The Caribbean - Windward Islands

Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines

The water in the Caribbean is the most fabulous colour, particularly around the Windward Islands, and then again in the Bahamas, which have the added advantage of beautiful white beaches. If you think the colour in the photos produced by those professionals employed by travel guides is exaggerated, you are wrong. It is exactly that utterly brilliant, translucent, pale turquoise colour. Never again, in all our travels did we see water that quite matched that gorgeous colour.

The Caribbean islands are very beautiful, and it would be boring for me to keep describing each island and each anchorage – frankly, one runs out of superlatives. Fertile, sun drenched islands, picturesque bays, quaint villages and sparkling white beaches are not everyone’s cup of tea, of course, but the colours and contrasts are incredible. Our guide books had warned of irritating boat boys trying to sell stuff and children begging, but that wasn’t our experience, and the people we met were friendly and mostly charming. The down side from our point of view was that the anchorages tended to be very crowded and everything catering to tourists was expensive, unreasonably so. It is ridiculous, I know, but because we were living on our boat we never felt like we were actually tourists; we were, of course.

The islands from Grenada in the south to Martinique in the north comprise the Windward Islands. The Windward Islands are so called because they were more windward to sailing ships arriving in the New World than the Leeward Islands, given that the prevailing trade winds in the West Indies blow east to west.

Up till now, check-in formalities at different countries had been just that – formalities. Now we were out of the EU, things were a little different; check in was more complicated and could be very costly. We’d heard that Grenada was particularly expensive, so we skimmed through stopping for a couple of nights at Tyrrell Bay on the the lesser island of Cariacou and then moved on to Union Island, a check-in point of the Saint Vincent and Grenadines group. We anchored at the town of Clifton which was extremely picturesque from the little port, and the water was stunning, but up close the town was dilapidated and run down, the people seemed very poor and provisions were expensive. Customs and Immigration were a long, hot and inconvenient walk away from the centre and the process was lengthy and expensive.

The anchorage off Clifton at Union Island

Discouraged by our first contact, and having been nearly run down by an abandoned wreck in the bay which had floated free of its mooring, we upped anchor and moved on to Saline Bay on the island of Mayreau which was lovely. We swam in the clear water and went exploring on the beach. After two relaxing days, we sailed off our anchor without the motor - for the first time ever. Admittedly, the conditions were perfect, but we were dead proud of ourselves.

We now zipped through the extremely beautiful and deservedly famous Tobago Cays. We zipped because the area was absolutely heaving with tourist boats and it was almost impossible to find a decent spot to anchor.

We passed through Bequia, anchoring in a couple of nice spots and then went on to the main island of St.Vincent. We’d heard about and had planned to stop at Wallilabou Bay, where there is an eighteenth century fishing village which had been specially built for the recently completed filming of Pirates of the Caribbean.

Wallilabou

However, Wallilabou was theoretically closed to the public so we went into Cumberland Bay, a small and snug little bay and dined on barbequed lobster in the only restaurant on shore – Beni’s – where we were served by Beni’s cousin (who else?).

The next day our waiter took us and another yachting couple for a walk through the forest to their village, and now I just have to gush. Talk about paradise on earth! The forest was cool, thick and fertile. The village was charming; solid, well-built little houses with well tended gardens full of flowers and vegetables. Everything seemed to grow so well - no shortage of water here. Our guide took us to the local school, interrupted classes and brought his two daughters out to meet us, who were shy but polite. The teachers weren’t remotely put out by this disruption and seemed as delighted to meet us as we were to meet them. The children and teachers were all so happy. It was a different and rather special experience for us.

The water pipe to the village

Village in Paradise

I appreciate that whilst it seemed absolutely idyllic and perfect in our eyes, it might be dead boring for any young – and possibly older - people living there. There wasn’t a lot to do, in the modern sense of the word.