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The Grenadines, Mayreau resort

The Grenadines, Mayreau resort

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In the last post we said about a resort day.. Well here we are! We decided to go all out and have a fully inclusive resort day with lunch and dinner and all the cocktails we could drink!.. 10am cocktails here we come.

We made friends with the manager, and after dinner he took us to Dennis’s Bar where we learnt the lyrics to “Rock your sexy body” by Dennis himself. There were goats sleeping on the road on the way back so of course had to give them a cuddle and one last custom cocktail in the resort bar before heading back to Hannah Penn for the night.

Dennis’s Bar near Mayreau beach resort

It was a very relaxing and enjoyable day and night, though the night resulted in a very lazy next morning!

But here began the next round of dinghy pains 🙁 And a fix that unfortunately didn’t hold. The three of us paddled home in a very sad dinghy that night, because at some point during the day it had got caught under the jetty and punctured a tube, luckily we found the hole with some soapy water and repaired it quickly.

All patched up

With our dinghy fixed, we went to explore a wreck nearby to the resort

That strange looking fish is a porcupine fish, a particularly big one, they can puff up their bodies much like a puffer fish can. This was the first time we’ve seen lobsters too 🦞
We have since been to clearer wrecks so more pictures to come!

Next we are heading around to the east side of this island to anchorage only protected from the Atlantic ocean by an underwater reef, fingers crossed we get some sleep!

Find out more next time…

Barbados

Barbados

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Barbados was the first Caribbean stop for us.

Arrival

Celebrating with a cocktail

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.

São Nicolau, Cape Verde

São Nicolau, Cape Verde

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Leaving Sal Rei, we set off just behind Danae on the way to São Nicolau. Our friends on Extress at this point were still on the last island but were also going to meet us in São Nicolau.

We stopped at 2 anchorages on the island.

South East

The first anchorage was at the foot of 2 hills that seemed to channel the wind down from 2 alternating directions in large gusts.

A review that we had seen on the Navily anchorage app spoke of a small community-run restaurant ashore, so we went to investigate!

Happily, we found it, and found Anna as the sign instructed. They opened the restaurant for us and we had some lively rice, veg, fish and beers.

The menu did include many other dishes, but perhaps they don’t stock for these very often.

Once again the snorkeling in the anchorage was fantastic!

Such clear water, and such great wildlife.

Here, I (Adam) had an opportunity to borrow the windsurfing kit aboard Extress, which I jumped at!

Second windsurf of the week, brilliant!!! And this time with some pictures and videos!!!

Extress also caught 2 large Mahi-mahi on the way to the anchorage which we of course had to help them eat! (but, no pics…)

Tarrafell (South West)

Our second anchorage on the island was Tarrafell, which was near a much larger town in comparison to anchorage 1.

Here we played some games of Kubb with our friends from Extress

Baia da Mordeira, Sal, Cape Verde

Baia da Mordeira, Sal, Cape Verde

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This was our final stop on the island of Sal after leaving Palmeria.

As you can see, we didn’t make our way directly to the anchorage, instead sailing around the bay a little.

What were we doing you might ask?

Playing around on the SUP behind the boat we would answer!

This anchorage ended up being a lot of fun. The exception was the seemingly hundreds of flies that would fly through the boat every single day…

The snorkeling was pretty good, the water was clear, and warm enough to comfortably stay in for hours if you wanted.

We kept seeing turtle heads pop up above the water, but no matter how often we tried to see them under the water, we always failed.

While at anchor we did a little fishing off the back of the boat after seeing the tasty-looking fish swimming around the boat, and we were actually quite successful.

We caught a couple of little tiny fish which we used for bait, as well as a set of small fly lures which landed us a tasty little sea bream

The live bait did get a bite, but unfortunately, the line broke and we never found out what it was.

This prompted a little BBQ aboard Extress with Danae too where we all got chatting more.

We discovered that Danae had a wing foil setup, and the next day we were invited to have a go! On the whole, we were pleased at how well it went! Maybe this is the next toy we should buy? 😉

As the swell picked up, it curved around the headland corner that was protecting us and started to bring swell directly into the beach.

This led once again to another little SUP surfing opportunity, this time within paddling distance of the boat (though it was straight onto rocks)

As the swell continued to build, it also started reaching the beach which made for some better surfing (but we didn’t get any pictures). The following day multiple surf schools showed up to surf this break.

This also lead to some quite interesting swell rolling straight through the anchorage.

By this point, Danae had left to head on to the next island, but alongside Extress we stayed for another night. Extress threw out a stern anchor and we moved further off shore into some deeper water to lessen the effecter of the swell.

Although this swell rolled right through the anchorage, it didn’t end up being an uncomfortable nights sleep for us.

