After our extended visit to Fort de France, we left Martinique and sailed for St. Lucia’s Rodney Bay where we were to pick up ‘Damsel in Distress’ Lorraine – who’s crewing experience didn’t quite work out as planned, so rather than have her stay in a hotel for 2 weeks waiting for her flight home to Canada, she joined us aboard Toodle-oo! Lorraine had kindly paid for a mooring inside the Lagoon at Rodney Bay where we checked in with 2 people and out with 3!

We left the following morning (not keen to stay in St. Lucia which continues to fail to deal with some security issues) and headed straight to Bequia, past St. Vincent – another island failing to secure the yachties – a long trip with some wildly variable winds arriving just before nightfall.

Unfortunately, our anchoring spot was not that great and we ended up gently dragging in some pretty breezy weather, so in the morning we moved to the other side of the anchorage and found a nice secure spot where we stayed for the next 10 days.

Our friends Bob and Anne on Baloo were in the harbor and so were a few other OCC boats – so we had a rather nice sociable week or so and managed a few great hikes. I also got to do a dive with Bob – and saw some really nice coral and wide variety of fish.

Lorraine left us after about 10 days aboard Toodle-oo! – heading via ferry to St. Vincent and then by plane to St. Lucia and then a murderous trip back to Vancouver by numerous connections. We had a lovely visit from Lorraine and Laurie is still trying to fix her up with some unsuspecting single-hander!!

After Bequia we headed to Mayreau where we spent a couple of very rolly nights in the anchorage. It’s a small island but sports a very nice beach at the north end (unfortunately full of charter catamarans – which we tend to avoid when possible) but we enjoyed a few beers on the beach taking in the beautiful scenery.

We checked out of the Grenadines with a quick stop in Union and then sailed the short distance down to Carriacou where we checked into Grenada. Last year we didn’t do justice to Carriacou at all – leaving Tyrrel Bay after just a couple of days.

This year was very different and we had an excellent stay, meeting new friends Steve and Carol on Innamorata II and did a couple of excellent hikes. We succeeded in climbing to the top of the second highest peak at 954 ft,

followed by a failed attempt at the highest peak (955ft!) which turned into a nice walk with Steve and Carol around the north end of the island. The following day however, we managed to find the trail head for the ‘summit’ trial which turned out to be a short, steep, Cactus filled trek. Once at the top, we tried looking around for the trail we’d tried the day before but there was no evidence – so it must be very overgrown.

After our trek up to the peak, we came back to Bogles and enjoyed a fantastic lunch at Bogles Round House – best meal we’ve had in the Caribbean – not bad since this was our 15^th wedding anniversary!

We finally left Carriacou and made our way to Grenada and while we were hoping to anchor in St. George’s anchorage, it turned out to be way too rolly, making setting the anchor impossible. We therefore continued round and found a spot well into the anchorage at Prickly Bay.

 

This brings you all up to speed as to where we’ve been and since we’ll be in Grenada for a few weeks, I’ll update the blog with Grenada stuf