I am posting this in pieces, as it is very long and detailed, so here goes part one!....
Grenadines Sailing Trip – June 1 to 18, 2012
Sailors – Jim & I
Charter company - Barefoot Yacht Charters – S/V Wind Dancer, but ended up on S/V La Dolce Vita
Originally I was looking for a two cabin boat in the 40' range, but there are very few available in the Grenadines. Got prices for an 07 Catalina 400 (Barefoot) and an 08 Jeanneau 43DS (TMM) – TMM was cheaper by far, but I really wanted the Catalina, never having sailed one before. Decided to ask on TTOL what people thought of Wind Dancer, and Seth saw my post and offered to match TMM’s price for his Catalina. Awesome deal! Spent months researching the boat and then one week before our charter, received an email from Seth saying the boat had been repossessed by the bank and that they were “upgrading” us to a 2003 Jeanneau 43DS that had just joined their fleet 6 weeks before. Unfortunately, it had 4 cabins (forward, twin berths and two aft which could be made into one huge berth). It wasn’t as convenient as the Catalina, plus Seth really didn’t give me accurate information on the boat – there were no twin helms, the anchor info was not accurate, etc. Was not pleased to lose the dual helms, I’m pretty short and have a hard time helming from the centre of the boat...especially a tall one! No worries, we’re still sailing, and we’re still going to be in paradise!
Thu May 31st - We drove to Toronto to stay at the Days Inn for our early morning flight. Best way by far, instead of getting up in the middle of the night for the trek to the airport. The Park Sleep & Fly deal was only $20 more than parking at Skypark. Great deal.
Fri June 1st - Off to the airport, breakfast, flight boarding on time, left 15 min late, but we caught up over the trip. Arrived in Barbados and were greeting with a man with our name on a sign for SVG Air. We paid $380 for roundtrip tickets to St. Vincent, Liat was $290. The difference in price we paid was worth it not to have to deal with LIAT! Although we were in an older airplane, the flights left on time and our luggage arrived with us! We did do a bit of a milk run though, landing first in Bequia, Canuouan, Union, and finally St. Vincent – it was pretty cool to be able to see the places we would be sailing from the air!
Kieshawn was there to meet us at the airport, not much has changed in the last six years except for more traffic! A quick stop for some libations for the room and we were checking into our room at Beachcombers. I have stayed here during every visit to St. Vincent, and it has never disappointed! Lovely gardens on the hotel grounds, as always, and the people were so friendly! I forgot how much I loved the people of St. Vincent, always something nice to say, and never too busy to answer questions, talk about the weather, or take a genuine interest in where you are from.
We had a quick dinner and then bagged out. Marva, our waitress was a delight, as always, and we were thrilled to see her several times during our two nights there.
Sat June 2nd - We woke up early the next morning to get ready for our island tour with Kieshawn. He arrived promptly at 10, and we decided to pick up some frozen food and drop it at Barefoot, as well I wanted to drop off the boat security deposit as I didn’t want to carry that much cash around the island. We stopped at Gourmet Foods (
http://www.gourmetfoodsvg.com/) but the choices were minimal. We did manage to get some lamb, hamburgers and pork tenderloin. No steaks though. I think if we had ordered ahead we would have had better luck. We stopped in at Barefoot, but missed seeing Seth. They agreed to keep my food frozen until we got on the boat. Off to Kingstown, where we stopped at Gonzales liquor to pick up some wines and booze for our trip. Then onto the fruit market to buy some veggies & fruit – we had a great time kibitzing with the vendors, and got some great tips on how to prepare some of the veggies & fruit that we bought. We went to the Anglican church, and as we arrived, I could see that it was decorated for a wedding, it looked beautiful! The pastor came up and said that “they were hoping to have a wedding there that day”- just the wording struck me as funny, and I started to get nervous that maybe Jim had something up his sleeve, but thank goodness, he was looking at me the same way! ~Grins~ We took some pictures, left a donation and signed the guest book.
