Sunday 18-March: Today we will leave the beautiful island of Mustique and sail to the main island of St.Vincent, thus officially leaving the Grenadine islands that lie between Grenada to the south and St.Vincent to the north. They really are beautiful islands to sail around and explore, each one with its own charm and character, from privately owned resort islands, like Palm Island, to totally undeveloped islands, like Petit Martinique. We are sad to leave them yet happy to be moving on to the next phase – the bigger islands. And St.Vincent seems to have a lot to explore.
But before we leave Mustique, we go ashore just one last time to have a flight with the drone. As we set it up below the shady palm trees, we are disappointed to find the drone has partially discharged its battery down to 60%. So the flight is only about 7-8 minutes over the island and across some of the luxury houses before we have to bring it back on just 25% battery.
Back on Cloudy Bay we prepare to leave, doing everything we possibly can before we take off our large sunshade which makes the boat so wonderfully cool. One job is to recheck the GoPro which yesterday had started turning on by itself and taking photos every 2 seconds! The only way to stop it is to remove the battery. But alas, today it is the same. OMG what are we going to do without our GoPro? What will our YouTube fans say? Will they desert us? We had already “lost” the rear screen but as it still took video OK we decided to wait till we were in the USA to get a swap from GoPro California, as their turn around is a few weeks. Now it doesn’t work at all, we’ll have to make plan-B. You see, it’s not only the boat systems that have issues …. it’s everything that resides on the boat too! Excepting Oana & Glen of course, who both seem to be functioning perfectly these days 🙂
At midday we set off. We plan to go the long way: around Mustique, anticlockwise, so that we see the windward coast. Today the wind is perfect, 11-15 knots. We have full sails up and make good headway, even though initially we are into the large Atlantic swell. Once sailing north along the windward east coast, we seem to have a current going with us, because our water speed is 8 knots but our SOG (speed-over-ground) is 9+ knots.
The water is shallow all the way, no more than 40m deep, so we have the fishing line out hoping to get our first catch in the Caribbean. So far we have only caught weed! But there are lots of fishing floats around, marking lobster traps below and it’s hard work dodging them all. Glen is just considering bringing in the fishing line, so as not to snag a float, when …. bbrrzzz! out it spinns. Yes, we have a fish! We can see its silvery outline dancing in the waves about 50m behind us. Oana gets the alcohol, gloves and bucket and Glen furls in the genoa to slow us down to 4 knots. We are not going to lose this one.
It’s always exciting to see what kind of fish we have caught. This one doesn’t seem to be fighting too much and Glen reels it in relatively easily. It’s not long before we have a small barracuda, a predatory fish with long mouth and large teeth, on the deck. Avoiding the teeth (!) Glen holds it down while Oana gets it drunk with medical alcohol into its gills. It goes quiet, a merry death! Soon it is beheaded, descaled, de-tailed and gutted, ready for the BBQ. Oddly, it gives one last “twitch” even though it is headless! Decks cleaned, sails back out, we are off at 8knots again, passed the north tip of Bequia, and into the passage between Bequia and St.Vincent.
Half way between the islands we clearly have a wind-over-current situation as the sea seems to boil with a messy pattern of waves that even splash us in the cockpit. But we are soon through it and heading into the gap between the small Young Island and the mainland, where we pick up a bouy and have a late lunch looking over St.Vincent. First impressions are: mountainous, green and populated.
Before sunset we take the dinghy in the more popular anchorage, the Blue Lagoon, to see if we prefer to be moored there. The Blue Lagoon also has a small marina where most of the charter yachts are supplied from. We sit and sip a rum punch on the marina terrace while watching various crews either bringing yachts back from a charter, or just stepping on board ready to begin one. We had to cross a reef to get to the Blue Lagoon, so before it gets too dark we dinghy back to CB and settle in for a quiet night. Tomorrow we start exploring.