The Grenadines to Antigua

Off to St Lucia - We said good bye to the beautiful Grenadines at daybreak mid November. If you ever get a chance to see this part of the world grab it. This area is one of the world's hidden gems.
We sailed off on a full day (11 hour) sail past St Vincent which we were advised to skirt around due to some baddies involved in the drug industry, to Marigot Bay, half way up St Lucia. It was a beautiful sail to a beautiful cove we had visited by taxi on our way down the islands last spring and looked forward to coming in with our boat. We snugged in and were joined by a super yacht who pulled in next door. The crew were wonderful and brought us a bottle of Canadian maple syrup as a gift. As usual we did what most people do on yachts... do repairs in beautiful places. We enjoyed a few beers with a local couple Jeff & Jan Bullins, we had met in the Grenadines. They said to meet them in the sundown bar at 5:30. Jeff says if they weren't there, the sun didn't go down. They were great fun.
We sailed up island and anchored at Rodney Bay, prepared for an early next day start to the run to Martinique. When we started our departure we were greeted with an anchor that wouldn't come up. After some serious maneuvering and strain on the windlass we were able to finally get it to break the surface and discovered this large piece of coral jammed into the anchor. It took us the better part of an hour to get it off. It was a wonderful sound to hear it plop back into the water to return from whence it came.
With a desire to stop in different anchorages then the ones we visited on the way down we sailed into Le Marin on the SE corner of Martinque. It was funny listening to the immigration officer pronounce Le Marin. We had no idea what he was saying until he twisted his mouth Texas slang style and said it Anglicised with a look at us like we were from the other part of the world where there is no couth.
This is a very interesting harbour. It is huge with an unbelievable amount of sail boats. We guessed over 600 hundred. We did our usual dinghy tour around the harbour and discovered 90% of them to be local boats. This was quite rare as all the other anchorages have yachts from all over the world. We dinghied over to a neighbouring town called St Anne. Past a beautiful Club Med Resort with one of the nicest beaches we have seen. St Anne was wonderful. We did a stations of the cross hike up a Calvary Hill reproduction in unbelievable heat. Interesting but we did notice the path was growing over after the first 2 stations. We were not sure if this was from a world wide expansion of agnosticism or whether it was a lack of desire to exercise amongst the locals. We returned to our dinghy to find 3 young teens diving off the wharf and using our dinghy as a bouncing tube. I stayed to guard it and give the boys a stern look while Sharen returned to watch a local wedding in the little church at the bottom of the Calvary Hill. She is never one to miss a fashion event.
We woke the next morning to have breakfast in the cockpit as the day was beautiful. There on this large catamaran next door were the husband and wife scrubbing their boat without a stitch on. Sharen made me switch sides. I was not sure if she did not want me to see or whether she wanted to. The boat's name was "Free To Be". It was a long breakfast. We left shortly after for Fort De France and they both stood there waving away... (their hands.)

We sailed past Diamond Rock, a small steep knoll 1/2 mile off the SW coast of Martinique. This has one of the great stories of the Caribbean. The English manned this uncivilized place during their war with France. Every time the French came near the English sent off the cannon balls. Napoleon was extremely frustrated on hearing about this embarrassment in the homeland of his beloved Josephine. This triggered his future engagement with Nelson at Trafalgar. So the story goes...
We sailed into Fort De France to find no boats in the area in which the sailing guide said we could anchor. As we closed in we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by the most beautiful square rigged race boats. We backed off until their first race was completed. We then snuck in and anchored just off the shore where we had a superb view of the festivities. We found a tour guide taxi driver who could speak English. He was very good. Sharen really liked his car.
The next morning we raised anchor (no issues this time) and went north to St Pierre to where we planned to check out and head off to Dominica. We anchored off this beautiful town which was devastated by a volcano in 1903. Only 2 survivors. More great stories but.... this is getting a little long.
We went to check out but found the office closed on Mondays. What to do???? We needed a document stating that we had checked out of one country before we would be admitted into another. Should we sail all the way back south to Fort de France or just leave for Dominica and hope the Dominican customs would believe us that the French just don't care. We left before sun-up the next morning and caught the most beautiful views of the sun rising over Martinique as we headed off to Dominica.
Hey Hooo. The Customs just shook their heads and said something about the Dumb French when we checked in.
