KIM IN THE CARIBBEAN CRUISE 2025 PART 2, NORTHWARD
- Paul Weston
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
On 2nd January we had a horrid trip from Tobago Cays to Bequia, dead to windward, motoring. With her flat bottom, Kim rather prone to slamming, and in retrospect, perhaps sailing would have given a smoother ride. The engine stopped twice, and we had to drain water from the fuel filter, and just before we arrived in Bequia the starboard rudder fouled a fishing buoy, which we were luckily able to free quite easily.
We picked up a mooring in the delightful, though rather crowded, Admiralty Bay, and did some shopping. Cicely and Ed went for a walk, and we had dinner ashore. To our astonishment we met some familiar faces walking along the esplanade, Jonathan and Sheena who we had first met in Port St Luis du Rhone two years beforehand.
The channel between Bequia and St Vincent was in benign mood, and we had a wonderful trip north along the coast of St Vincent, steep to, green, mountainous, and incredibly rugged. At the northern tip of the island, the evidence of recent activity around the Soufrière volcano was very obvious. Darkness fell as we made the crossing between St Vincent and St Lucia, and there were some rather nasty squalls. In the darkness we could not see the famous Pitons in the south of St Lucia, and in fact the coast was only discernible through shore lights. We made our way into Rodney Bay and anchored at 0300, cursing unlit anchored yachts. Later that day we made our way into the marina, which was a hotbed of ARC activity, with the imminent departure of the round the world rally.
Cicely and Ed left us at St Lucia, catching a taxi to the airport. Ed had been a great stalwart during the Atlantic crossing, and we were sad to see them go. We stayed in the marina for a few days, meeting Jonathan and Sheena from Options again as they arrived in their charter boat, and also the crew of Isola, a Riva 38 on which Jonathan had crewed across the Atlantic. We cleaned the boat, and then went out and anchored in Rodney Bay, enjoying walks ashore in the remains of the British fort, and relaxing on sun loungers on the beach.
There are sometimes significant tidal streams between the islands, but I was at a loss to know how to predict them, until I came across a copy of the informative “Caribbean Focus” magazine, and read that the tide runs towards the moon. If you know the time of the moon’s meridian passage, you can easily predict the tidal stream.
We had a good sail north from St Lucia on the 8thJanuary, but as usual in the lee of the islands there was little wind, and we had to motor along the coast of Martinique. We stayed overnight on a mooring at St Pierre, in the north of Martinique, a town which in 1902 had been completely wiped out by the eruption of Mount Pelee. We found St Pierre to be an uncomfortable place - there is only a narrow ledge of shallow water, and the mooring seemed to be only just beyond the surf roaring onto the beach.
We had a brisk crossing of the Martinique Passage, grey and windy, enlivened by the passage of a large Japanese LNG tanker mournfully blowing its whistle, and the unfathomably silly behaviour of a French yacht, La Bulle, which came very close to us on an almost parallel course. In a VHF conversation the skipper said he had to come close as he was “making a video”.
The wind dropped in the lee of Dominica, and we had to motor along the coast, a wonderful experience, until we anchored in Prince Rupert’s Bay in the far north of the Island.
Dominica is a marvellous island, unspoiled, uncrowded, with misty mountains covered in rain forest. The dinghy jetty is owned by the PAYS cooperative of boatmen, who own the moorings and have a shore establishment which hosts barbecues and parties. We were rowed up the Indian River by one of their members, Albert, and took a taxi for a walk in the rain forest.
The partly restored Fort Shirley on the heights above the anchorage is breathtakingly evocative – it was easy to imagine Admiral Rodney observing the French fleet from the lookout post before the Battle of the Saints. Prince Rupert’s Bay is an excellent roadstead, and has been used by generations of seafarers, including the eponymous prince, who based his ships – the remnant of the Royal Navy – here while on a wide ranging expedition after the restoration of the monarchy.
The drawback of Prince Rupert’s Bay is that the wind tends to funnel through the gap in the mountains, and whistle through the Bay. At about 0300 one morning we were awoken by a loud bang. When we went on deck, we discovered a French yacht, which had dragged its anchor, entangled with Kim’s bowsprit, requiring some minutes of frantic activity to free it.
