Not a trip report – just some comments and notes about our first SVG trip:

Luggage Is Arriving Tomorrow lived up to its name, for us and ~20% of the passengers on our flight, as well as ~20% of the next day’s flight (when we waited an hour to retrieve our bag). If they moved those 20% up a day, it would probably be more convenient for everyone. But we got all our bags on time on the return trip. BTW – with no significant queues, it still took 80 minutes to do the outbound checkin process.

Avoid VinceyFest if bareboating – traffic was a nightmare, places were closed, employees wanted to go party (understandably), some shelves were bare …

Mustique is pretty, but at $10/mile (or was it $10/rich-and-famous-driveway?) the taxi tour wasn’t worth it. They have a great marketing scheme - $30 first night’s mooring, second night free. After souvenirs, gourmet provisions, lunch at Firefly, taxi tour, sunset drink at Basils’s – the free night cost >$300.

Taxi tours of Bequia and Meso Valley were beautiful. So was Montreal Gardens, as seen from outside the fence. I would recommend visiting them on weekdays when they’re open, tho.

Tobago Cays are wonderful. Coral is beat up, but sealife abounds. Park Service is putting in ~30 moorings to mark the perimeter of the main anchoring field (so far, 3 near Jamesby and 5 near Baradel), which are for anyone’s use, at a fee to be determined. Hopefully with the huge field clearly marked, people won’t feel so obligated to anchor 1-2 boat lengths away (happened to us 3 times in 3 nights). There were 15-20 boats there each night.

I hiked up from SWB to the church on Mayreau. While I was admiring the view, an Italian guy walked out, looked for 5 seconds, said “this isn’t so great – nothing like the postcard – not worth the trouble” and left. If I had his address, I’d send him a postcard of the Grand Canyon and save him that trouble too.

Do NOT do the “beach BBQ” at SWB, unless you like wolfing down food fast enough to keep your body weight up while the mosquitos do their best to help you lose weight. Not to mention having to BYO plates&cutlery (and hence doing your own dishes).

Boat Vendors pretty clearly split into 2 groups: courteous helpful and professional, vs. pushy. Use the former, politely tell the latter that you’re not interested. Most amazing ‘vendor’ was an old man who snorkeled up to us in Canouan, told us a sob story about needing a new band for his spear gun to feed his children, and promised he would bring ‘4 small lobsters’ in return. When I mentioned they were out of season, he assured me that nobody would know. I said ‘No thanks’, and he snorkeled off to the next boat.

The wind was so far south of E on our sail from Canouan to Bequia that I thought I’d need to jibe to get around West Cay. But, heaving-to in 35kts for 30 minutes took care of that problem. I always wondered what that would be like. My wife insists that wasn’t on her list of things-to-do for this trip, but she lost the list, and I think she may be mistaken.

Getting hit by a blinding 40kts squall just as we approached Blue Lagoon to turn in the boat wasn’t on anyone’s list. The GPS said we were making 2 kts at 2300 RPM against the wind. I throttled down a bit to help save the planet, but when the GPS tracking arrow turned around from SE to NW, I decided to throttle up, keep the boat off the reef, and use some boat deposit money to buy carbon offsets instead.

Note to self – next time use the dinghy anchor to take some soundings before leaving the dock (to calibrate the depth gauge). That should help reduce the pucker factor when the gauge reads 1.5 ft even tho the chart says 9 ft.

It was a challenging trip, with more weather than we wanted, and multiple minor boat/travel issues that piled up to become not-so-minor, but still a beautiful place to sail and visit, and we’ll be back. But probably earlier in the year, with the kids (in their 20’s) as crew, and after taking a more leisurely BVI trip first.