Continuing our journey down The Grenadines we found ourselves in another country, Grenada. As I mentioned in a previous post, The Grenadines is a chain of small islands lying between the larger islands of St. Vincent and Grenada. Of the nine inhabited islands in the chain, the northern seven are part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, while the southern two belong to Grenada.

Carriacou

Carriacou is the largest of the Grenadines islands, and it’s home to 8,000 people. It is known as “the island with a hundred rum shops and one gasoline station”, and also as the “friendliest, healthiest and safest island in the Caribbean”. I didn’t count the rum shops and I don’t feel entitled to use superlatives, but we did like Carriacou and its people a whole lot.

We anchored first in Hillsborough where we did the customs and immigration paperwork, and took a taxi to the village of Windward, on the other side of Carriacou. Then we moved to the small, secluded, isolated and beautiful Anse La Roche, a beach where we enjoyed the peace and solitude we had been seeking for a while.

We did have a little incident with the windlass, though. For you landlubbers the windlass is an electric device that helps you pulling the anchor back to the boat. Our anchor rode is a combination of chain and rope. The splice that joins rope to chain was made by yours truly, possibly not in the most professional manner. Well, things got badly stuck in the windlass, because the splice didn’t want to go through, while the chain that came after had no patience and attempted to get ahead of the rope. The result was a tight jam of rope and chain in a place designed to hold only one of them at a time.

I saw no other solution than to get the tools and start disassembling things (after lowering the mainsail, which we had eagerly raised, since I had no idea how long that would take). In the end the job was not that difficult, except that after reassembling everything I ended up with the proverbial extra part in my hands. Oops.

Sandy Island

Sandy Island is a postcard-perfect crescent-shaped strip of sand declared a protected marine area. Turtles come here to lay eggs, supposedly at night, but we saw one laying eggs in full daylight. The park ranger was baffled when we told him.

La Ronde Island

La Ronde Island is a convenient and lovely stop before reaching the island of Grenada, except that it may take a try or two before finding a sandy spot for the anchor to bite. It’s a private island that happens to be for sale, in case you’re interested and can spare a hundred million bucks.

An active submarine volcano that goes by the name of Kick’em Jenny is located two miles to the west. The most recent eruption was in April last year. You are not supposed to sail directly on top of it, because bubbles of volcanic gases can lower the water density to a point where your boat may no longer float. Since you don’t want Kick’em Jenny sinking your boat, there’s an exclusion circle with a radius that depends on the level of activity. Activity detected in March prompted an increase to 5 km, but now it’s back to its usual 1.5 km.