Windwards

For those of you exhausted by our romp down the Leewards, you'll be relieved to learn we "bounced" off most of these islands. That was a combination of no time and the fact that we were starting to enter some dangerous territory.

Our first sight of Martinique, complete with massive volcano.

When Pelee erupted in 1902 it sent a hurricane of molten glass down upon the major city of St Pierre, killing 30,000 people in a matter of seconds; only 2 people survived. Here we see the ruins of the waterside warehouses. We climbed the summit but have no pics to share because it was enveloped in clouds.

We rented a car and drove down to Fort de France, but didn't take any pictures worth sharing. Our main other experience of Fort de France was being fleeced by French Customs. The harbor is superb but the town is very sad, being inhabited by hordes of pathetic, frightened, feral dogs.

We simply bypassed St Lucia and St Vincent. Both islands have a history of yachts being boarded, the crews robbed and beaten. This is a shame, but we didn't want to add to the crime statistics. We did, however, check in at Bequia, a small island which is south of and part of St Vincent. This is because we wanted to visit the Grenadines, a beautiful chain of islands.

Bequia was OK, although the Rastafarian farmers could be quite obnoxious, especially as they were all stoned out of their gourds. This made produce shopping an ordeal but fun.

How many boats can you see in this picture? We count about two dozen, in a very small space. Sort of like a marina but cozier. Welcome to the Tobago Cays, a good example of being loved to death. We did some diving but skipped spending any time there - way too crowded.

We began to have an idyllic time anchored off the idyllic island of Canouan - clear water, empty anchorage, no boat boys. What could go wrong? Well, if you're on a boat, plenty. In our case our 8KW genset quit running, the cause being quite mysterious. This killed our fridge, hot water heater and SCUBA compressor. No cold beer, hot showers or diving. Bummer.

What to do? We managed to find a local who worked on charter boats. We asked if he could fix it. He said, "No problem, mon". The only catch was we had to leave for Union Island nearby, where he lived. When we got there, we called and he told us he had to fly out of town but would return next day. The next day, his truck broke down, this on an island you could walk around in a few hours. We forget the litany of other excuses, but it was obvious we wouldn't get our genset fixed. So, with our frozen food melting on a large scale, we reluctantly checked out and left for the next island south, Carriacou.

Carriacou is part of Grenada so we had to check into a new country. After doing paperwork we headed for the haven of Tyrrel Bay. We got the genset fixed by an expat American the next morning, thus saving our bacon, not to mention steaks and ice cream. We might have stayed longer but we got another tropical storm nearby which caused us to move again, this time to Grenada.

For some reason we seem to have no pictures of Grenada. We suspect this was another case where all shots were on film. We thought the place was OK, the people friendly. Most people remember Grenada as the site of a US invasion in the '80s, but our impression was that the locals were glad to have been invaded as the revolution was as much farce as tragedy. We looked at storing the boat there, but all the space was booked. It's just as well as we would have been there when hurricane Ivan hit, which wreck 600 boats and destroyed the whole boat biz. Grenada is another island we voted for to build a second home. There are many expats there who opted to retire on this lovely piece of rock.

Well, we exhausted the Windwards and were ready for the final jump for the season. Please join us as we head to Trinidad!

Home