Barbados was the first Caribbean stop for us.

Arrival

We were very happy to see land and flat seas to anchor in on the west side of the island after our 20 day Atlantic crossing.

The first stop on the list was Port St Charles in the north, where we anchored upon arrival, and had the first full night of sleep in 20 days!

We started the check-in process that day and also headed to the closest restaurant to spend some relaxing time on land celebrating our achievement.

Nothing like tasty fish and chips, and a fancy pizza after 20 days at sea, the last few of which we mainly ate easy food like instant noodles.

Christmas

The next thing on our minds was how to celebrate Christmas, which was coming up in a few days time.

In style of course! We booked an AirBnB that we could dinghy to from the boat for 2 nights and started preparing for a sunny Christmas celebration.

We had decorations, a beach view, air conditioning, Christmas movies, but most importantly a full roast dinner, with all the trimmings, homemade of course!

Exploration

After Christmas, there was exploring that had to happen ahead of the arrival of our next guest, Anna, who would arrive on new years eve.

You can anchor down most of the west coast of Barbados, but you’ll find most people stopping for the night either in the north at Port St Charles, or down south in Bridgetown.

Needless to say, our exploration took us into the water with snorkels, masks and fins, and we found the water temperature to be lovely, and the snorkeling to be great!

We were seeing coral for the first time, lots of tropical fish, and the visibility is great! (Though writing this 1 month after being there, there is much better snorkeling to come!)

Best of all, some turtles, busy eating right next to our anchored boat!!!!

Our explorations were not only water-based, and we headed to land one evening to go and watch the new Avatar film in the cinema which we loved 🙂

New Years

We discovered that with our RYA membership, we could get a 1 week reciprocal membership at the Barbados yacht club. They also happened to be throwing a new years eve party which we decided to attend.

Anna arrived on new years eve, and after a little trouble getting a taxi to the right place, we were celebrating in style with a DJ on the beach and enough rum punch to drown a small goat.

Best of all, fireworks at midnight (though one of these did slightly melt part of our dinghy)

Off we go

We explored the coast more with Anna, and on the 4th of January after around 2 weeks in Barbados, we put our sails up again and headed on to St Vincent & the Grenadines.