The Grenadines is a must for sailors in the Caribbean. It is part of the country of St Vincent and the Grenadines, with St Vincent being the main island, and the Grenadines consisting of many small islands. Some of them are atolls, with only a tiny spot of sand above the water. This means beautiful pristine turquoise waters, what every person who grew up with long, cold winters dream about.
We have spent a total of about three weeks here, through two different visits. I’ll cover our first visit in this post, and our friends visiting from Norway, Kyrre and Ann Iren, were with us for this visit. We spent time in the Southern part of the Grenadines, and visited Union Island, Canouan and Tobago Cays.
Tobago Cays
The Grenadines consist of a total of 600 islands of very varying sizes. Most sailors put Tobago Cays on top of the list, as this is where you will see the most pristine waters and animal life up close. Tobago Cays is a protected marine park, which means there are many restrictions on where to anchor, and it is quite costly. You pay a park entry fee per person, as well as paying for the boat being there. We stayed two nights, the last one inside a reef with just two boats nearby. It was definitely the most beautiful anchorage we have ever been at.
The turtles and stingrays in Tobago Cays are plentiful, and you get up really close to them.
Union Island
We also visited Union Island, and were anchored two nights at Chatham Bay. This is a quiet bay, with just a few restaurants on the beach.
You are surrounded by high hills, they are so steep that there is no road leading to the beach. We hiked up to the road, and got a pre-ordered taxi to take us to Clifton, the main town.
Clifton is a cute, little town, with colorful houses and some nice boutiques and cafes. Carine found a bikini from a local brand called Salty Girl, with a very cool local island story behind the brand.
Canouan
We briefly went to the island of Canouan to check out, and were anchored for one night in the bay outside the main city. Unfortunately, we did not have a great experience at Canouan. It seems like the island has sold off a chunk of their land to an investor who has built a luxorious enclosed marina and airport, where super yacht owners fly in and go off to sea. All of their provisioning is done inside this enclosed area, with no access for the local population. We experienced true poverty on this island, with locals almost harassing us as we came ashore.
We offered some pay to a couple of locals for “help” with parking the dinghy as well as handling our trash (which meant taking it out of our hands on the dock and putting it in the trashbin whic was right there). The guys helping us ended up in the worst fight between themselves, as we did not have change, which meant they had to split the bill we paid them. We heard them still loudly fighting as we passed through the town half an hour later.
It is for certain that Covid has really hurt the economy here in the Caribbean in a big way. Considering that tourism is by far the biggest industry, things are barely starting to get back to normal. And, it seems like small, local businesses have been hurt the most. We see plenty of closed food stalls along the roads and in the towns of all of the islands we visit, for example. Our sailing guides share information about thriving local communities with plenty of tips of what to do ashore, that simply do not exist anymore.
Experiencing what we did in Canouan is sad to witness. And we only hope that said investor sees beyond his fenced marina and does something to help the community that has welcomed him there…