La Graciosa

La Graciosa

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After a day of recovery from our rather long crossing (we mainly lay around, sleeping eating and watching TV), we headed to shore to wonder around the Volcanic island.

First, we headed up the closest volcano-like thing, where we got a great view of our part of the island, nearby beaches and anchorage.

We then headed to the north shore to see the breaking waves and the few people surfing them.

The north shore also had many rock pools with all kinds of sea life in them.

The most interesting of which was a collection of hermit crabs all trying to get in line to swap shells. We watched for quite some time, but none of them could decide which one should take the new larger shell that they had found.

There was also a self righting sea snail.

Kathryn was craving pizza, so we headed to the main town of the island in search. There was a pizza place on Google maps that should have been open, but sadly not.

We ended up at the popular local restaurant where we had black squid ink paella.

The walk back to the anchorage took around 20-30 minuites and was lit by moonlight.

We spent much of the rest of our time in this anchorage snorkeling around. The water was so clear and warm we could see to the bottom with ease and didn’t need a wetsuit.

This also gave us an opportunity to dive on our anchor to see how close to the rocks we were.

Day 41: Escaping a rockey anchorage

Day 41: Escaping a rockey anchorage

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As said at the end of day 40, we were in a new anchorage with only 1 review. It turns out it was a bit rubbish for the conditions we were in, and it was a bit of a rockey night.

Moving anchorage

You can see in the picture below, these were not exactly glassy conditions.

Choppy water in the anchorage

We were up early because of the rocking, and decided to head off before breakfast in the direction of a shortlist of better anchorages based on the conditions.

The wind was having quite a “mad one” and flipped the dinghy over while we were beating through wind waves that were breaking over the deck.

Dinghy upsidedown out of the back cockpit window

We sailed using a mixture of Genoa and mizen, leaving the main down, and the first anchorage we passed looked great so headed in.

Much more pleasant location in these winds, I expect we will be here for a day or 2.

Boat jobs & relaxation

Let’s skip the boat jobs part and just say that Adam managed to drench the inside of the boat with salt water while trying to wash the deck (the window was open)…

We tried out the water, it’s still quite cold, but went and found the anchor with our wetsuits on.

A collection of underwater pictures

Day 40: Louro to Ribeira

Day 40: Louro to Ribeira

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The feeling this morning is “I can’t believe we are motoring again… We finished wrapping up all of the previous blog posts this morning, then set out for a sail, to somewhere exciting so that we can get in the water.

A side note here is this means we will aim to write these sail logs as we go, so they might get longer, but also more accurate…

Starting the sail

Half an hour in, we are still motoring out to sea with all of the sails up, but not much wind…

All of Hannah’s sails up, hauled in as far as possible

Don’t worry though, 35 minuites in we turned the motor off managing 2-3 knots.

An hour later, we came to a stop and started motoring again. Where is the wind?????

Time to reef

Don’t worry, the wind appeared. Once we got fully out of the mouth the wind picked up and we started speed along while Adam was trying to cook the Needle fish from yesterday for lunch!

We started to reduce our sail area, first the mizen came down, then we reefed the genoa, and finally started reefing the main, planning on putting 2 reefs in.

We got past the first reefing line, but the sail stopped coming down half way to the second reef. What was it stuck on?

Looking up we saw one of the sail lugs caught in a feeder line (string) that we have in place to add a second halyard. This meant that we could reef no more, so we raised the sail back to the first reef.

After a couple of gybes downwind on a less rocky point of sail Adam headed up the mast in a bosun’s chair to untangle the mess (which ended up being quick and easy).

Navigating to anchor

We carried on for the rest of the day with a half reefed Genoa and 1 reef in the main. The fish cooking effort had to be restarted once all of the excitement had died down.

The next effort was navigating to our anchorage. We had to change our plan, as we discovered that you need a navigation and anchoring permit for some islands in the area (where we were originally planning on anchoring for the night).

Our new target was a beach that looked well protected from the Atlantic swells, but this meant a change of course, and also navigation around the conservation area that we shouldn’t enter without a permit.

You can see the conservation area boundary line in red below which we should stay north of. This will take us within 10s of feet of some quite shallow areas, and also take us generally through a shallow area that will be funneling the swell.

Screenshot of navionics, showing the norther border of a protected area

It’s the closest we have been to the coast, shallows or rocks in a while when actually out sailing, but all went smoothly.

The rocks nearby

At the anchorage

We found this anchorage on Navily with a single review, so we could have been heading into anything.

Anchoring in around 7-8m, and it was quite windy to start with. We were the only boat around so we ended up putting 40m of chain out.

Adam went for a quick adventure under the boat cleaning the waterline on his way.

Adam scrubbing the waterline

Kathryn prepared some tasty tasty dinner including flat breads from a sour dough starter, and soup for dinner.

Sour dough flat bread and carrot soup