No longer a reef virgin.

St Vincent and the Grenadines 3/11/18

One great advantage of the Caribbean chain of “Windward Islands” is their proximity to each other, often less than 10 nM apart.  For those of you without a map of this area in your head, here it is:

The lower section of the Windward Islands.  The red triangle is Shanti on the island of Mayreau.

Leaving Hog Island, it was a very pleasant 3 hour sail, just round the corner to the capital of Grenada, St George’s Bay.  The next day called for an earlier start for the longer haul of 35 nM to the island of Carriacou.

With 4 boats heading in the same direction, it’s always a bit of an unspoken race, and the conditions were ideal for Shanti to shine. We haven’t done much windward sailing on this circumnavigation, so it was a novelty to be punching into a stiff breeze at a perfect angle off the bow. It’s also a rare bonus to get photos of one’s own boat shot from outside of one’s own boat.

Our fearless leader, Wolfgang, on “Rosine” led from the rear, (bit like Peter Dransfield round Tassie), but he had already given us the benefit of his previous years’ spent in this area and directed us to the less densely populated spots. 

Sandy Island is just as the brochure promises, with the crystal clear turquoise waters and white sandy cays heralding the true arrival into the heart of the Caribbean. Time to enjoy my first underwater splashabout, marvelling at the abundance of colourfully curious reef fishies.

Christoph off "Leonora" enjoying a tow.

A downside to the exciting windward sail was that I lost most of my fresh water en route.  It took me a while to figure the origin of all the water that was sloshing about where it shouldn’t be, but I finally sussed it.  It was the same problem I had when first leaving Melbourne, beating to windward down Port Phillip bay – the inspection panels on the top of the water tanks leak when the tanks are full and Shanti is heeled right over on her ear. After several hours of bailing and mopping, the offending panel was once again removed, cleaned and re-siliconed, hopefully to stay watertight for a bit longer.

Strange as it may seem, many of the Windward Islands are independent countries, and it is necessary to go through all the formalities of checking out, clearing customs and immigration, getting passports stamped, etc, only to sail 6 miles or so to the next check in. Carriacou is part of Grenada; Union Island is the start of St Vincent & the Grenadines. Luckily the islands of this country continue up as far as St Lucia (British), before Martinique (French).  All rather confusing, but fortunate in that the SIM card bought for my phone in Grenada still works here in the Grenadines.

From Union Island, we anchored out near the fringing reef of Tobago Cays, which is kind of like being in the open sea, especially at high tide, when it can get a bit rolly poly. There are reefs everywhere in this area, which I discovered later to my peril.

Happy Island bar. Very cool.

Even cooler - dedicated dinghy dock.

But let me tell you first about last night. We had sailed round to the leeward side of Mayreau Island, (also part of Tobago Cays) where at first it seemed a bit more sheltered, especially in close to the cliffs. But later the rebounding swell made it unpleasant, so I moved in closer to the beach, perhaps a bit too close to the ferry wharf, which Wolfgang assured me only saw a daily bread delivery by a smallish vessel. Wrong!!

Just after 9 pm a loud horn blast announced the arrival of the not insignificant inter-island vehicular ferry. The wind had swung Shanti even closer to where she should not be. With lights splitting the pitch black night, the ferry was doing one of those ten-point turns, with engines in reverse, lining up the vehicle-loading ramp with the wharf -  but as we know, “operating astern propulsion” does not necessarily mean going backwards.  For heart-stopping moments it loomed nearer and nearer until I almost wondered if I should do something to fend off.  It was a terrifying thing to be in the billion candle-power spotlight like a stunned rabbit as the sheer metal cliff-face of this monster’s bow came within metres of running into me.

A more benign view of the ferry in the morning.

I could practically see the whites of the captain’s eyes, who was no doubt wondering what on earth this little insect was that was sitting directly in his path. But these ferry- drivers are highly skilled operators and so no paint was lost. The moment he had docked, I leapt into action, fired up my engine, lifted anchor and reversed blindly through the darkness, amongst mooring buoys and other boats to get as far away as possible, without courting further coronary. That was last night. This morning .... close encounters with the hard stuff ....

The view to the front. Glorious!

The view to the back. Not so nice.

 

Hey Alex Hall and Ronnie and other SYC’s – we are now in "Salt Whistle Bay", which will forever be known for the loss of Shanti’s virginity to going on a reef. Ouch!  That is such a painful experience.

“Janis”, Shanti’s trusty Yanmar engine has developed this nasty little idiosyncrasy of stalling during, or just after lifting the anchor. I have read it could be due to old age, low compression, being a bit “cokey”, or any number of other possibilities, most of which fit the bill. I have learnt certain tricks to get round this, such as putting her into slow reverse gear first, which mostly works, but sometimes not.

This morning was a NOT. And with the reef only metres away, the timing could not have been worse.  I had gotten myself into a tight corner and dropped the pick in weed, too close to the reef behind, so had to re-anchor. But half way through the first hoist, I heard the high pitched squeal of the engine alarm, telling me she had stalled. I ran back to the cockpit and started her up again but once the anchor was free, again, no power, and we were drifting reefward.  I watched in horror as the depth sounder showed 0.5, 0.3, 0.1, 0.0. Bump, bump!!  Aaargghh!

Convoluted tracks of panic.

Luckily the wind was not strong, and with a local boat and Wolfgang’s dinghy to the rescue we managed to quickly get back into floating depth.  I dove straight after and couldn’t see any damage - just a few inches near the bottom with slightly less slime on the antifoul, and perhaps a few more ripples in the cast iron sole. So it could have been worse, but it’s still a very distressing thing to have happen. Such is the price of trying to edge into a calmer corner of the bay.