St Vincent and the Grenadines

Rum punch, steel drums, kite sessions, lobster on the beach and a chase with stingrays

Country

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Date

Saturday, 3. February 2024

Geo

Latitude	12.59695° N
Longitude	61.41482° W

St Vincent and the Grenadines is an island nation in the Lesser Antilles. We chose one of these islands, Bequia, for our landfall after crossing the Atlantic. From here, we explore this little paradise from north to south.

Bequia

Once we arrive in Port Elizabeth, we celebrate our successful crossing in style. We reach the floating bar, which is about 100 metres in front of our boat, by swimming, as our dinghy is still safely packed on deck. We quickly make the acquaintance of a drink that is available on every corner here: Rum Punch 🍹 Well then, raise your glasses!

We spend the next few days sleeping and relaxing, eventually we find a launderette and we're slowly getting ready for some naughty deeds again!😉 On another visit to the floating bar, we meet our friends from SY Leeloo again, who we've been following since Almerimar. There is also a music festival taking place at the time, so of course we want to take part in that too. However, the tickets are rather expensive, so we decide to go to the steel drum concert on the first evening of the festival. It was fun, but not the party of the century. Thierry has already started work, he'll be pretty busy for the next two months.

We walk around a lot, the people are super friendly and helpful. We even get fruit as a gift 😍 We also find a tiny fishing shop, whose owner "Socks Man" is also super cool and repairs our fishing rod for very little money. Yay! 🎣 So we're ready for anything and head for our next island.

View on the massive bay of Port Elizabeth.

Little walk to the other side of the hill.

Friendship Bay, on the other side of the Island.

Canouan

With the prevailing winds here, we make great progress and are also surprisingly well protected from the waves of the open Atlantic by the many islands. We arrive in Canouan after a few hours. We only make a stopover here for two nights. A little change was needed after our time in Bequia. We go for a swim, take a walk around the island, find a beautiful bay and lots of friendly locals on the way there 🐢🥰 And then it's onwards from here.

The most expensive cocktails of the century.

Strolling across the island with a view over the reef.

Lonely beach on the other side of the island.

Union Island

We choose the lower anchorage, away from the town but next to a beautiful lagoon that just screams for kiting!!! 😍 Unfortunately, it screams too quietly 🤣 The wind is juuuust okay at around 12 knots. Going upwind works depending on the gust 😅 We don't care, we're having fun! The bay is super flat and there are hardly any other kiters around, when do you get that? And if we don't manage to get back, we still have our dinghy to pick up. In the meantime, Marti and Wulfi go to explore the underwater world, as there is also a small reef here and lots of cool fish.

On the second day, Thierry & I spend the morning working again. In the afternoon we go snorkelling and in the evening we walk up the hill to the small island next door, Frigate Island. Actually, we all wanted to go up there together to have a sundowner. But the path up there doesn't really exist, so Thierry and I scramble over cacti, hermit crabs and rocks to a beautiful view. But it's definitely not an easy way, we make it back to the kite base just before sunset and have our sundowner there with two other sailors (rum punch ahoiiiiii 🤪). After two nights, however, we leave this place again. Why are we so "stressed"? Marti & Wulfi have found a flight that leaves Grenada on February 11. That's soon, and we really want to spend a few days in the Tobago Cays. And that's exactly where we're going next!

Tobago Cays

This is definitely a huge highlight. A few small, uninhabited islands surrounded by a reef. The waves of the Atlantic break on the reef, which makes for a spectacular anchorage 🏝 Just difficult to photograph the view of the open Atlantic from the bow, as these stupid catamarans with their shallow draught always plant themselves on the sandbank at the front. Well, who can blame them 😉

A flat spot like this is also perfect for water sports: Time to practise wingfoiling again. The wind is just strong enough to lift Thierry out of the water. I'm somehow stuck in the "stand-up-and-fall-down-after-two-seconds" stadium 🥴 But even that has to be learnt 😉

We enjoy our time here, the water here is crystal clear, which also makes snorkelling a wonderful experience. There is a wide variety of marine life here: turtles, stingrays, even eagle rays, tonnes of boxfish, small barracudas and an octopus, and that's just the ones we can name 🐟🐠🐡🐢

Together with a few other sailing boats in the bay, we treat ourselves to a BBQ on the beach. Lobster 🦞, chicken 🐔 or fish 🐟 are grilled here, with the typical Caribbean side dishes: rice, pumpkin, manioc and potatoes. It was delicious and a great way to socialise and make new friends. We will definitely see each other again!

View from the mooring (in between tha Catamarans).

A rare capture of the capitana not in the water.

A large reef protects the Cays from the swell.

The turtles eat the sea weed on the ground.

They are not shy at all so we can get super close.

Union Island (for the second time)

Yes, we're here again. No, not (just) because it's so cool 😉 Our next destination is Grenada, and that's a different country. So we have to go to Customs in Clifton to clear out. In the evening, we have a few pina coladas on Happy Island, an island with just a bar on it 😂 We negotiate the price for dinner down from 150 to 50 East Caribbean Dollars (EC), apparently we already look shabby enough 😂