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SAILING IN THE CARIBBEAN

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DASH DOWN THE CARIBBEAN CHAIN July to December, 1987  By July 1987, with hurricane season upon us, we finally hauled anchor to start sailing south from St. Martin. Hurricane season officially starts June 1, and a popular mariner’s hurricane rhyme starts, “June, too soon,” but here it was already the end of July.  First stop was Antigua, where we met my brother and his wife for a week’s exploration of Antigua’s famous coves and beaches. Antigua claims to have a beach for every day of the year, which we believe. It is quite a pretty island, and we had all those lovely anchorages to ourselves. Not enough time, but we were already a week into August, and English Harbor, a charming and well-restored old harbor was nevertheless not the place we wanted to stay in for hurricane season, so we picked up two friends who flew down to meet us and headed south in earnest.  Deshayes, Guadeloupe, was 40 miles away on a glorious broad reach and was a pretty quiet anchorage. A bus trip to Point-a-Pitre gave us a mini-tour of the island, and a stop at Basse Terre gave us a tour around a huge and wonderfully preserved old fort. There must be hundreds of old forts on these islands – such a strife-torn area the Caribbean used to be. According to the cruising guides, the people on Guadeloupe are supposed to be unpleasant, yet we saw only a pretty island and very friendly and helpful people. It’s true that almost no one speaks English, but we had little problem communicating with our total of about 10 French words, badly pronounced – a tribute to the helpfulness of the people we met.  We next headed for Martinique, bypassing Dominica. Poor Dominica, a dramatically lovely and lush island, has earned a terrible reputation among yachts. Hopefully they will get their act together one of these days so more people can visit this beautiful island safely. Another glorious broad reach and into Fort-de-France at sunrise.  What a pretty island! Grande Anse d’Arlets gets my vote for Wonderful Anchorage of the Caribbean. Pretty, quiet, and still not spoiled by overpopulation of either people or boats. Coral, fish, and all kinds of sea life thrive here, you could spend a week snorkeling and come across something new each day, like the cute little octopus I frightened. How does one apologize underwater to an octopus? Again, the people were far friendlier than we had been led to expect, and even Peter has agreed that we need to return to Martinique and spend more time exploring.  Our goal was St. Lucia, where our guests were leaving us to return to the States, so we reluctantly set sail for Castries.  Things have changed somewhat since we were last in St. Lucia. Rodney Bay has a beautiful new marina which looks to be the biggest and best in the Caribbean. But every morning radio ads urged us to come to Catries Yachting Center, so we did. I wish I had the talents of a Faulkner to describe this rotting, decrepit marina. It would have been at home in a Louisiana bayou. But people were friendly and helpful (do I sound like a broken record? Keep reading), and there was an unlimited supply of fresh, sweet water.  Of course, no trip to St. Lucia is complete without a trip to the Pitons, two peaks that rise abruptly out of the sea, flanking a coconut-shaded meadow that is a soothing study in shades of green. And, of course, the elephant! (No, you’re going to have to ply me with drinks and soft words to learn more about the elephant) Because the depth of the water drops sharply down to over 120 feet just a boat-length from shore, the wall of reefs tumbling down to those depths is spectacular. Blue sponges, brilliant fish, beautiful coral formations in crystal-clear water.  We were not looking at the end of August, and with just a bit of a feeling of urgency (the hurricane rhyme intones, “September, remember”), we again set sail, leaving the Pitons at sunset, to arrive in St. Vincent at sunrise. Because St. Vincent has few good harbors and a bad reputation among yachts, this was a short stay before pushing on to the Grenadines. We must admit, though, that the few islanders we met were friendly and polite; not at all what we had expected.  We had lovely, but short, cruise in the Grenadines, cut short by the report of a storm system heading for us. So we pushed on to Grenada, where we expected to spend September and October, the worst of the hurricane season.

