Christmas in Bequia

We’re in Bequia for Christmas and the New Year. Bequia is one of the StVincent Grenadines and is probably the most developed from a tourist and boating perspective. That’s the reason we pushed on to get here.We only spent a couple of nights in the Tobago Cays, one of the most unspoiled areas around here, and a night in Canouan since we left Carriacou nearly 30 miles south of here.

Bequia has many restaurants and several supermarkets and an excellent local fruit and vegetable market. It even has several tenders that cruise the anchorage taking care of trash, laundry, fuel and water. Bequia is very popular with charter boats; probably nearly half the boats here are crewed or bareboat charters. It also gets regular visits from small cruise ships and windjammers.

The large bay has two nice beaches and several snorkeling areas. There are a couple of good dive sites within dinghy range and we’ve explored those.

We have our Christmas lights up! We have three chains of multi-colored ‘tube lights’ around the cockpit and across the front of the boat. We run them for just a few hours each night as they suck down the batteries.

We ate out at Auberge des Grenadines on Christmas Eve and Plantation House on Christmas Day. Between Christmas and New Year we’ll do some diving and then, in the New Year, we’ll set off south again.

Carriacou

It turned out that conditions were manageable at Ile de Ronde. On our way from Grenada to Carriacou, we diverted into the anchorage to take a look and decided to stay. This uninhabited island has lots of seabirds (pelicans, brown boobies and tropic birds), good snorkelling and even a good dive site quite close to the anchorage. We stayed two nights and dived the reef on Tuesday.

Now we've arrived at Carriacou, the southern-most island of the Grenadines (which belongs to Grenada). We'll stay here a few windy days and move on to St Vincent's Grenadines when the wind eases early next week.

A week at Hog Cay

via email: We're still in Grenada. Shortly after clearing in we left St David's Harbour looking for some better snorkeling. The bays we looked into on Grenada's south shore were muddy and the weather was worsening. On Saturday 3rd we settled into the anchorage behind Hog Cay because strong winds and seas were forecast. We ended up spending a week there in winds up to >30 knots - it's well sheltered though. Once the winds had dropped we dinghied into Lower Woburn to eat at Rogers Restaurant. Finally, today (Sunday 11th) we left Hogs Cay, rounded the southwestern point of the island and anchored in Halifax Bay on the west side. There's still a bit of swell on the west side but not too much is getting into us now. In a couple of days, when the seas have settled some more, we'll continue on north to Carriacou. Our dream is to find fresh veggies there, because there seem to be none in Grenada. Some clearer water would be nice too. We'd like to stop at Ile de Ronde halfway between Grenada and Carriaacou, but conditions are unlikely to be settled enough for that.

Arrived in Grenada

We checked out of Trinidad on Tuesday and, after picking up our duty free wine and beer, we went back to Scotland Bay for 24 hours. At around 5 pm we left for Grenada. It was a very pleasant overnight sail. Once we were a few miles out we had around 12 knots out of the NE, letting us sail at 6-7 knots. The wind dropped in the early hours and we sailed much of the night at 4 knots or less. The sea was calm so it was a pleasant trip. We cleared into Grenada at Grenada Marine in St David's Harbor.