Monthly Archives: March 2019

Rum, Rain and Reunions

Posted on by
8

Tuesday 26th March 2019

Marigot Bay became much more fun with arrival from the UK of Phil and Julia and then three more Oysters, two of whom were celebrating the finish of their circumnavigation as they sailed into the bay.

Undeterred by their long journey Phil and Julia were happy to get straight into the Caribbean vibe, we took the dingy across the bay in time to watch the sunset with a rum punch. Doolittle’s restaurant, is named after the 1967 movie Dr Dolittle that was partly filmed in the bay. The rum punches turned out to be extremely strong and although there are no longer any animals here to talk to that didn’t stop us from trying.

It was four groggy passengers that joined our driver for a short tour of the island at 9am the next morning, the steep, windy roads testing our constitutions. The views were spectacular despite the succession of showers that were passing over the island. Near the coast we looked down on a sparkling blue sea full of yachts, beaches where rows of local fishing boats sat back from the often black sand and valleys full of tightly packed colourful roofs.

Marigot Bay from the cliff top

Inland we climbed high into the rainforest, the air became humid and the smell of the undergrowth thick and peaty. Huge ferns, leaves the size of a child, jostled for space in the thick undergrowth with fruit trees and large clumps of 15ft high bamboo. Deep valleys like gashes in the landscape made for precarious drop offs right next to the road.

The Pitons, two, tall, narrow peaks are the symbol of St Lucia and stand in the middle of a still active volcanic area. We gave the crowded natural hot springs a miss and went straight to see the centre of the collapsed caldera with its pools of boiling mud and steam vents. We didn’t stay long a combination of the sulphurous air and darkening skies sent us scurrying back to the car.

The Pitons with the roof tops of Soufriere lying in the valley

Our final visit was to the botanic gardens, an oasis of lush greenery and a feast of exotic flowers. We marvelled at the incredible shapes and colours of the blooms, it hardly seemed possible that they had evolved naturally. A tiny iridescent humming bird hovered enjoying the nectar, a waterfall cascaded over a cliff and a stream, coloured grey from volcanic minerals, meander downward.

Monday still feeling a bit tired and with the weather against us, we decided to spend one more day in Marigot Bay. The showers had turned into longer periods of rain but with the temperatures still warm we headed for the pool. The sun beds were covered with puddles of water and the towels sodden but the restaurant was open and a very talented singer was in full song. We spent a pleasant couple of hours swimming in the rain and drinking beer at the swim up bar.

What else is there to do on a rainy day

During the day the bay had become crowded with Oyster yachts, five in total. For our friends on Vela, whom we’d last seen in Richards Bay South Africa, Marigot Bay marked the completion of their circumnavigation. So that night they invited us all onboard to celebrate. With a lot of the round the world yachts reaching their completion points in the Caribbean it looks like a few more reunions and bottles of champagne are still to come.

Crowded Caribbean

Posted on by
9

Thursday 21st March 2019

View of Marigot Bay from the resort

Today’s stop is Marigot Bay, a very pretty, extremely protected inlet on the west coast of St Lucia. It is wonderfully still and the perfect place to give Raya a bit of love and attention and prepare for our friends who arrive on Saturday. However it is crowded, hooked up to our mooring ball, we are at times, as we all swing in the gentle breeze, no more than 3m from our neighbours. We knew that this is how things are in the Caribbean but the reality is still a bit of a shock.

Crowded mooring field at Marigot Bay

It’s not just the anchorages we are finding busy, sailing up the coast of the islands there is a steady stream of yachts coming towards us, requiring constant vigilance. Cruise boats disgorge their occupants into the small towns and beaches, and local ‘boat boys’ whiz around offering you everything from help hooking up to a mooring to live lobsters.

The crowds are here. of course. because the Caribbean has a lot going for it. The islands are beautiful, the sea is clean and warm, restaurant and bars are everywhere and the climate is near perfect.

We spent two days off Sandy Bay enjoying the classic Caribbean view, we still had plenty to do to get Raya straight after two months at sea but the anchorage was a bit too rolly to comfortably get things done. So we relaxed, strolled in the soft white sand and snorkelled in the shallows where shoals of tiny fish filled the water.