From Dominica we went to Guadeloupe, passing close to the Saintes, the sea very choppy in the Petit Cul de Sac Marin when we neared Guadeloupe. We had hoped to go through Guadeloupe through the Salt River which divides the two halves of the island, but in the marina we were told that the lifting bridge which blocks the passage of masted vessels had been out of action for many years. The marina at Pointe Pietre in the middle of Guadeloupe is the centre of a bustling tourist industry, with a great number of bars and restaurants. There are supermarkets and shopping malls which would not be out of place in metropolitan France, and the marina is the finishing place of the Route du Rhum yacht race. We were astonished to learn that the latest winner had crossed from St Malo in less than seven days.
We are not blessed with Starlink technology, and use a mobile phone as a Wi-Fi hub for the boat, using local SIM cards. We mostly relied on Digicel, the dominant Caribbean network provider, and spent many happy hours looking for and waiting around in Digicel shops. The main tips – or perhaps stating the obvious - is to buy a card which covers as many islands as possible, and gives the maximum amount of data. Topping up can often be done online, but it seems that a strong signal is required for this to work.
In Guadeloupe we worked on the boat, replacing the jib sheets, and drying out locker drawers which had got wet when a connection to our rain catchment system had come loose.
On 22nd January we left Pointe Pietre marina and had another unpleasant squally passage across the Petit Cul de Sac Marin. We had intended to go to Deshaies in the north of Guadeloupe, but as we coasted along the western coast of the Island, noticed a little bay, Anse a la Barque, and went in and, after several attempts as there was not much room, anchored. We stayed in this attractive spot for several days. It was occasionally rather bouncy, but the abandoned fort with its broken guns, reminiscent of the British raid of 1808, was interesting, as was the former coconut grove, with its myriads of huge crabs.
The trip between Guadeloupe and Nevis was interesting. We departed Anse a la Barque at three in the afternoon, and in the night sailed quite close to the volcanic island of Monserrat, its fumes giving me a rather unpleasant asthma attack. We picked up a mooring at Charlestown in Nevis, just off Pinneys Beach. The Pinney family were friends of Frances Nelson, and Nelson met Fanny in Nevis when he was stationed in the West Indies. Although Nelson did not altogether enjoy his time on Nevis – he was frequently embroiled in legal controversies due to his enforcement of the Navigation Acts – we certainly did, and an early morning walk along the beach and then inland, which included a close encounter with monkeys, is a treasured memory. Alexander Hamilton was a native of Nevis, and there is an interesting museum dedicated to him near the seafront.
We moved from Nevis to the port Zante marina on St Kitts. The marina, next to the cruise ship dock – Queen Mary 2 visited while we were there - is friendly and convenient for shops in Basseterre. We rented a car, and did a circuit of the island, visiting a superyacht marina in the south.
Fort Brimstone, a British fortification impressively sited on a hilltop overlooking the approaches to the island is well worth visiting, and we were lucky enough to meet the owner of the St Kitts Railway, which was formerly used for transporting sugar cane, who was overseeing the repairs which had shut it down for several days. He also owned the Skagway Railway in Alaska, and split his time between the two - locations so disparate that the contrast must be quite disorienting.
The wind blew very strongly during our stay in Kitts, but Windy suggested a window was opening, and on 4th February, we departed Basseterre and headed north west towards Road Town in Tortola, British Virgin Islands. The passage, about 130 miles was uneventful. We passed close to the island of Statia, busy with tankers awaiting their turn on the loading berth, and precipitous Saba, where we had half thought of staying for a few hours. However as we were making good progress and the anchorage at Saba seemed rather forbidding, we decided to press on. The night was mostly memorable for the number of cruise ships making their nightly passage between islands, Enchanted Princess, Arvia and Celebrity Equinox making detours around us, as did the superyacht Bon Vivant who we called on the VHF.
At ten in the morning, we went through the Salt Island Passage and into the Great Sound of the British Virgin Islands. At noon, we picked up a government mooring in Road Town (the second one, as the first one was too shallow, and we bumped on the bottom) and went ashore. We tried to get to the customs jetty in the dinghy, but Road Harbour was too rough, so we took the dinghy into the marina and walked into the town, clearing customs, making the inevitable stop at the Digicel shop, and meeting my nephew, George Weston, who works as a lawyer in Road Town, his office overlooking Kim on her mooring.
The moorings in Road Harbour are rather exposed, and unsuitable for a long stay. The marinas in Road Town were all full, so we considered staying at Brandywine Bay, near George’s house. The entrance seemed rather rough when we drove past in the car, so on 20th February Kim motored against a strong easterly wind, and settled in the small marina at Hodges Creek.
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