Sailing to the Grenadines, a fire on Union Island
13 January 2025
• Chatham Bay, Union Island Grenadines
by Ken Hilk • Sunny and warm

Today we cut ties on the dock in Port Louis, Grenada and headed out to begin a long anticipated sail north for our 2025 cruising season along the Caribbean island chain.
First, we motored off shore from Port Louis and had fun and games emptying and subsequently calibrating our Holding tank in conjunction with our newly installed Tank Monitor panel board. This successfully complete, at 0930 we shut off the engine on the good ship Lover Of The Light, hoisted sails, and started sailing north along the coast of Grenada enjoying a nice beam reach. After about an hour, the wind almost completely collapsed, and we switched the Iron Jib on, furling the genoa, and motor sailed with the main sail. We only had to do this for forty minutes before the wind returned, backing to the north a little bit as forecast, so we unfurled the big genoa and turned off the engine and resumed "pure" sailing.
I have to say at this point the First Mate was not ecstatic as we were now on a close reach, making for the port side of the "Kick 'Em Jenny" underwater volcano exclusion zone. I don't think the exclusion zone bothers her very much as we have sailed around it many times, but the long interval northerly swell that was just starting to dissipate was causing a fair amount of lumpiness in the seaway against the north-northeasterly wind driven wave chop, so although the big heavy full keel of Lover Of The Light drives through these conditions well, the rail was still occasionally dipping in the ocean, and we were taking some sporty waves over the bow - and at least one wave fully landed on the hard dodger enclosure (thankfully we had the center flap down and fully secured, or we would have taken on about 30 gallons of sea water in the cockpit and a smaller amount in the ship's salon. :)
Upon further sailing, the sea flattened out a bit after several hours (which based on previous experience sailing north of Grenada the skipper had predicted) and the first mate was a little more happier. We were in my opinion victorious therefore, as we sailed on a close reach all the way in to Chatham Bay on Union Island, taking about 6.5 hours to go 40 miles and having only motored about 50 minutes, (not counting tank calibration shenanigans at the start).
Once anchored in Chatham Bay we jumped in the water, dove on the anchor to check it and then relaxed a bit. Around 1830 hours we started smelling smoke, which typically means a small trash fire or intentional wood bonfire on a nearby beach set by locals. Not this time! The entire hillside on the north corner of Chatham Bay was ablaze, with an area I estimated at least one half mile wide. We feared for the large house built at the top of the ridge and it appeared the wildfire was burning out of control and could sweep all the way down the mountain to the beach. The smoke was so thick and prevalent it was burning our eyes, we suspected ash was landing on the boat; the Mate covered the dodger/bimini enclosure with its protective cover (bra) and we closed all the portholes and hatches in the boat. After a couple hours, it appeared that water was being pumped onto the fire from a large cistern on top of the ridge, and this may have brought the fire a little more under control. At any rate, by this morning the fire was out, thankfully, and we could see that a lot of scrub trees had burned but it appeared that the large house above the area on the ridge had been spared. :)
Next: sailing to Bequia again.
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