor so we decided to keep heading south to Dominica and got into Pourtsmouth at around 3:30 in the afternoon.  I really enjoyed Guadeloupe even though it is a french island and hardly anyone speaks english.  Wes did download the french Rosetta Stone and has been trying to learn french since we have been visiting so many french islands.  It seems to be a very difficult language to learn but hopefully some of it will sink in so at least we can find a bathroom, a drink or groceries when we need them.  

When you pull into the harbor there are “boat boys” to meet you and help you out with anything you might need.  They are very helpful and knowledgable .  They have to be certified guides to be part of PAYS (Pourtsmouth Association of Yacht Services) and they also patrol the anchorage, which is nice.  There are a few other boats in the anchorage that we had met before which is nice we keep bumping into them.  Rick and Helen who are on Symmetry III were planning to do the Indian River trip the same day we were so we decided to book it together since we had the same PAYS guide (Albert) assigned to our boats.  It was a really cool tour.  Albert picked us up at our boat in his 20 foot boat and we motored over to the start of the river.  Once we started up the river he had to shut off the motor and use oars because motors are not allowed on the river.  The river has been used in Pirates of the Caribbean II when they travel up the river to visit Calypso the witch and it was also used to film a series of Survivor.  The first house in the Pirates movie is still there but the one where Calypso lived has been torn down.  When you get to the furthest spot you can go on the river there is a bush bar which serves local drinks.  I tried the Dynamite, which is made from gooseberry juice, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg-oh and of course rum.  It was pretty good but what a kick.  

We will probably stick around here until Tuesday then head down island to Roseau, which is the capital of Dominica and the main town.  

This was an eel that was in the marina on Guadeloupe

A lighthouse we saw leaving Guadeloupe

This is the view of our anchorage in Pointe a Pitre.  it looks like it would be really loud but it wasn't  These freighters would come in all night and they would load and unload and then be gone by the morning.  It was a very busy port.

Our Guide Albert 

The Indian River

Having drinks at the bush bar.  The chairs were all made out of tree stumps

In Guadelpoe first edition

Guadeloupe is some island. It is bigger than most of your Caribbean islands and holds 330,000 people. It also has three of four big cities. The biggest of these is Pointa A Pitre. That is a really big city. Not as big as Denver but much bigger than Boulder. Since there is so many people on the island there are a lot of freighters coming into port. They seem to be able to unload all of them in a day. Because the port seems to close down around 9:00 pm. 

We have done a ton of stuff since we’ve been in Guadelope. We we’re in Deshais and we hiked up the creek, They call it a river. It was only about 1.5 miles but we were hiking over boulders and stuff like that. It really wiped me out. It even wiped out the dogs.

Then we went down to pigeon island. The weather said it was only supposed to be blowing 20 knots. But we experienced winds of 40 knots off and on all the way down there. Then we got there and the wind didn’t let up all night. It was still gusting at 40 knots and maybe more in really short bursts. I didn’t get much sleep that night. We were on a mooring ball but with the wind that high I didn’t trust everything would be well. Even though I doubled the ropes attached to the mooring ball and put roles around the headsail. That was the windiest day we have spent down here all year. And we were on the leeside of some pretty big mountains.

Later I found out friends of ours slipped anchor and got blown out to sea just a couple hundred yards from where we were

I will post more of Guadelope later, but I'm going to split it up.

On the river walk.

Pigeon island

                                                                    Where we mored

Left Antigua and headed to Guadeloupe

As the title says we left Antigua and headed for Guadeloupe on Wednesday. We left at 6:30 and got here a 12:45. Its 43.3 knots so we averaged 6.9 knots. I wish I could say it was because of our great working engines that we made such good time, but it was the wind that carried us here. We had between 18 and 28 knots of wind so it didn't make any sense to turn on the engines. That was more wind than we had planned for. I like to sail when the wind is less than 23. Anything over that and I think about double reefing. Yesterday I had the jib double reefed and the main single reefed.

The waves can get big enough that the boat has a hard journey and it can beat it up to much. That didn't happen much yesterday because we were on a beam reach and running 90 degrees from the waves.  Although waves were quite big. At times you couldn't see over them but once you got used to it, it wasn't a bad trip. We haven't been in that big of seas since the southern Bahamas last year after hurricane Gonzo

The boat is running excellent. Even though we didn't use the engines to sail down here we did use them to leave Antigua and to come into Guadeloupe. They ran nicely and I didn't have any issues with them at all.

We landed in Deshaies (pronounced Day-ay), Guadeloupe. Since Guadeloupe is a french island I'm back on croissants and bagets for breakfast. The french have the best bakeries. We found some bakeries in Antigua that had croissants and bagets but they just weren't as good.

Deshaies is on the leeward of a rain forest, which mean that every second hour we get a little rain squall. It only lasts a minute of two but we have to close all the hatches. It makes it hard to get a good nights sleep.

We haven't seen much of Deshaies since we can't find a place to check in that is open. Once we get checked in I will have some more info to pass on.