Cruising the Eastern Caribbean

The Routes up thru September, '03

     Click on left picture to view our trip through the Eastern Caribbean, and click on
     each of the bordered small photos to view larger pics

Leaving Bonaire, regretfully, we sailed upwind in light to moderate winds heading for the offshore islands of Venezuela.  By the early morning, the wind direction lifted well to the north east and we reluctantly sailed by some  nice places but were able to sail directly east all the way to Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela.  We stayed for seven days, provisioning the boat and fueling up and doing a little exploring.  Local foods were good and inexpensive, fuel was unbelievably cheap, about 11cents per US$ per gallon.  We met quite a few cruisers there and on the eve of our departure they all came by to see us off.   We sailed from the harbor north that next morning and by late afternoon we were sailing past the west end of Isla de Margarita on our way to Antigua.  The 500 mile trip took under three days and on that morning we sailed into Freemans Bay, Antigua.

After a very enjoyable stay in Antigua, with lots of hiking, snorkeling and exploring by land and with the dinghy and having been awed by the incredible majesty of the Antigua Classic Regatta, we set sail for St. Barths.

The beauty of St. Barths is hard to describe, so here are just a few photos.  We went exploring all over, first with the most ridiculous car ever imagined that we rented, (Dinah's note: it's a Ligier, with two gears, forward and reverse, not to be confused with the Formula 1 car!!!),  then by "Dinah" and dinghy.  Our favorite cove was Colombier which we used as our home base-with "Dinah" patiently waiting for our daily return.  Ile le Forge is behind and St. Martin behind that in the photo below.

The harbor at Gustavia

It is so hard to leave this place, but we know what is up ahead; St. Martin and Tintamare island, Anguilla and Dog Island and then the Virgin Islands.  St. Martin was a lot of seeing old friends and provisioning the boat.  There are way too many bars and fun things to do there!  So, we poured ourselves back onto the boat for the solitude of Dog Island.  This beautiful place we had in the evenings all to ourselves with maybe one fishing boat to wave hello to during the day.

Our Caribbean "Dinah Cove"

       "Man Friday" shoe repair!

After putting off leaving for another day, we sailed off the anchor early one morning for the ten hour downwind sail to Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. 

                             The famous "Baths" at Virgin Gorda. 


                                  We made many new friends......

                and rediscovered some old ones, Ned Havard ...
                                                   who had recently found boat parts are harder than he is!       

           and Doug McLean (after we partied for two straight days in Tortola!)

We visited St. John, in the US Virgin Islands, a particularly lovely green island with pretty beaches and multi million dollar homes.  There are some interesting ruins of an old sugar mill - at one time most of the island was made up of large sugar cane estates.

Since the Virgins is almost all a marine reserve, Dinah would feed fish right from the back of the boat! (Dinah's note: I think this is a horse eye jack, it was between 2 & 3 ft long, and before long a second one came by as well as a smallish nurse shark!)

Toooooo much fun in this place, we had to go back to Virgin Gorda to recuperate.  Later we sailed back to St. Martin where Dinah took a flight to England to help her son and his fiancee, Nick and Zoe, with their wedding plans.  I stayed and entered the North Sails Caribbean One Design Championships.  We finished top St. Martin boat sailing with " Irish" Ted and "Danish" Flemming.  The last six races were sailed in heavy winds with gusts to 40 knots!  We left with "Dinah" the next day to sail south for the hurricane season.  We had a great sail over St. Kitts and anchored in the lee of Nevis for the night then left the next morning for Guadalupe and a view of the volcano on Montserrat.

                 
Montserrat and the town of Plymouth under ash

     Ahhh! France!  Iles des Saintes.

We anchored overnight in the beautiful bay of Deshaies and spent the entire next day slowly sailing down the west side of Guadeloupe for a look- see.  It is a short sail then to the small islands south of Iles des Saintes where we hiked around old French forts and bought baguettes at little streetside shops.  After a few days, it was an overnight sail down the island chain to the island of Bequia in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.  We had fun there catching up with our old friend Don Marmo on his "Ned Kelly".  After a pizza at Mac's and the next day a dinner at the "Gingerbread" we started our series of day sails thru the Grenadines-one magic little island after the other- down to Prickly Bay Grenada.  With just a little time to spare, we made arrangements to haul the boat out of the water for storage while we flew to England for Nick and Zoe's wedding on July 19th.  

  "Dinah" hauled out at Spice Island Marine.

I returned the following week, and Dinah came back in early August with her girlfriend Marilyn, we stocked the boat up and took off to spend two weeks of hilarious fun in the Grenadines!  

We had perfect weather, only the occasional shower, but not much wind.  Tobago Cays, to the east of Mayreau, was calm and beautiful and the water perfect for snorkelling.  We explored Palm Island, Petit St. Vincent and Petite Martinique and Carriacou where we found Ned Kelly once again.  By the time we got back to Hog Island, Marilyn had made a circumnavigation of Grenada!

The view from the top of Hog Island over Clarks Court and Mt. Hartman Bays.

One Sunday, the cruisers at Hog Island put on an auction of donated boat stuff to benefit a local charity.  This was great fun with a bar-b-que and lots of beer.  And, Aussie Craig was there! (minus the corks!)

Our plan from here was to sail on down to Tobago.  To our surprise,  the wind was so light we had to motor two thirds of the way!   But what a wonderful place to come to.... Dave has not been to Tobago before, but I am happy to say not very much has changed, especially in the north of the island, and Englishman's is still as peaceful as ever, except Kenny's Bar on the beach, pictured below, is a new addition.  He makes local food, like the famous rotis, and Caribbean style fish and chips which we had one evening.  He even went to buy a case of cold beer for us!!   

Englishman's Bay, Tobago with Don, Bobbie and Noel looking down on our boats from a little park we found, full of fruit trees - limes, mangoes, star fruit and passion fruit.

We tried our hand at fishing again, Dinah went out early one morning with Noel in the dinghy, but only managed to get a bite! Now we just troll from the boat for fun!  Noel was more successful and would catch small bonitos.  After several days enjoying this bay we moved down the coast to Mount Irvine Bay, again one of Dinah's favourite anchorages in Tobago.  We hiked up a hill to visit some Trinidadian friends of Don's who have a horseriding ranch, and did a lot of "liming" in the beach bar!

It is now September 20th, Dinah has become a grandmother!, and in a few days we will be heading back to Charlotteville to check out of Tobago and go to Trinidad for a short while.  Then the plan is to go to Los Testigos, Margarita and perhaps Puerto la Cruz again to haul the boat and paint the bottom.   We are still planning to be in Virgin Gorda for the second week of November to meet up with friends there.