We contracted with a local Rasta Tour Guide to row us up the famous Indian River. I had seen it 3 years before with our good friend Doug Murray on our first Caribbean sail trip. I enjoyed it so much I wanted Sharen to see it. Maybe it was because the Tour Guide we had then was so into his job with lots of wonderful stories about the this being the location of Pirates of The Caribbean and the location for the Survivor Series. I was amazed to find that out of 10 plus guides on the river we ended up with the same guy. He was just as good but all new stories. When I repeated some of the ones he told us a few years before he couldn't remember them. I think he has been into his favourite ritual spiritual drug (marijauna) too much. Beautiful mangoves, fish, birds and the most interesting roots. It is a Very cool spot.
We were off again the next morning. We were on a tight schedule to get to Antigua as our daughter Nicki and husband Aaron were meeting us there for a few days. We had 20 knot winds on our trip to Les Saintes, a beautiful island group just south of Guadeloupe. We tried to check in at customs but were told their fax (which they use to send our documents to Guadeloupe) was not working so we could just ck in on the big island when we got there. We felt this was probably a lie. They just really didn't care that much. Les Saintes is a very deep anchoarge and we put out most of our chain, jumped into the dinghy and went ashore. We were hungry and anxious to have dinner in one of the islands fantastic restaurants. It was 5 oclock and time to eat. Well... not here. Nothing opened for dinner until 7 pm. This is France and that is how they do it. I convinced Sharen that we should return to the boat for a light snooze and return after 7. It was a long sail and I was pooped. She was concerned that I would not wake up. Well, she was right. I awoke at 10 pm and on getting showered, dressed and spiffed up we returned to find all the restaurants closed. We returned to the boat for some beer and peanuts. I was not popular.
Next day we were off to Guadeloupe which we were excited to see. This is one of the most developed islands in the Caribbean. After renting a car and touring almost every road, we found it delightful. Huge homes overlooking the sea and beautiful beaches on the SE side. Wonderful lunch in a small fishing village on the NE side and a fantastic drive along the NW and thru the beautiful rainforest on the mountainous central part of the western wing of the island. We enjoyed the fully developed marina area in Pointe a Petre, the main city on the island.
We wanted to experience motoring the Riverie Salee that separates the 2 wings of Guadeloupe. We anchored for the night in the shallows just before the first bridge. The draw bridge opens for boat tarffic at 5 am and the second bridge opens at 5:20 AM. It doesn't get light until 6 AM. You have to do this all in the dark. We raised anchor at 4:45 to get ready to be greeted with a tidal flow that was pushing us into the unopened bridge. Lots of wiggling and squarming trying to drive the boat backwards while pointing it front and centre. At 5 AM I laid on the fog horn to let him know it was time. He finally opened about 2 minutes later. Just in time as I was having a fit. We then powered up to the next bridge trying to remain in the centre of the channel which we could hardly make out in the dark. We finally emptied out into a large body of water which was mostly around 2 feet deep with an even tighter channel thru. This time marked by bouys that you could not see without binoculars from one to the other. We had put the way points into our electronic navigation from our guide book and followed these faithfully. We made it through without touching once. We were pleased. Other boaters we had met with a lot more experience touched several times. You also have to wonder about the French boaters. We saw several bouys marking where boats had sunk recently. Several in the river and several in the shallow bay. On top of this while motoring up to our anchorage prior to the first bridge we passed a boat towing a sunken boat with a load of survivors aboard the rescue boat. It seems these boaters could use a copy of The Safe Boating Guide.
We knew when we chose to stay the extra day so we could tour Guadeloupe that the weather was deteriorating and we would have a bumpy ride to Antigua. We both thought it would be worth it but rethought it when we were welcomed by 8 ft seas and 22 to 25 knot winds. We reefed in the main and furled the foresail and still maintained 7.5 to 8 knots. On approaching Antigua we decided to heave to and let a squall pass by in front of us. We entered Falmouth Harbour to the largest collection of super yachts we had ever seen. It was the big charter boat show and these things were "big". It was fun. Most rented for over 100,000 per week. We have no idea what the really big stuff went for.