Off to the Fort, where Benton gave us a tour. On the way we stopped for some Hairoun beer, but since Jim doesn’t drink beer, he got to try some of their tongue numbing rubbing alcohol that they call spiced rum... ~smiles~
It rained a little while we were at the fort, but just enough to cool us off. Away we went to the Botanical Gardens. By this time it was noonish, and it was HOT. We did the tour with Lennox, very knowledgeable about the plants and trees, and then got a chance to visit with the St. Vincent parrots. Beautiful birds, but endangered, so it’s nice to see that they are breeding them in captivity. I think the locals are all a romantic bunch, when they found out that Jim and I weren’t married, again came the comments about having a wedding in St. Vincent, at the gardens, look at this lovely spot for wedding pictures, you can have your ceremony here, etc... It was pretty funny, and Jim and I kibitzed with Benton that since we were sailing, I’d marry him on the boat and do the ceremony myself... <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />
Tried to find some local food for lunch, but it was late and most places were sold out already in Kingstown – they are getting ready for Festival, so there was a street party going on – lots of loud music and youngsters hanging around, but we didn’t feel out of place and everyone was very friendly. Ended up in a small restaurant eating chicken & rice, was pretty good for being the end of the lunch hour!
Stopped at Sunrise for provisioning, they agreed to keep it all until the next morning when we’d bring it to the boat. Back to the room, we loaded all our other purchases into the room, got into swimsuits and hit the bar & pool. We were so tired, but it was a great day, and I got a good head start on tomorrow with getting the provisioning done.
Back to the room for a rest and then dressing for dinner – we decided to take a walk over to HiTides, we had heard good things about them. When we got there, they were closed for a private wedding, so no joy...we ended up at Paradise on the beach where I had one of the best rotis! Jim had chicken creole, and it was tasty too. Good find!
We walked back on the beach with the full moon out, it was an awesome end to a great day.
Sunday June 3rd – Kieshawn picked us up at 8:00 sharp, and we went to IGA while Kieshawn went to pick up our goods at Sunrise. Off to the boat, where we said our goodbyes to a great tour guide, and now friend. St. Vincent is just that kind of place! We ran into his aunt, who owns the taxi/guide business, and I found out she was the same women who gave me a tour back in 1999, when I first came to St. Vincent! Small world!
I had already filled out most of the paperwork the day before, so it was pretty easy getting all the gear for the boat. Someone took all our stuff down to the docks, loaded into the dinghy and brought it out to the boat for us.
Brent (our boat checkout guy) told us that the fuel had been overfilled and the boat was full of fumes, so they were airing it out and cleaning it up a bit before we could board. So if we could do our chart briefing, they would get us on the boat ASAP afterwards. Unfortunately, our briefer, Don, was unavailable until after 11, so we were kind of stuck with not much to do. We ended up getting some fruit juice from Driftwoods and ordering an early lunch of pizza. The fruit juice was AWESOME – it was all kinds of pieces of fruit blended together with ice, and was very refreshing! The pizza was pretty good too!
We were eating our pizza when Don, the chart briefer arrived. He gave us some excellent tips for anchorages that I would have only stayed at for lunch/brief stop, and also some great tips on how to avoid the worst of the current going through the Bequia Channel – shoot straight for the point halfway across the island, and then sail down the northern coast to Admiralty Bay.
Ton then came out and gave us the weather report. A very interesting thing – he texts out a weather report every morning around 8:00 am to your charter provided cell phone, with wind speed, direction, gusts, wave height, period & direction – it was a great and unexpected resource, and I found it to be a great addition to their services. I wonder if you can ask Ton to text you if you are just sailing through...
Eventually Brent got us out to the boat, and I was not happy to see that all my carefully kept and frozen goods were sitting in a plastic tote at the bottom of the stairs in full sun – and it looked like it had been there for some time, as everything was pretty well thawed....I chucked it all into the freezer/fridge, shrugged, and figured I would deal with it later. The fridge/freezer was way too big for just two of us to fill for two weeks...we’d have to figure something out about that! We ended up loading the bottom of the fridge/freezer with our drinking water,a block of ice, putting everything dairy & meat related into the two baskets, and all the juices, pops and condiments on top of a bag of cubed ice, and we still had to put two life jackets on top to keep it full! After two days we decided not even to bother trying to use the cooler, we were just making cold water that turned warm pretty fast, so all of it went into the fridge instead and we stored the cooler in the unused bunks berth.
