Browsed by
Tag: wreck

St Kitts & Zora

St Kitts & Zora

Comments 0 Comment

From Pinneys Beach where we experienced some very interesting weather, we headed all the way to St Kitts.

The weather still wasn’t perfect, but in this anchorage, we made another boat friend that we would spend the next few days on St Kitts with. Sailing Yacht Zora.

Interestingly while we had some severe westerly winds the night before, they had some severe easterly winds that had actually caused them to drag anchor out to sea a little. We can only assume that the small stormy system passed right in between St Kitts and St Nevis, causing the swirling wind on both islands.

In theory, there was a wreck in the anchorage to snorkel on, so we headed out together, but couldn’t locate it. But the snorkeling was still pretty good.

This seems as good a post as any to say that you can actually follow along with most of the nature stuff that we see on a site called iNaturalist on adams profile.

From this snorkel session, for example, we have all of these observations, and more, recorded…

Anyway, enough nerding out about fish…

We sailed with Zora to a new anchorage, had a walk around a town, did some shopping, and had some lunch. The anchorage was horribly rolley giving us memories of Montserrat, so we all agreed to head somewhere else to allow for a better nights sleep.

Here there was actually a wreck, but in the 2017 hurricane, it got washed up onto the shore.

One of the best parts of this snorkel session was the small group of Caribbean reef squid that seemed to like hanging out near the rudder of Hannah.

We had some sundowners aboard Zora where we also met 2 other boats and chatted about all of our very different travels through the Caribbean.

Wanting to move on to St Martin so that we could also move on to the BVIs we headed to another anchorage a few days later so that we could check out and set sail.

As often happens in the Caribbean there was a festival of some sort going on as we were walking through the town, which included some plank walking! Who can get the furthest?

The anchorage was even more rolly here than we had had in the previous week or so. So we decided to spend as much time on land as possible, using up our remaining XCD currency which we would no longer be needing in a nice restaurant. We made sure to have some leftovers to being back to Hannah for our night sail on to St Martin.

Here you can see how rolly the boat was, no chance of sleep on that.

The Grenadines, Mayreau to Bequia

The Grenadines, Mayreau to Bequia

Comments 0 Comment

A short sail on from our last post and we arrived at our first Eastern anchorage on this side of the Atlantic, called Windward Bay. The submerged reef turned out to be quite a good swell barrier and although this wasn’t the best anchorage we’ve been to, it was a fun experiment.

Sailing boat Danae were also there and we were both tucked into the most norther corner of the bay, the only boats there.

Danae at sunset, Mayreau Island

We went for a little drink with them in the evening and also discovered just how bright our anchor light is when there’s no other lights or moon around, we were anchored close enough together that Hannah Penn’s anchor light at the very top of our main mast was bright enough that it gave light to see in Danae’s cockpit! It does make finding her in a busy anchorage at night quite easy.. she’s always the shortest and brightest.

In the morning we couldn’t resist another quick dip before sailing onwards so threw on our snorkeling stuff and found the sea bed full of starfish of all different colours.

A sand dollar, when alive these creatures are fury

We are really enjoying how clear the water is around here and what interesting things we come across on the sea bed when you can get up close and personal.

Being fairly self sufficient on a boat means you’ve got to do some baking if you want bread and tasty treats, going to the store is not always an option, especially here in the Caribbean, many shops are very basic, some don’t even have fridges, freezers or bread. So our latest bake-off challenge were sourdough bagels!

Bagels do take a long time to make, particularly sourdough, but if thought of in advance they are totally worth it. You’ll be able to read about all our sourdough recipes and other great boat recipes in an upcoming post.

Next we planned on sailing to Mustique which was north east from our location, but it turned out the wind was more of  northeasterly that day than expected so instead of slogging upwind for hours we decided to miss out that island and go straight to Bequia instead. We still had to sail as close to the wind as possible to make it to the island wich meant healing over pretty far, enough that the deck would sometimes be in the water during gusts. It made for a fun sail.

Getting to Bequia earlier than originally planned was a good decision as we had 3 lovely days there with some land ans sea based exploring and more good food!

There was also a very cool floating bar in the middle of the anchorage, which was so rammed one night that they were scared the whole thing would tip up and we’d be in the sea! So we all spread out evenly after that!

Another walk took us up Hamilton lookout with spectacular views over the bay.

After a little more relaxation we moved on from our first anchor location, to the northern end of the anchorage to make the dinghy ride shorter to a wreck we were interested in seeing.


We went to see ‘Bequia Tug wreck’ on the 16th January after being told about it by another cruising couple who said it was their best wreck yet. Although the water could have have a little clearer that day, it was still very impressive, having been down there for quite some time, sea life had completely enveloped the boats carcass creating a mini ecosystem.

The top of this wreck was about at my limit of free diving depth so you can see in one of the videos Adam helping me down so as to not use up precious oxygen before seeing anything cool!

That about wraps up the Grenadines, and now we are on to St Vincent, but that’s all for the next post.

The Grenadines, Mayreau resort

The Grenadines, Mayreau resort

Comments 1 Comment

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…