We have truly enjoyed the Grenadines and Grenada, our southernmost destination on this year's journey. The islands here are all within a few hours sail of each other, and each has it's own personality. We started in Bequia - a place we could easily call home with it's accessible town, wide bay, and friendly people. Tobago Cays were all that they were hyped up to be - if not a bit windy! Blue and beautiful! Union Island was smaller than we had imagined, the town of Clifton held nothing special for us, but we really enjoyed the wide bay of Chatham which is largely undeveloped. The kids enjoyed the long beach, and we were treated to lovely beach barbecue's with friends on our 2 stays there. Mayreau Island was beautiful and hot. There has been a drought in all of these islands, so water has become extremely valuable to us! Salt water showers with just a fresh water rinse are now the norm. Canouan Island was nothing special - it has mostly been taken over by a Raffles resort, and we opted not to hang out there long. Carriacou Island, part of the Grenadan Grenadines, was a surprise favorite. The town of Hillsborough had great charm, the people were friendly, and there was no hassle involved in exploring the island.

Grenada itself was not exactly what we had expected it to be - mostly due to the lack of water. We were hoping for a lush tropical island, similar to Dominica, but due to the water shortage, the island seemed a bit dry and hot! A treat for us was our friend Brix came down to visit us for a week and a bit, so we were able to share a bit of our cruising life with him. He was a real trouper and put up with all of our new habits - showering once a week, knowing where everything goes, sleeping in odd places with odd swells, and drinking a lot of Ti Punches! We enjoyed exploring the island by rental car - seeing some waterfalls, monkeys, how chocolate is made, watching wildfires burn, and enjoying some relax time by the pool at our marina.
With Brix we went to a few smaller islands that we had missed our first time around - Petite St. Vincent , a private resort island , where we had a really nice adult dinner out and Palm Island, another private resort with crystal clear water, and lovely cocktails under the palms. We left Brix at Union island to fly on a local plane back to Grenada - hopefully full of stories to take back home with him!
We now find ourselves back in Bequia where we will sit for about a week getting some serious school completed and some varnish work done on the boat. Our future plans involve hitting a few islands on the way back north that we missed on our way south, or just didn't get enough of on our way down, and making our way back up the chain. We've got a lot of miles to cover to get back to Newport. If anyone is interested in joining us on any of our legs back north - let us know - we could use extra hands on some of our longer passages!!
Happy Spring from the Spring crew - enjoy the new photos up from our recent weeks!