We decided to switch out our 15HP motor for a 5HP as we’d have to put it on the rail at night, and neither Jim or I was interested in doing any heavy lifting – was a good thing, because the 5 was heavy enough with the wave action we had the first few days in the anchorages!
Brent did a very brief checkout. He was very thorough, but way too quick through the boat, and then we had to do the inventory. Not a fun thing to do in a hot boat, but at least we were on a mooring and not at the dock, so there was a small breeze. I told Brent we’d call him when we were ready to leave, as I wanted to go through everything again, in my own time, and figure things out at my own speed. This is one of the reasons that I like to do a sleepaboard, so that I can look around the boat on my own and have a list of questions, missing items or whatever for the boat briefer the next day. I have found, however, that not being in a rush to get away from the charter company you can still accomplish the same thing – it all comes with experience, I guess. Most charter systems operate the same way, so it’s only a matter of finding it or finding any differences in the boat you are on.
After finishing up inside the boat, we called Brent to come and take us out. I asked a few more questions to get clarification on a few boat systems, and the guys loaded the motor on the rail for us, and away we went. Just outside the buoys, they left us on our own. Tip & see ya in two weeks!
Ha! Little did we know...!
We had a great sail to Bequia. The boat handled very well, and the directions we received from Don held us in good stead. It was much easier heading straight across and then hugging the coast of Bequia. We barely noticed the waves or current, except that we hit great speeds with reefed sails!
We anchored off of Lower Beach to be away from the crowds. It seemed very busy for being the off season! We decided that we were too tired to go to shore (we didn’t want to have to wrestle with the dinghy motor off the back rail), and it was pretty windy to mess with the BBQ, so we decided to cook inside....Until the propane wouldn’t stay lit. We messed around with it for awhile, and then tried to change tanks, but unfortunately Barefoot did not give us a big enough wrench to take off the regulator, and we were afraid of stripping it with the pliers (Brass fittings). So, we ended up eating Salsa and chips and going to bed.... Grrrr
Monday, June 4th
Woke up VERY early with a growling stomach, and no way to make coffee.... Double Grrr!
A boat vendor showed up with banana bread and we bought some just to have something in our stomachs. He didn’t have a wrench, but went around to a couple of boats nearby trying to get one, but no one else was up or helpful. So we decided to head in for breakfast and to call Barefoot to see whether to buy a wrench or not... So, motor off the rail, onto the dinghy and a LOOOONG ride to the main ferry dock in town.
After wandering around a bit, we ran into Emmett, an ex-pat who lives in the town of Industry – he directed us to The Porthole, where we had a great breakfast. By then it was after 8, so I made the call to Barefoot. They said they would get back to me –they were great about not using my time on the phone –incoming calls were free, so they often called back once they tracked down the answers, help or info needed.
Mary called back to say that someone had left St. Vincent and would be with us within 45 minutes, so we finished up our shopping and headed back to the dinghy for the LOOOOONG ride back to the boat. We waited to see who/what would show up, and imagine our surprise when we saw Brent & Virgil show up on one of Barefoot’s sailboats, a 41’ Beneteau named Lady Di, and they pulled up and rafted up to us (remind me about the TTOL thread on boat rafting!).... not sure why they didn’t anchor, but they jumped on board and got to work. It was a working trip for them, they were trying to find a reported leak on the Lady Di, so they were happy to take it for a “real” sail.
They fixed the aft cabin fans (although one was put on backwards, which made for pretty scary fiddling in the middle of the night!), the propane (was a bum connector), left us with the proper sized wrench, and unfortunately, could not fix the stereo, or get the replacement stereo working, so they had to install a non-MP3 player – which sucked, as we had brought down all MP3 music...so it was local radio (or nothing, and often we chose nothing)...
I think I figured out the method to their madness. After they were done working, we sat around and had a few beers on the boat, and they headed into Bequia for lunch before heading back to Barefoot (I assume!). I think they purposely leave things wrong with the boat knowing they’ll get a day out of the office to chase boat to Bequia or Mustique! (Kidding.... I think! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Yikes.gif" alt="" />)
We joked that our next call will be from the Cays if Seth would let them head over to help out...little did I know the prophecy...!
Pictures were posted previously, but here are the ones related to this part of the journey - you don't have to be a member to view:
Part one Stay tuned for part two!
