Carnival revisted

We had a hot sunny day for Carnival on Saturday and enjoyed a parade of brightly coloured costumes, raunchy dancing and unremitting soca music - good fun but surprisingly smaller than St Lucia's parade, perhaps due to the postponement from last Tuesday.

We are investigating haul out possibilities here but it looks like it's going to be significantly more expensive than Trinidad so we are probably going to sail down there in a week or two to have a look.

The first named storms of the season - Anna, Bill and Claudette have developed. Bill is a category 4 hurricane but has fortunately tracked north of us here.

Washed out Carnival

We sailed down from Carriacou to St Georges, Grenada on Sunday crossing over the underwater volcano, Kick 'em Jenny. It was a fast passage until we got off the coast of Grenada when we lost all the wind. We checked out the inner lagoon at St Georges but decided to anchor outside at the end of the 2 mile beautiful Grand Anse beach so we could swim. Monday/Tuesday was a holiday on the island for Carnival. We were looking forward to the big parade of bands and costumes through the streets on Tuesday afternoon but, very sadly for all the participants, organisers and street vendors, it was washed out by torrential rain. It will now be held this Saturday.

Yesterday we headed around to True Blue Bay on the south coast. Very few boats and reasonable snorkelling.

On to Grenada and Carriacou

We have a fantastic fast sail down to Hillsborough, Carriacou yesterday and are now anchored in Tyrell Bay. It's full, full, full of yachts. St Georges, Grenada next stop for Carnival on Monday and Tuesday.

Great Snorkelling in Bequia

On to Bequia

We left St Lucia early Tuesday morning and sailed south, arriving in Bequia late that night. It was a great sail and we had a large pod of dolphins accompany us on our approach to St Vincent. Bequia is under the flag of St Vincent and the Grenadines. It's very picturesque, overgrown with lush tropical trees, vines and flowers and speckled with multi-coloured wooden gingerbread houses. We had a great snorkel this evening – dozens of schools of small fish, at least 100 strong, hanging out around the rocks near the shoreline. We've never seen so many in one place, there must have been thousands. The rocks were covered in Christmas tree worms of all colours. Sadly we didn't have the underwater camera with us.