The next day we picked Nicki & Aaron up in a car we had rented. We live in fear of being out after dark in any unknown place in third world countries and here we were out driving not only at night BUT also on the wrong side of the road. We diligently followed the map and as expected got horribly lost. However we did find wonderful locals who directed us back to our anchorage and home. Whew!!
We enjoyed having Nicki & Aaron aboard. Sharen loved getting their stateroom ready. We toured Nelson's Dockyard and attended the Sunday night party at Shirley Heights. We ventured off to a beach anchorage where we found a great swim and a beach side restaurant with cold beer. Heaven. We were delighted to have our friends Gerry and Marilyn Bolton along with their son Chris link up with us while their cruise ship was in Antigua. We enjoyed lunch at Castaways Restaurant on the beach at Jolly Harbour. We rented a golf cart and toured the various resorts. Each residence has a pool, beach and a boat dock. We left the boat at Jolly Harbour marina under the watchful eye George Bridger, a marine electrical specialist and overall handyman. We left him with a long list of stuff that needed attention.
We flew back to Edmonton for Christmas Dec 10th with Nicki & Aaron. We were anxious to see the grandkids and Richie & Becky.

The Grenadines - Turquoise Water, Beautiful Beaches and Nudes

This is a photo of St George's where we did a supply stop prior to heading north to he Grenadines. We loaded up with Sally's list from her recipes and more beer & wine and left for Carriacou, the first island. A quick pass over Kick em Jenny, the underwater volcano. I had planned to go around except, well... this boat was gaining on us and well... you know what they say... 2 boats going in the same direction. You know...it's a race.
We left S/V Salonge and our friends from Vancouver Island who stayed to dive the underwater statues, by Sculptor Jason de Caires Taylor, just north of St Georges. This was a mistake as their pictures showed this to be a great scuba area. You can see the confidence 11 year hold Caleb has in 30 ft of water. We also chose to bypass a sand spit island called Sandy Island which they chose to stop at. Here are the size of lobsters they caught. Amazing. We had a great sail and arrived in Tyrrell Bay in good time and joined the Cariacou Yacht Club in a wine tasting. We, (actually Sally) met several other boaters who were full of suggestions and all with great stories about where to go.
We sailed into Hillsborough on Cariacou where we checked out of Grenada and sailed onto Union Island with a quick stop in a little bit of heaven, Palm Island. It was very beautiful although we stopped for only a quick swim on the beautiful beach. It is a private Island. We checked into St Vincent & The Grenadines (SVG) on Union Island with a quick side trip to Happy Island to show Bob & Sally. It was not as nice as it was on the way down. The Conch Shell Island was now nothing more then poor quality sand and concrete. There were also lots of ants which made us want to leave quickly before we brought some back to the boat. We left for Salt Whistle Bay on Mayreau before nightfall. This is by far one of the nicest spots in the world. Especially with all the boats with nudes on them next door. Sister Sally was about to dis-own me when I climbed the mast to install a new radar reflector (and get a better look at the nudes). She was not happy. Off to Canaouan. This is the home of The Raffles Resort which occupies over 1/2 the island. No visitors allowed but we were able to convince them we were looking for a place to go next Christmas so the Manager took us for a first class tour. An amazing place. But, you might expect a place that charges $20,000 per night for a 5 bedroom villa to be pretty nice.
With a tearful farewell, Sally & Bob flew back to the cold north. We know they will be back for their 4th visit sometime soon. Sharen & I left back south for Saline Bay on Mayreau. While anchoring we noticed some locals snorkeling for fish. Shortly after we were settled in, a local boater came by to ask us to move as they wanted to fish in this area. As soon as we re-anchored we noticed they had strung an absolutely huge 1000+ ft net out around the bay from the dock and tied to a couple of small fishing boats. All of a sudden 50-60 locals descended on the beach(men, women & children) and they all started pulling in this huge net. Of course we wanted to be part of the action so into the dinghy we went (along with our Norwegian neighbours on the only other boat in the bay) to do our part!! Every local went home with a pail full of fish with enough left in the net in the water for the local restaurants to use for days to come! Reminded me of a Bible story from years gone by. The next day we sailed north around Mayreau to The Tobago Cays. Wow. This is a tight entry with reefs on all sides. Once anchored we sat back to marvel at the beauty of the azure seas and the large Horseshoe reef which protects the area. Salonge joined us there and we had some wonderful dinners on board and some terrific days snorkelling with the boys and the turtles. It was fun to watch them chase the fish and turtles underwater while we floated on top. They seemed part fish themselves.
