Back to paradise in St-Vincent and the Grenadines.

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When sailing the Antilles we start to believe that the entire world is like what we see every day; bright sun, clear water and a volcanic island with a tropical forest on it every 30 miles. But even here we sometime arrive at a new place that reminds us that things are different. The Tobago Cays in the Grenadines is one of those places where we thought we were in paradise until we got there. This is a set of tiny islands sitting in the chain of islands between St-Vincent and Grenada. On the islands are white sand beaches that contrast with the volcanic black sand we find on most of the Antilles and a large coral reef offering protection against the crashing waves from the Atlantic Ocean. We set anchor in this national park and just reminded us why we set into this trip!

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The cruising life is not only sipping a smoothy on a sand beach before jumping in the water to snorkel through hundreds of colorful tropical fishes. We also have to do the usual chores such as buying food at the market of making the laundry. As you can see, nothing is more romantic than a nice dinner with wine and cloths hanging over our heads in the cockpit of our sailboat! By the way, the market here is on Union Island in the Grenadines. This is a very nice little town where people made significant efforts to make their town appealing to sailors.

Claudette is having quite a good time sailing with us. Of course in order to pay for her voyage she must contribute to operations of the boat. Armed with her binocular she is the best watchwoman a boat can have, especially at anchor where we would quickly have a complete description of all the boats in the anchorage including the name of the boat, the number of people on board and a detailed summary of everything they did since the morning! On the second picture you can see her chained in the galley where we would release her once and only once she is done cleaning the dishes!

While anchored in Tyrell Bay on the Carriacou Island in Grenada we got hit by a very violent squall that washed the anchorage with a torrential rain and gale force winds. During the storm, that last about half an hour, Renaldo, a local fisherman, got into some troubles as he was trying to row his small wooden boat into the bay. He managed to get to Chocobo and asked to attach his boat while the wind rages. I was away with our dinghy and Danielle let him secure his boat, which he did and stayed calmly in his boat in company of his little puppy who follows him while he goes fishing oysters. Danielle gave him an old raincoat we had as well as a Sprite. He took them happily and even asked for a bit of rum in the Sprite! After about 15 minutes the rain and the wind calmed down and I was able to take the dinghy and come back to the boat. As I arrived Renaldo explained to me that the pegs holding his oars are too small and he couldn’t row hard enough without breaking them. He then left but this was apparently too soon. After 5 minutes the squall came back and poor Renaldo was trying again to come back toward us to secure his boat. Unfortunately, the wind was pushing him too fast and in an effort to reach us he broke one of his pegs and couldn’t row anymore. At that time Danielle had already pushed me in the dinghy to go and get him back. Maneuvering the inflatable dinghy with 28 knots winds is not as simple as it may sound. The fact is that in those boats when you are alone the weight is not well distributed and it is easy for the boat to be flipped by the wind. I had to be very careful as I managed to get to him and pull him back to Chocobo where he would safely wait for the wind to stop. After the rain, and the day after, I helped him by drilling bigger holes so he can put bigger pegs for his oars and manage to use more force next time he gets in that kind of situation.

This is an interesting restaurant we saw in Union Island. The bay where we anchored was surrounded by a large coral reef on which this guy decided to build his own island called “Happy Island”. He previously had a restaurant on shore but had a hard time finding customers. He then decided to make this island out of cement and a large pile of conch shell left on the beach by the fishermen and build a restaurant on it.

Arrived in Grenada

We arrived in Grenada this afternoon

No guided tours in Martinique

Although Martinique has many things to show to the usual tourists we decided to just take it easy and spend our time in this French island by visiting the towns by ourselves and try not to melt under the scorching afternoon sun. Here in Fort-de-France we walked in this tourist market where tens of vendors sell pretty much all the same stuff and because they all sell the exact same stuff they understood that the first one to catch the incoming tourists gets the sell. We couldn’t walk 5 feet without being aggressively welcomed by three of them at the same time. After 4 minutes, Danielle and I couldn’t breathe anymore and had to leave and wait outside that tourist gauntlet while Claudette seemed to have quite a good time! We actually had to deal a very similar situation in the many town markets selling fruits and vegetables where our white skin makes our wallet as attractive to the local retailer as our veins to the local mosquitoes. The funny thing about this is that everyone seems to believe that we are multimillionaires travelling in our super yacht and they are very good at inflating the prices when it comes to it. However, they quickly learn the reality that we are non-working people on a very limited budget and we simply don’t buy if it’s too expensive. When we feel the price is inflated we usually offer about half of what they ask and most of the time we get it.

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Fort-de-France was a surprisingly active city with many stores and most importantly it had a McDonalds! After over 4 months of fast-food craving I could finally satisfy my needs of North-American diet under the sacred golden arches with Danielle rolling her eyes. And if we exclude the fact that their pop machine was broken and they had only Coke to drink and also that the women washroom was out of order and both genders had to share the same washroom the big macs actually taste the same!

