Our friends Sue and Denny joined us in St Lucia. We met sailing in the Caribbean 3 years ago and have sailed together several times since then. We spent the night in Marigot Bay and then sailed down to Sugar Beach, between the Pitons, then next day. Local guide Jahleel helped us pick up a National Parks mooring. We went ashore to have lunch at Sugar Beach Resort and then snorkeled along the cliffs. It was a lovely relaxed afternoon before a busy day!

Marigot Bay on a calm morning

Next day Jahleel picked us up in his boat and took us to Soufriere for a tour. Our guide was Jahleel’s Uncle Dave. We visited Tet Paul where there is a pleasant nature hike and some stunning views of the Pitons. Maybe one day we’ll hike one of them – Gros Piton is said to be the easier of the two.

On to the volcano where we soaked in the hot mud baths and were painted in different colors of mud. Alas, no photos! Feeling rather grubby, we got back in the van to drive to a waterfall to rinse off. Offered the choice of warm or cold, we chose the warm waterfall! It was a pretty hike down and there were warm pools to rinse off in.

Our next stop was the Soufriere Botanic Garden where we admired huge Ginger Lily, Bird of Paradise and other native plants. Rain was moving in so we hustled through and headed for lunch – we had requested Roti, and Dave assured us he’d take us to the best Roti place in St Lucia. It was delicious! After a couple of quick errands we went back to the boat for the evening.

The next day was a fairly long passage down to St Vincent with strong winds and big seas. This is becoming repetitive! A huge high pressure system in the North Atlantic has resulted in about two months of very strong trade winds for the Eastern Caribbean. Many restaurants have no fish or other seafood as it’s been too rough for the fisherman to venture out. We wanted to try somewhere new, so came into Chateaubelair on St Vincent. We were swarmed by boys on paddle boards wanting to show us the best place to anchor, to take our trash, or just ask for food. Later we realized that, since it was Sunday afternoon, this counted as entertainment for them! Jeremy went ashore to clear in. The afternoon turned squally and wet, and so we hunkered down. When the sun did make an appearance we saw that we were in a stunning place, with palm trees on a ridge above us, terraced farms on impossibly steep slopes, and multiple layers of greenery everywhere.

In the morning we decided to explore ashore. The anchorage felt slightly sketchy and the dock definitely didn’t look welcoming for visitors to tie up to, so Jeremy ran the rest of us in. There wasn’t much in the town and it looked a bit down on its luck. We walked up to Dark View Falls, which was an easy walk, first along roads and then on a track through the rain forest. The track took us to two levels of falls, both with a pool for swimming – Sue and I swam in the upper one. Apparently there is a third level but that’s a scramble and we didn’t see any kind of trail.

Next morning, after buying a delicious tuna from a local fisherman, we moved south again, checking out a couple of other harbors, Cumberland Bay and Wallilabou on the way. These would both be good places to stop although I felt that Chateaubelair was the prettiest. Wallilabou is where quite a bit of Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed and some of the sets are still obvious. Our plan had been to go around the south end of St Vincent to Young Island; however as we approached it we saw that it would be a hard (though short) sail up there and was likely to be too rough for the snorkeling that was the reason for going. Bequia came into view and the temptation to go straight there was just too strong, so we changed course and headed over in bright sunshine. The seas were still huge, and we saw big ferries rolling alarmingly as they came over. However the wind was in a good direction for us and we had a relatively comfortable trip over.

The southern end of St Lucia and the east coast of St Vincent have had a bad reputation for safety over the past few years, and many sailors skip them. We found lovely harbors without many boats around. People were friendly and eager to help – in a few cases too eager! Some guides, such as Jahleel, have been able to establish a reputation for providing good services and tours, and this is starting to attract more boats, which in turn helps the local economy. It’s also reassuring to go ashore and see how people are living in the villages – the guy walking down the road carrying a machete isn’t an ax-murderer, he’s just on his way home from working in the fields. That said, we took additional safety precautions, such as hoisting our shiny new dinghy out every night and pulling up our swim platform to make it harder for someone to board us (we already lock the dinghy on each night and whenever we leave it). We felt safe, and hope that we’ll be able to spend some more time in St Vincent in particular on the way north next season.