St. George, Grenada, is probably the prettiest city in the Caribbean. Most of the buildings are very old, dating from the late 1700s and 1800s. The city is built on steep hills surrounding a wonderfully protected harbor. St. George reminded me of my first impression of Charleston, SC (the tour guide I read said that Charleston had retained its charm because it was too poor to raze and rebuild from damage inflicted during the Civil War and so the citizens repaired those lovely old buildings. I think that a lot of Grenada is still standing for the same reason. This is a lush island, “The Spice Island” where nutmeg trees, peppercorn vines, clove trees, vanilla vines, cacao trees, and more grows. The scenery is so lovely, it’s a shame its residents don’t complement their surroundings. We found too many greedy, uncooperative people on Grenada, and were anxious to leave.  The dock at Grenada Yacht Services in St. George is in such terrible shape that the owners have posted a sign at the gate: “NOTICE: THIS DOCK HAS A DISCONDITION. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.” Not only is it rotting from neglect, but the Grenada Coast Guard, running a lovely cutter donated by the U.S., frequently forgets to untie its dock lines before leaving the dock, contributing to the shambles. We’re not quite sure what else the Grenadians do with their boat – the certainly made no effort to help a local boat that sand as the Coast Guard looked on, not even trying to use any of that wonderful equipment that the U.S. go generously gave them. We did see them cruising the St. Lucian coast. We have made some uncharitable speculations.  There are a lot of Japanese cars in Grenada, and Peter is urging everyone to write to their Congressman to urge that the U.S. stop sending Grenada money – send U.S. automobiles instead. Since it’s cars that they want, our money is just going to the Japanese, who really don’t need it – GM and Chrysler need it more.  We stayed in Grenada for three weeks, but when Peter lost his temper twice in the same day, for perhaps the fourth time in ten years, it was time to leave.  So we went to Venezuela by accident, not design, and are so glad that we went. Here were desert islands (no water, no people); lush jungly coves where clouds of green parrots rose from the trees; big modern cities alongside simple fishing villages; the oldest city in the Americas; and lovely people. A beach where you could (and we did!) pick up clams by the hands-full, an eerily beautiful bay surrounded by desert-red and dry hills, a sunken city, and so much more, and so much we didn’t see. We spent two months in Venezuela and could have spent a year.  On our way back to St. Martin we stopped in Trinidad on the advice of a new friend, and were surprised by the warmth and friendliness of its people. Trinidad is visited by few yachtsmen, possibly because it was a very isolationist country for so long, and there are few good anchorages. They get few tourists here, and it shows. With the exception of Venezuela, this was the first place we’d been since leaving Martinique where every third person did not try to beg something from us. This was a country where strangers went out of their way to help – so far as driving me all over town to help me find some parts for the boat – to giving me a ride into Port-of-Spain and therefore gleefully cheating the taxi driver out of a fare – to demanding that the bus driver treat us politely (a whole bunch of people took us under their wing that day). It was the general charitability that impressed me. We’ve found it everywhere – on every island (even Grenada), in Venezuela, but nowhere to the degree that we encountered it in Trinidad. Our stay was short; we had people to meet and a deadline to make it back to St. Martin. For those of you who don’t know that Peter holds a grudge for a long time – his high point on the sail back was our gliding into Grenada at midnight and leaving before 9 am that morning. He passed the Customs & Immigration officer arriving for work, who greeted him with “do you want to check in?” To which Peter replied, “No, I’m leaving.” “Oh, you want to check out?” And Peter had the satisfaction of replying, “No, I didn’t check in.” Hopped on the boat, threw off the lines, and chuckled for two days. We’ve promised ourselves a return visit to Trinidad, and a trip to Tobago, its lovely sister island.  We have made new friends, seen lovely places, done some glorious sailing, heard of new places to which we MUST go. We’ve bought two new cruising guides to the South Pacific, but our list of destinations gets longer, and we can’t say yet whether we will head east or west. It just might be decided by which way the wind is blowing the day we haul the anchor to go.

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