Late one day a SVG Police Boat came by asking for our Courtesy Flag. These were a nasty group. Neither us no Salonge had one. We were able to trade an old Canadian flag for one from a SVG learn to sail boat with some Canadians on board. Kevin & Melissa made one from a cut up t-shirt and some water color paints. Pretty good job. It looks better when at a distance up the mast. The sad day arrived. We had decided to head north and not risk the potential problems heading into the wind, waves and pirates of the Venezuela-Columbia coast as much as we really wanted to. Kevin and Melissa on Salonge were still committed to go. We bid farewell and headed off north. I think a few tears were shed on both boats. Us because we were going to miss them. Them because the boys were going to miss our cookie cupboard.
We sailed on to Mustique. This is another private island and home to the Caribbean's largest collection of billionaire residences. We were fortunate to meet Ty, the Chief Operating Officer of the ownership company, in Basil's Bar on Saturday evening, the day we arrived. He described the history of the island and how things worked. He was a Six Sigma Blackbelt and was very proud of the efficiencies possible when an island is run by a private company as opposed to a government. The next day we we took the tour of the island. It really is the Who's Who of the financial and entertainment world. Tommy Hilfiger (that is his with the gates. Taken at hi speed as you are not allowed to stop), Mick Jagger (impossibe to get a picture because of the high hedges), Brian Adams, Celine Dion, Shania Twain to mention a few of the owners of the 100 or so $15 million dollar estates. This picture of our sailboat also shows Celine Dion's on the right (top) Shania's & the former residence of David Bowie left of it. But the most interesting has to be English publishing tycoon Felix Dennis. He has falling in love with Mustique and when a property becomes available he buys it. He now has 3. We met one of his carpenter-cabinet maker's who spends most of each year working on his properties. Dennis is now 61 years old, worth about $750 million and has never been married although he confesses to having spent over $100 million on women and drugs. One of his 50 or so magazines is Maxim. There also seems to be as many Canadians with homes here as there are Americans.
This is the humble residence of some English dude. But he did have Prince William and his girlfriend there for a visit a few weeks ago.
While on board enjoying a nightcap looking at the lights we noticed a bat fly thru under the bimini. Next thing we found one fly inside. Sharen then saw it fly past me into the main stateroom. Look as we (me) could we could not locate it. We slept in the front stateroom with the door shut and the screens in. Next morning.... you would not believe the mess. Bat poop (guano) everywhere. There must have been a number of them there. We did not hear a sound. We finally cleaned it all up and recleaned and recleaned. They were after some bananas I had left on the counter. We chose to leave rather then risk another invasion.
We were interested in an island just north of Mustique which is almost the same size but not much written up on it called Baliceaux. We decided to sail to it and consider staying the night if we found a good anchorage. We chickened out as there were a number of squalls coming thru and if we had a mishap we would be all alone. We did later find out it was for sale for $30 million (if you are looking for a deal here is their website http://www.baliceaux.com). It has a checkered history as it was the island the English conquerers deposited 5000 of the pesky Carib natives. Half of them perished there in the 1700's. A bit spooky.
We continued on to Friendship Bay on Bequia which is the northernmost Grenadine Island. The bay is beautiful. We spent the night and enjoyed the beautiful (but empty) Friendship Bay Resort. We chose to leave the next day as the anchorage was extremely rolly. We had breakfast ashore and returned to our dinghy to find the dinghy anchor had snagged on a reef so I won the flip (Sharen said it didn't matter who won) and I donned the snorkel et al and dove to free it. While sailing on to Admiralty Bay we passed by Moon Hole. This has to be the world's weirdest residential development. No electricity. No easy access. It was founded by the late american architect Tom Johnson.
We sailed into the calm of Admiralty pausing long enough for a squall to pass in front of us (we are allergic to bad weather) and anchored next to an 80 year old boat which we discovered was the band (husband & wife) who have been sailing for 30 years supporting themselves by playing in bars along their route. They invited us to join them at their gig tonight. He is a Joe Cocker type and she plays a mean tenor sax.
We took an Island Tour and were fortunate to have met Orton King who started a turtle sanctuary about 15 years ago.