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The anchorage in Fort-de-France was very uncomfortable so we quickly moved to Le Marin on the south side of the island of Martinique. Le Marin is the local Mecca of sailboats with hundreds of catamarans and monohulls belonging to charter companies anchored in the huge bay. With such a charter community comes a good selection of boat stores and services. Of course we are still far from the USA but still we could find the few parts we needed and just enjoyed this calm and protected environment surrounded by all these huge sailboats that make Chocobo look like a 2 bedroom apartment in the middle of luxurious mansions!

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For Danielle’s birthday we paid ourselves a treat at the Mango Bay restaurant with a full service meal and the best dessert we had in years. Look carefully at the picture on the table you can see the huge sundae I had and Danielle’s “Couli au chocolat”. Just this was worth going there as good ice cream is hard to find unless you’re ready to pay the big price for it. Again, being multimillionaires living on a mega yacht there is nothing too good for us!

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Here we wanted to show you a special tree. If you look closer between the branches you can see many big green fruits. This is the bread fruit and although it is a fruit it tastes very like potatoes once boiled. It is very abundant in the area hence very cheap at the market. After boiling it you mash it with some Massalé spice you bought at the market in St-Pierre, Martinique and you get one of the best side dish you can dream of.

Arrived in St-Vincent and Grenadines

We arrived in the islands of St-Vincent and Grenadines, more precisely Bequia island, after un motorsailed of 49 nautical miles for a duration of 9 1/2 hours.

Arrived in Martinique

We arrived in Martinique after a very nice sail of 33 nm. The ride took us 7 hours

Exploring Dominica

Like everywhere else it is nice to visit the landmarks and all but sometimes we also have to go back to the basic activities of human living such as going to the market! Danielle here holds small bananas, one of the three varieties they offer here, which are very sweet and tasty. Here we are talking about real bananas and not the green tasteless ones that were harvested a month before that we can find at home. These ones will likely end up in our “smoothies”, the drinks we make by throwing fresh bananas, pineapple, orange juice, sprite, grenadine, cream and ice in the blender. Nothing better to cool you off!

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This is a better picture of the market here in Portmouth on Saturday morning. All fruits and vegetables are grown locally and sold here by the farmers once a week. Of course, we wash everything in a pale with soap before it gets on the boat! We sure like to keep the little insect pets of the island off the boat! Cockroaches here are sure big enough to make nice pets but if we want some company, we’ll do like everybody else and buy a dog instead.

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We toured the island and we stopped at that “bakery” were they cook some local bread made out of the flesh of a root growing around here. It doesn’t look like bread, it doesn’t taste like bread but it is good though. The man here is grating coconut to make something with it while someone else bakes the root bread on the heated plate.

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We went to see the Indian River, which is a national park and protected area. The guide had to row the boat by hand since motors are strictly forbidden in order to protect the nest of the Water Chickens who build their nest at water level. The wake of the boats destroys them hence the ban. The Indian River was used in the movie “The Pirates of the Caribbean” for the scene of the voodoo woman. The 8 inches purple bulb is actually the flower of a banana tree before it blooms. We’ve seen many of those but never an open one.


We also walked in the Dominican jungle to get to Spanny falls; a nice water fall in the middle of scenery of the type you’ll see in a King-Kong movie! Of course we still have to show Claudette how to wear a baseball hat but this will come!

















Nice examples of the local architecture that goes from nice rustic setups to barely holding houses. Remember that Dominica is an independent country and in the area this usually means living in underdeveloped conditions

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Shopping at the local market and buying fruits we’ve never seen before also means having some surprises. Here I am discovering the passion fruit, which has no flesh but just that gross thing in the middle full of seeds that makes it a serious contender to the oysters in the contest of the most disgusting things to eat! The taste was good though, but Danielle and Claudette passed this time.

Arrived in Dominica

We arrived in the city of Portmouth in Dominica after a nice 4 hours of sailing to cover the 19 nautical miles between Les Îles des Saintes and Dominica.

Les Îles des Saintes; Our last port of Guadeloupe.

Just South of Guadeloupe and mid way toward Dominica lay a set of islands called “Les Îles des Saintes” where we stopped for a couple of days before crossing to Dominica. We took the time to visit the town of Bourg des Saintes where I wouldn’t think live more than 500 peoples. The anchorage was deep with a bit of roll but the town was very welcoming and, as other English speaking sailors told us, unilingual French. Of course we didn’t really notice that aspect as we were just too happy to be greeted and served in French by the local business, the first time since we left Canada really. The town is very picturesque and survives only on tourism as there is just no agriculture or industry whatsoever on these islands.

Time in the area really takes another dimension as the tremendous heat picks up around 10:00am and burns everything daring to stay in direct sunlight for more than a microsecond until it goes down again around 04:00pm. During that time, the body just cannot function and naturally slows down and so do we. To cool off we try jumping in the water but it is already at 90°F (32°C). I mean we take showers at lower temperature than that! So, during most of the day we have to slow down and do virtually nothing. But early in the morning we were able to go visit a nice fort called “Fort Napoléon”, a well preserved artifact of the very active past of Guadeloupe, which was violently disputed by the French and the English.