Storm clouds bunched ahead like an unmade bed as our captain gunned his single outboard motor straight into the oncoming swells. Thwack! Every 10 seconds, we bounced high then slammed down hard, drenched in salt spray, on the wooden bench. Even more thrilling — or maybe terrifying — we could see no life jackets aboard. It was just another island crossing in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
To see more than one or two of this Caribbean nation’s 32 mostly uninhabited islands, which stretch in a roughly 56-mile-long crescent closer to Venezuela than to North America, you’ll need a boat. Flights between islands are hard to come by, and if you do find one, takeoffs are unpredictable.
During our nine-day tour of the archipelago, my husband and I visited eight islands — including one barely larger than a sandbar — by ferry, water taxi, small yacht and the occasional swim to shore.
It was a far cry from my previous Caribbean forays. Those land-based trips culminated in daily hot showers and hair dryers back at the hotel or Airbnb. Here, we lived in our swimsuits and bathed in the sea, immersed in the consonance of land, ocean and culture that is island life.
Rum Punch With the ‘Yachties’
Our journey began on St. Vincent, the island “mainland” of the Grenadines. We rented a car, loaded up on water and an addictive regional snack of molasses, coconut and spices called toolum, and hit the winding roads, dodging stray dogs, goats and roosters. The northernmost island in the chain, just 18 miles long, St. Vincent is a tangle of hibiscus, bougainvillea, pastel cottages and corrugated-metal-roofed bars with names like Joe’s Bla Bla and Chillspot.
We found a muddy hiking adventure at the Vermont Nature Trail, a 2-mile path winding around a pair of towering pitons (pointed volcanic peaks), dense with Caribbean pines, palms, epiphytes and tall trees with thick buttresses. The guide we hired at the entrance was worth the $20: The slippery trails might have persuaded us to turn around before reaching the preserve at the top, where we glimpsed a pair of the endangered St. Vincent parrots soaring over the green valley.
The next morning, we boarded a ferry loaded with pallets of potatoes, concrete, diapers and other necessities, bound for the island of Canouan, where a floating Airbnb awaited us. When we disembarked two hours later, we met Johan Kotze and Nelia Lindeque, a South African couple who left their aerospace jobs a decade ago and sailed across the Atlantic on their 34-foot catamaran, the Wind Kat, where they now welcome visitors to join their island hopping.
On the aft deck of the Wind Kat, the pair inducted us into “yachtie” life with a toast of rum punch. The yachties form a sort of floating, nomadic expatriate community in the Caribbean. They are laid-back (some boast of spending weeks naked on their boats); meet up when the wind blows them into the same bays; exchange news about swells, weather and which islands are short on supplies like butter and lettuce; and gather to lash their boats to the roots of coastal mangroves when hurricanes are coming.
Some of the Grenadines are private — Mustique and Petit St. Vincent, for example. Canouan is open to the public, but increasingly colonised by the 1 per cent. Travel sites have called it “the next billionaires’ playground,” on a course to become a superyacht destination like St. Barts. Rooms at the Mandarin Oriental start at $1,800 a night. Not far away, the new Soho House Canouan, a members-only resort, offers an elegant outdoor bar and restaurant that is open to the public, but the yachties scoffed at paying $6 for a Carib beer, when local bars sell them for less than half that.
That night, we slept under an open hatch. The glup-glup of waves on the hull woke me just before sunrise, and I opened my eyes to see a square of starry sky turn from violet to pink.
After a breakfast of coffee and eggs, followed by an obligatory rum punch toast (yachties day-drink without shame), we set sail. Fish splashed and glittered along the hull. Above, the mast tilted back and forth like a compass needle aimed at the sky. An hour later, we were anchored at Salt Whistle Bay on the island of Mayreau.
From above, Mayreau, which is less than 2 square miles, looks a bit like a manta ray, one of the creatures that live in the nearby waters. It is roughly 7 miles from Canouan, but economically, another world. It has no gas stations or ATMs. It had no electricity until the early 2000s, after the national government persuaded the family that had owned the island since colonial times to sell 24 acres to its approximately 250 residents.
Mayreau is the only inhabited island within the Tobago Cays Marine Park, a protected area that also includes three islets and five cays (including one, Petit Tabac, that served as a setting in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”). The surrounding reefs teem with sea turtles, rays, sharks and other marine life. The park attracts yachties, private charters and some medium-size cruise ships. But its fishing restrictions also pose hardships for the local population. — NYT
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