Lovely beach on Sandy Island

Each group of islands in the Caribbean are different countries, which makes for a lot of checking in and checking out with officials. Sandy Island and Carriacou are still part of Grenada, to move on we had to get our clearance papers. Tyrell Bay, just a couple of miles away had a customs office and first thing Monday we were waiting at the door so we could clear out and set sail for the island of Bequia, part of St Vincent and the Grenadines.

The prevailing winds here, at this time of year, are still dominated by the trades, so generally come from the north east or east. As we are travelling north through the islands we are sailing mostly into the wind which is unusual for us and has taken a bit of getting use to, but Raya seems to like it and the 40nm sail to Bequia was fast and exhilarating.

The anchorage when we arrived was very busy and the only area free meant trying to drop the anchor in one of the few patches of sand between a mass of sea grass. It took us three tries before we were happy that the anchor had set firmly, it was reassuring, especially during the night, to have our anchoring App on my iPad to warn us if we started to drag,

Busy Bay at a Port Elizabeth, Bequia

Bequia was one of our favourite places as we sailed south three years ago and although this time the island had been invaded by the passengers of a cruise ship, ashore it still had a charming and friendly feel to it. For lunch we revisited Jack’s, a beach bar right on the sand and just a minute or so dingy ride from the boat, a great spot to eat and swim.

The next morning we sailed on, passing by the stunning scenery of St Vincent and on to St Lucia. It was another nice trip with varying conditions keeping things interesting. In the channel between the islands, open to Atlantic Ocean, we had plenty of wind which again made for fast and fun sailing but in the lea of the islands the wind dropped and the sea calmed giving us time to make lunch, have a cup of tea and enjoy the view.

A shower threatens over the stunning Mountains of St Vincent

The marina in Marigot Bay is part of the Marigot Bay Resort which means we have access to its restaurants and swimming pools. Once we’ve stopped scrubbing and polishing and if we can find the space to park the dingy we’ll go and see what it has to offer.

On Dry Land

Posted on by
1

Friday 16th March 2019

We have just arrived at Sandy Island, a small half moon slice of sand just a mile off Carriacou. It’s nice after our time on passage to be at anchor again, just chilling, while being gently rocked, watching the sun go down. The view from the cockpit is a bit more crowded than we are use to but we are now in the Caribbean, the yachties playground

Today’s view from the cockpit.

Our week in the villa was fantastic, we ate, drank, talked and enjoyed the pretty pool. We lounged on the comfy sofas and put the world to right in the shade of the pagoda. And we slept, whole nights, in still beds. The sole disturbance being swarms of mosquitos that seemed to be everywhere, we all rapidly became covered in bites and the only fluid consumed faster than the wine was the DEET insect spray that was being applied liberally.

In the background of course Raya was still demanding our time. After three weeks at sea she was a mess, the decks covered in salt, the laundry basket full and the bottom of the fridge was supporting its very own eco system. She also needed some time on dry land, to fix the leaky through hull fitting and give the hull a once over before our trip back to Europe.

So just a few days after we arrived at St Louis Marina, Thursday morning, we, plus our villa crew, let go the lines and motored her around to Clark’s Court Boatyard. We had had the hull scrubbed by a diver in CapeTown but were still surprised how clean she looked.

Raya being lifted out of the water by the Hulk, a huge lift in Grenada.

While Rick supervised the cleaning of the hull, topsides and superstructure, replaced the through hull fitting and changed the engine impeller, I took a day off to join the others on a hike to a waterfall. When I say hike, stroll would be a better description of our pretty walk that took less than half an hour. Of course, as seems always to be the way when I visit waterfalls, the lack of recent rain had severely lessened the flow, the waterfall was still a pleasant site but the pools mentioned in the guide as swimming opportunities look uninviting.

Mount Carmel Falls

We drove back towards the coast, the small towns that line the road were full of Caribbean colour, with houses ranging from ramshackle purple and red huts to grand yellow and turquoise villas. And in keeping with the mood, the hotel we found for lunch that sat on the lovely beach at Sagresse Bay was bright pink.

Girls taking a cooling dip

Although all a bit of a rush, having Raya on the hard while we lived at the villa, was perfect timing and having the use of the car meant we could easily get back and forth and top up with provision. Penny and Stephen dropped us back on their way to the airport with just one day to cope with living on the hard. Yesterday a very shiny Raya was put back into the water.

