Sunriser

The official start of the hurricane season in the Caribbean is June 1st, but at the end of May we’ve already seen a change in the weather, with more clouds and humidity. The islands were blessed with much needed rain in the form of torrential but short showers. The parade of tropical waves coming from the Atlantic has already started, and some will eventually develop into storms and hurricanes. Luckily, we will be out of the danger zone by then. For the moment, we enjoy the fresh showers while constantly open and close windows to let air in and rain out.

We said goodbye to Blue and set sail south, and after a short night stop in Dominica we arrived to Martinique where we wanted to restock on food for the trip into more isolated islands. It was also time to seriously address the fridge issue. The main fridge was turning off and on for several months and we did several attempts to find the issue: checking the wiring, checking for leakages, checking if the fan switched on when it was working, but to no avail. We already called an engineer in Martinique when we decided for a last try: drill a hole in the cupboard and install an old computer fan to cool the compressor. This did the trick!

A forgotten open window during a rain shower caused a flood in one of the provision spaces under the couch; apart from some rusty tin cans it did not cause much damage. So, with all the food properly stocked we could continue to St. Lucia.

We dropped anchor at Rodney bay where sailing yacht Britt was already waiting for us and, together with Lindsey, enjoyed the street party at Gros Islet, organized by the locals, which takes place every Friday evening. People come from all over the island to enjoy the food, music and an impressive selection of local alcoholic concoctions with rhum as main ingredient.

Further south we sailed into the most iconic view of St. Lucia, the bay of Soufrière, framed by the two Pitons. As it sometimes happens with too high expectations, we were a bit disappointed….. although the view is fabulous and there is a lot of coral just below the boat, the constantly passing speed boats make the anchorage noisy and uncomfortable for yachts. On top of that, it rained incessantly while we were there, and the rain washed all the dirt and rubbish from land into the sea. We saw hundreds of plastic bottles floating away towards the ocean, a truly very sad sight.

So, we cut short our stay in Soufrière and sailed further to St. Vincent… and that was an exciting sail! On the way south the wind blows in a narrower angle, which makes sailing much sportier; also there are constant wind gusts and changes of direction, not to mention rain squalls and unexpected currents. And the whole trip followed by brown boobies diving in front of Sunriser…. and using the deck as a toilet. Luckily, the braking waves and rain wash away a lot of the poo.

Chateaubelair, in St. Vincent, is a small fishing village, not really matching its grand name (we certainly could not find any ‘chateau’). Many of the villagers try to make some extra money by selling fruit and fish to the cruisers or plainly begging. They approach the yachts paddling on precarious surf planks and offer all kinds of unsolicited services, all very friendly; it is difficult to be confronted with poverty from off our luxurious lives and we don’t always know how to best react. We try to help by buying fruit and fish from them and giving away items we do not need and they can use, such as clothes and books and sometimes we just give them money for giving us unneeded directions or ‘watching’ the dinghy.

The rainy weather continued in St. Vincent and we are slowly learn to cope with it like the locals, stoically waiting under a tree until it passes, which does not take longer than some minutes. In between showers we walked to the dark view waterfall which serves as the local swimming pool.

The botanical garden in Kingstown is the oldest botanical garden in the western hemisphere and has some very old trees and beautiful flowers.

Another popular attraction is the set of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie ‘The curse of the black pearl’ in Wallilabou bay.

St. Vincent is the last of the volcanic islands we will visit. Continuing direction south we will now head toward the Grenadines, which belong to the same country as St. Vincent but are very different. We sailed and snorkeled there 30 years ago and are very curious to see the changes, particularly in the state of the coral reefs with the climate change.