Archive for February, 2010

On Coral Reefs, Turtles and… Bookshops?!

Prickly Bay at the South end of Grenada to the Grenadines doesn’t look far on the chart – but unusually for the Caribbean  it’s a beat ; a boisterous one at that , and it took all day. But it was certainly  worth it.  Once you are amongst the little islands there is a marvellous […]

The Grenadines at Speed

Festina continues her somewhat haphazard course through the Windward islands. Having explored Martinique with Peter, we returned to St Lucia to put him back on his plane and continued south, bypassing St Vincent to windward and coming to rest in Bequia, the first of the Grenadines. The light winds that we experienced with Peter are […]

Just Cruising

With 2 days of Peter’s stay to go we sailed the 15 miles from Rodney Bay  at the North of St Lucia ,  to the Pitons – those astonishing iconic volcanic plugs that appear in every article about the Caribbean, but  are somehow even more imposing in the flesh. There was no hurry so we […]

Yole Racing

From Yole Racing Our original plan was to spend one night at anchor in Havre Robert on the coral bound East coast of Martinique, before rounding the top of the island and sailing back down the West coast. It seemed a shame to leave this beautiful place and when we saw a couple of racing […]

Festina photographed off St Lucia

From St Lucia From St Lucia From St Lucia Thanks to Peter Quentrall-Thomas for the photos!

Coral hopping on the East Coast

Martinique has an unbelievable number of yachts in its waters. That said , the anchorages are so roomy that it doesnt seem crowded , but it is a bit like the Solent on a sunny day and gives the place a holiday feel . We on the other hand are on a rapid Cooks tour […]

Getting used to not being on watch!

We arrived in Rodney Bay Marina ,St Lucia after a fast overnight sail from Barbados It was noisy , hot and far from idyllic – but we cleaned and reprovisioned the boat , hopefully sorted the charging and batteries for the final time, went through the mind blowingly boring immigration procedure and picked up Peter […]

When in Barbados…. do as the Bajans do

The character of Barbados – or at least Bridgetown , was made clear within minutes of landing on the pure white beach in search of a celebratory rum and supperl. We stumbled into a deserted beach bar and were ushered into the next door restaurant – full of waiters and ridiculously pretty hostesses all dressed […]