We are somewhat still undecided as to how fast to go north. We are looking forward to our daughter Nicki & husband Aaron coming to join us for a week in early December.

We are back in Grenada. WOW!! The heat. It is over 31 everyday. We returned to our boat to find everything in order (We thought).
We had a great summer with many mountain hikes including Shadow Lake (where Sharen tried to burn down our cabin - she left a towel on a burner. It burnt. I think that is smoke coming from the cabin in the picture). We also did Skoki back country resort in Banff, Parker's Ridge and a hike of The Iceline Trail in Yoho. We were able to visit our family in Nova Scotia in the spring after we returned from the south and then again in September. While in NS the last time we took a side trip to NYC where we met up with our son Richie and his girlfriend Ashleigh to do all the typical Joe tourist stuff. Wow. What a city. We did the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Square, listened to the Oprah Show live in Central Park, toured Carnegie Hall, walked the Brooklyn Bridge & spent an enjoyable hour talking to a nice young NY couple, Anna & Mike, while lined up under the bridge for the famous Grimaldi Pizza. We also saw the musical West Side Story and the new play Wicked. We happily walked the the streets of New York until our feet were sore. Wonderful fun.
While in Nova Scotia we were invited to stay with sailing friends Pat & Larry Pringle from Pasha at their beautiful summer home in Chester. We met them in Tres Saintes last season. We truly enjoyed their company.
We stopped in Barbados on the way down and attended the Oestens Fish Market Friday Night Jump Up. This is the beer drinking, food tasting wildest dance event of their week. It was a hoot but we tired out from flying overnight and carrying too many bags filled with boat stuff. We taxied back to our hotel for an early night.
We were met in Grenada by Snag from the Spice Isle Marine Yard where our boat was stored on the hard for the summer. We cleaned, repaired, had the bottom painted and finally polished the exterior and topsides to get Slow Dancing ready for a fun filled season.
We had investigated the possibility of heading west along the Venezuela/Columbia coast and on to Cartegena but have been convinced by the stories of occasional night boardings and high winds to remain in the Caribbean again and visit the islands we missed last year. My sister Sally & husband Bob have flown down to join us again for the first few weeks. Their third visit. We do enjoy their company. Sally with her great boat recipes and Bob always with a funny quip. We have had many wonderful days and look forward to them being with us to the middle of Nov. We sailed the boat around to Post Louis Marina in St Georges Bay. A beautiful spot. We met Michel & Linda, a nice couple who crew the 82 ft Sundowner, an Oyster. This is one of the creme de la creme's of the sailboat world. It was beautiful but on returning to Slow Dancing we felt this suited us better. Sharen & I took a quick run out around the headlands to a beach area about 2 miles away to fill my scuba tank and had the dinghy motor quit on us. A seadoo pulled us to shore and we negotiated a tow back to the marina on a fast fish boat. I discovered I had loosened the spark plugs in the spring. One was completely out and the other ready to fall out. I moved myself up a little higher on the "now that was dumb" scale.
We took a tour to Fort St George where Prime Minister Maurice Bishop was shot by the socialist (aided by the Cubans) in 1983.
We sailed around the south end of the island to quiet Clark's Court Bay Marina where we could finish repairs to our solar array and install our new Skymate full time satellite internet. It is wonderful. We get full time email connection but without attachments. Our new onboard email address is slowdancing-at-skymate.com. (please change the -at- to @). A"Wow! that was even dumber" prize was won by me when I connected the boat to 220 power and fried the charger and a resister in the AC. We lucked into Peter who was able to rectify all and promise not to tell anyone. I was able to get away with a slight embarassment and a little lighter sailing kitty purse.
I was invited to join Kevin and son Caleb (11) from Salonge and Simon with his son (11) from Nathniel for a scuba dive. Caleb was on a 40 ft air hose to a tank in a blowup mini kayak. It was fun to watch the boys. They found a lobster and Kevin skewered it with his spear.
On halloween we joined a party at Le Flare Bleu, a marina we dinghied to. Lots of fun and great costumes. Sharen and Sally wanted to dress up. Bob resisted and I refused.
We are off today for Grand Anse Beach on the east side of Grenada. A few more repairs and we are off tomorrow for the Grenadines. The weather forecast looks great.