Sailing the Grenadines: all you need to know

This video is all about the Grenadines, why we have chosen to sail there, if it is really hurricane safe and obviously all the amazing places you have to visit when you sail to the Grenadines. It is the beginning of May which means hurricane season is around the corner here in the Caribbean. Soon anchors will be lifted throughout the Lesser and the Big Rand hills and sailors will start to the north or to the south to bring their beloved sailboats into more secure waters. It really feels like a pilgrimage, everybody's just moving around, it's a pretty crazy time here in the Caribbean. This year we will be choosing the northern route, we will be sailing along the east coast, if you're somewhere in the region let us know, we would love to meet up. But in the last two years we actually have chosen, like so many other sailors, the southern route. In the south you actually have two different regions that you can choose to sail to. One region are the ABC Islands which we chose two years ago. Really beautiful island but it's really tricky to come back to the Lesser and the Big Rand hills if you still want to sail around here in the Caribbean. On the other hand everything which is below Saint Vincent here in the Lesser and the Big Rand hills is kind of regarded as safe from hurricanes. We will discuss at the end of this episode what it really means, hurricane safe, because there's actually not really any guarantee at the moment, especially with all the climate changes or whatever you want to call it happening right now. South of Saint Vincent you can find Trinidad and Tobago, Granada which is very much beloved by all those who want to do some boat works during hurricane season and you can find the Grenadines which we have chosen. This video is all about the Grenadines, why we have chosen to sail there, if it is really hurricane safe and obviously all the amazing places you have to visit when you sail to the Grenadines. Arriving to the Grenadines is actually pretty simple. You can island hop along the Lesser and the Big Rand hills or just sail straight to the Grenadines. We have decided to skip on Saint Vincent because we have heard some mixed experience about the island. There seems to be a pretty high crime rate at the moment, especially for sailors. Things have been stolen or people have been boarded, so even if the stay is really beautiful we decided to not go there and to avoid some troubles. If you skip Saint Vincent you should sail to Becquia where you have the possibility to check in. We're not going to touch on all the check-in procedures because they constantly change but I will put you the link to Noonsight in the description. Noonsight is a very helpful site which we personally also use whenever we have to check in somewhere. They always try to keep their information up to date. Becquia is a cute little town which is very much loved by sailors because it has a very huge bay where you are pretty much safe from most winds and you can actually do provisions which is very tricky in the Grenadines so if you decide to stay for a longer period in the Grenadines we do recommend to do some bigger provisions in the French islands if you come from that side or from whatever island you're coming in because it can be very tricky and very expensive to do provisions in the Grenadines. We actually spent all three weeks here in Becquia at the end of the hurricane season because we had a lot of work to focus on and it was great to have a nice spot where we could be secure about time provisions and go over to Jack's Bar whenever we craved a margarita which we definitely did drink too much in those weeks. Besides margaritas, the huge bay also offers a really nice promenade so you can go for nice little hikes around the island and they have a very nice coral reef in front of the bay where there should also be a shipwreck if I don't remember wrongly you just have to take care because the currents can be really strong you can do it come on do it that I cannot flop my leg two more push when I laugh then I don't have strength thank you thank you. Besides Becquia, we sailed to another eight islands in the Grenadines all of them are really unique in their own way so it's really hard to say which ones we love the most so instead of making a list of which islands you should see we decided to give out some awards like the most beautiful diving spot which is obviously a no-brainer if you ever heard about the Grenadines you probably have heard about Tobago Cays. It's just a diverse or better said snorkel paradise because it's very shallow you have this huge reef which is at about one or two meters of depth so everybody can go there and just observe the beauty of nature there is just everything around we saw stingrays we saw sharks we saw turtles actually a lot of turtles when you throw anchor which you can if you don't want to take the mooring buoy you really have to pay attention to not hit any turtles because there are so many around it is a national park so be aware that you have to pay when you go there I don't exactly remember the fees they are changing also for every year so we put the link in the description for the national park you can choose the mooring ball if you want it's an extra cost or you can throw your own anchor we decided to throw our own anchor in general we love we trust and love our anchor so we always choose that option if there is one next up we have the most secluded beach and at the same time probably also the most instagrammable spot because let's be honest how beautiful is this island it's called mopion island it's actually more like a blob of sand on a coral reef and it is truly beautiful you can anchor in front of it if you want to go and visit it in calm waters it's not really the safest spot because there is nothing really that can protect you and there is a lot of coral reef around but you can take your dinghy on shore during low tide because actually during high tide there is not much left of it this is a close one because jack's beach spa in becquia has really a place in our hearts but on the other side if we think about a true caribbean feeling we have to say that a spot on the union island gives you everything you've ever imagined of a caribbean beach bar we are obviously talking about sunset cove in chapman bay it's very much renowned in the cruising community everybody who is there in a way goes there i think on sundays they have this huge bonfire which is really nice a lot of people from around the island come and obviously every cruiser which is close by and you get to meet the local cruising community union island is also a great stop if you're looking for some provisions on the other side of the island in clifton there is a nice little town where you find a local market and also a nice little supermarket where you can find most of the things that you might be looking for most pictures beach goes to salt whistle bay this place is so much overrun during high season at least we heard so uh in the hurricane season there is not many people around luckily so we had the place pretty much to our own it's just a stunning place it's if you ever thought about a postcard from the caribbean it's pretty much this beach unfortunately um there is this old structures of our old hotel which is not used anymore but it's very beautiful nonetheless it's actually also a very good spot to sit out a storm we have been there for over seven days while one of the bigger tropical storms had about 15 knots actually blew through the grenadines at this time we stayed there and had actually on not really any problems sure a lot of rain a lot of wind but we had almost no swell and it was a pretty nice spot most underrated island definitely goes to turtle island this island is pretty small and nobody really goes there because you have to sail against the wind which most people don't like or you actually have to monitor because you know it's literally east of vikia so you have to go straight against the wind it's also tricky because there's only one bay where you can actually anchor and this bay sometimes is rolling we've been very lucky we stayed there for probably a week five to six days and yes sure it was not the most comfortable anchorage but it was also not bad the island is beautiful i think there's nobody really on it at least we did not see anyone it has two beautiful coral reefs on which you can dive and the island is literally all around with this cute little land turtles which we just had the most fun to observe during our days when we went for walks after work for some reason this place had really magical to us and we can just very highly recommend to stop there before we finish this episode let's talk about the hurricane risk after grenadines if the last years have shown us anything is that hurricanes have become more and more unpredictable so it is really difficult to say how safe a place is last year for example there was a huge hurricane in the abc islands which seemed for very long the foolproof option to go to if you want to be safe from hurricanes unfortunately last year they got hit really bad in general the grenadines have a very low probability to be hit by a hurricane if you want to know more about it we have included some statistics and also some links in our blog post so if you want to know more we have a blog post on our website where we talk more about the grenadines how it is to sail there where to go some routes you know if we want to stay for a week for two weeks if you stay all three months and also some statistics about the hurricanes if you're interested the link is in the description i hope you liked the episode don't forget to subscribe and stay safe