TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums Southern Caribbean beating up before - running down

Hi fellow bareboaters; Thinking of chartering a catamaran and our first thought was to do a one-way from St. Vincent to Grenada making various stops along the way. We will be 4 couples (2 of us (gents) have bareboat experience in BVIs and all of the gents have just done our 101-104 certification through nautilus sailing in Grenada)

The other option that we were thinking of is having the gents going down a couple of days early and beat up to St Vincent checking in at Union island for the night and then picking up better-halves for the nice relaxing broad /beam reach down through the islands in St Vincent. Wile it looks doable (app 30 kn miles to Union and another 30 or so to St Vincent, I was wondering how practical it is to do it in two days. Keeping in mind the whole point of going down a couple of days early is to get familiar with the boat its handling and operations and experience some challenging sailing.

Thoughts on this approach?

That should be fun. The first 20nm up the lee side of Grenada will be motoring (wouldn't recommend going windward as it will be a beat and the swell can be pretty big, not great for your first sail) then it usually gets breezy and fun for the rest of the trip to Union. If you do get short of time you can always anchor up at Carriacou and clear out. Next day, early start and up to Blue Lagoon, St Vincent to clear in (if you had to stop at Carriacou rather than Union). It won't necessarily be a beat, it depends on time of year. I've done that and had a beam reach on more than one occasion.

Pick up the rest of the crew and make the rest of the trip leisurely so that everyone wants to do it again.

Thanks for the reply Jeannius. do you think on the second leg (assuming we can clear in at Union) we can get to Blue Lagoon pick up crew -re provision as required and then down to bequia on the same day? Thinking the ladies would like to get to Bequai and start the fun part of the trip as soon as possible

You might be able to get to Bequia but, if not, there is Young Island Resort ( https://youngisland.com/ ) right next to Blue Lagoon. It was really nice last time we were there. Admittedly that was a few years ago but back then you could get a free ferry over there if you didn't want to take the dinghy.