We make it to Grenada - just in time for Hurricane Beryl!

From the glorious backdrop of the Pitons in St Lucia, we headed south again. This time we ended up in Bequia for the night, one of the islands that forms part of St Vincent and the Grenadines. We weren’t staying long enough to check into the country but met up with friends for dinner there and headed off at first light. We will be back to explore more over the next few months.

So we headed to Carriacou. This is the northern of the 3 islands that make up the country of Grenada, and where we are due to return in a few months and haul our boat out whilst we travel to Australia for a few weeks, as well as getting some work done on the boat. We checked into the country in the nick of time before Customs and Immigration closed on a Sunday afternoon, making sure, as with every country we get to, that we went in with the forms filled in and the right paperwork for the boat on hand and sorted to make life as easy as possible for us all! We then went to Sandy Island, a tiny sand bar about a mile north, with well set mooring balls. Totally beautiful spot with pink sand and palm trees.

The next day as we headed down to the next island of Grenada itself, we had the privilege of sailing close to Kick ‘em Jenny, a submerged underwater volcano which one has to sail around the exclusion zone of. Thankful that this day it didn’t erupt as it had in 2017 as it continues to bubble and build. We could really strongly smell the Sulphur dioxide as we went past the area though!!!

We felt pretty elated to have finally got to Grenada. This has been our destination really for this first year of traveling, the destination where so many cruisers head as it is known to be (by insurance companies most importantly) far enough south to be out the Hurricane zone, and where many people hang out for the season. We started socializing with several kid boats (or boats with kids on!) and doing meet ups. The local marina has a pool where you can hang out, there is a local beach with a bar that is a good meet up for a different day; market day is on a Wednesday, and we spent a morning hanging out in St. Georges, the capital of Grenada. Sadly the weather was pretty rainy but we spent some time in the market, loving seeing all the spices that make up the tag of Grenada which is known as the ‘Spice Islands’. Nutmeg with the mace on the nuts still, cinnamon, turmeric, and several we had never heard of. very cool and we will be back! Another dodgy bus ride back to the anchorage in the pouring rain, and one of the wettest dinghy rides we had ever had. Sadly all of this didn’t get us away from the fact that Hurricane Beryl was headed our way. As Pete had been in the US with work (he got back just before the Hurricane came!), we didn’t have the chance to sail south to Trinidad and Tobago as several boats around us had done. We moved the boat to a bigger part of the anchorage, where we had more space to re-anchor and put out all the anchor chain that we had - 300ft - so that if we were going to have a chance, we would hopefully hold and not drag. We made the call to get the family off the boat, and stay in a local apartment. We took loads of provisions in case we weren’t able to return to the boat quickly.

And then we waited……. The radar just kept closing in…. We were extremely lucky that there was a boat nearby where the family stayed on, and were able to send round regular videos of the anchorage, so we knew that our boat was holding and seemed ok. Their wind instruments hit a steady 65knots (70+ mph) and nearby, the airport about 3 miles away had gusts of 120mph.

The storm hit us around 11am. and in the apartment we were sheltering in we really didn’t feel it too bad, we were so lucky. The owner had been through Hurricane Ivan 20 years previously and that was far worse he said, the roofs came off and the damage was immense . The fact he sat on the step near us, in the rain, chatting as Hurricane Beryl went over was amazing for our anxiety levels. His main concern was for the safety of his goats. Later that day we even got back to LunaSea and were so happy that she was unscathed and absolutely fine.

Sadly as we then got to see the news pouring in over the next few days, we saw the horrendous damage that the Hurricane did to Carriacou, the beautiful island 30 miles north that we had just visited the week before.

2 weeks on Grenada itself feels very normal, everything pretty much reopened within a couple of days, but rescue, recovery and clean up operations are still very much ongoing on the other islands. We hope to be able to return there soon to support.