February 24,2020
Starting the holiday part of the trip…. While for every blue water sailor, crossing the Atlantic or any ocean for that matter, is a treat, a pleasure rarely achieve, an achievement you will keep and cherish for long, we are now entering the holiday mode.
The Grenadines is a destination for thousands and thousands of sailors a year. Only accessible by boat for the Tobago Keys (Picture above), most of the Caribbean is definitely so nice to sail through than the usual tourist holidays for a week at a time. We will encounter so many other boats and so many charter boats along the way that agree with this statement.
Now 3 on board, it turned out much easier for Gloria to adjust to Happy Days. Getting her marks, settling down. We planned for Jason and Antoine to stay some time in the Caribbean with us making us 5 on board. Both made great other plans (Port Lincoln regatta week & Sailing the Alaska island on board of Fleur Australe) and as such, Gwen is the only one continuing towards Martinique for an added couple of weeks visiting the gem of the Lesser Antilles.
Maps of the lesser antille trip …
With Gwen on board, food was amazing, so we added a couple of lobster from the local fisherman and we were in paradise…
Obviously to deserve all that, there was some work involved as we still did not have steering. Passing a line instead of the original cable took a bit of time and small fingers… but we sailed with a very soft helm once we installed the temporary fix. Other work includes dinghy set up as we are now anchoring everywhere, and sailing nicely from one paradise to the next…
All those islands are from the same country but they have different feel. Canouan is more off the charter track, Mayreau the base camp for the Tobago, Tobago Kays and its forest of mast, Union quite large and would deserve more time, Petit St Vincent the luxury resort…
Obviously Happy Days is flying the french flag as it is registered in France but with her owner on board, we had to fly a larger Colombian Flag. It brings a few questions from people who do not know the flag. The ones that knows it split into 2 categories : Latin and latin travellers happy to come and chat and others that seems to avoid us… (Stereotypes unfortunately).
On board we kept with a french tradition of Apero. As such, it was not easy to always find a nice spot on those islands. Matching sunsets and apero work perfectly specially in Mayreau (again and again) and in Bequia (Pronounced Beqwe).
Got a run!! I’ll finish this chapter later, come back! -Cedric
Happy Days 