Without a doubt one of the highlights of this cruising life is the people, not just the locals we meet all around the world or the pleasure of being able to get together with family and old friends in exotic places but also the comradery of our new cruising family.

In the bay next to Clark’s Court were our friends on Britican, Britican is also an Oyster 56 and we sailed across the Atlantic together. While we have been on the other side of the World they have explored the waters of the US and the Caribbean, we have stayed in contact, following each other on Facebook and via our blogs. It was great to catch up with them again in real life and we enjoyed a delicious Caribbean lunch swapping stories and comparing Oyster notes.

Revived from our spell on dry land and with more friends flying out to St Lucia next Saturday, we have a week to enjoy some quiet time and slowly sail the 120nm north to pick them up.

All the Way Round

Posted on by
24

Thursday 7th March 2019

We are circumnavigators, on Tuesday morning we sailed into Port Louis Marina on the Caribbean Island of Grenada, where 3 years and 45days ago we had set sail for the Panama Canal and the Pacific. We have been swamped by messages of congratulations and have been toasted with champagne but I’m not sure our achievement has really sunk in.

We are being very kindly treated to a week in a luxurious villa, with Jonathan our sail mate, his wife and my sister and husband. Slowly we are unwinding but the last few months of continuous sailing have taken its toll and we feel pretty tired.

The pool at our lovely villa in Grenada

The second half of the passage from Ascension was much windier than the first half. Having cleared the squalls the sea calmed down and for a day or two we enjoyed perfect trade wind sailing. With the sea flatter Jonathan put the rods out and we finally had some fishing success catching a small tuna and a few days later a Mahi Mahi.

Successful fishing day

The days rolled by, sleep, watch, eat, read, eat, sleep, crossword, eat sleep, watch……. We sailed on in our ever changing disc of blue, some days calm others a mess of conflicting waves, the oceans colour varying with the sky from deep ink blue to somber grey. The moon gradually reduced to a slither that rose later and later each night and as the nights grew darker we were treated to skies of a trillion stars.

We were mostly completely alone, the occasional brown booby flew close catching the flying fish we disturbed with our wake and a few AIS targets passed by on the chart plotter but too distant to appear on our horizon. So it was rather a shock when, with our waining vigilance, we spotted a fishing boat less than half a mile away. It had no AIS, in fact, covered in rust, it’s waterline thick with algae, for a moment we thought it may be abandoned but no, tossing wildly in the waves it’s crew valiantly fished on.

Ever since the equator we had been sailing through increasingly large patches of free floating, bright orange Sargassum seaweed. With no engine running it wasn’t a problem for the propellor, but we sat aghast trying to imagine how many acres of ocean it must cover, hoping that it was at least using up lots of carbon dioxide to help the atmosphere.

Masses of Sargassum seaweed covered the ocean

We were sailing fast which meant our eta had us arriving the morning before the arrival of our welcoming committee, who were flying in from the UK Tuesday afternoon. But after 15 days the thought of slowing up and spending an extra night at sea didn’t appeal to us, we pushed on. Until suddenly, and against every chart and source of information we had for this area of water, we encountered a negative current and for 36hrs we stared depressingly as our speed over the ground struggling to reach 7kts. Thankfully about 200nm from Grenada the current firstly went neutral and then positive, at times we screamed along at 10 knots towards the finish line.

The traffic had increased also, not only more fishing boats, with and without AIS but tankers and cargo boats, plying their way between the Americas and Africa or the Far East. The radio sparked into life with a large drilling platform calling up to ask us to leave them a minimum perimeter of two miles as we passed. On our final night we had to call up two cargo boats to ensure they were aware of our presence and as always they were happy to change course to give us plenty of space.

Tuesday morning we arrived off the SE corner of Grenada, land ahoy was excitedly written into the log. But we weren’t quite there yet, blackening skies and high winds built as we approached the island, overfalls tossed us about and we had to slow to let the rain pass so we could prepare the boat for docking. Then we faced the challenge of the complicated mooring system at Port Louis Marina, it was with a sigh of relief we secured the final line.

The ‘got here beer’ tasted good but not as good as the Champagne we shared with our friends that evening. We’d made it, we’d sailed all the way round.

Got here beer Grenada