Grenada, Union Island and Tobago Cays, Martinique and St Maarten.(March 2013)

Dear friends,
Herewith a photo impression of a fantastic journey from Trinidad, visiting Grenada, Union Island and Tobago Cays, Martinique, to St Maarten. Roughly 450 nm.. My very special friend Dora from Brazil was brave enough to undertake this adventure on board the Onda Boa.


The sailing was great, most of the times… After all the work done
on the Onda Boa, she sails better..(took out dead weights as the genset, the airco, and the old water maker… so less weight, better sailing). As we quickly learned, it is not only all the time easterly winds. A rather big fish managed to rip the whole fishing rod, reel and everything else from the transom and so we were out of fishing gear…
Grenada, the Island of Spice.. It is a lovely island, and eager to discover the secrets of the spices, we undertook a spice expedition, which wasn’t as exotic as expected, because apart from the nutmeg, most spices are grown in Brazil as well, so not much novelty there.


Tried to anchor inside the harbour of St George, but that was not so easy (and would have been rather expensive for Us$ 65/night) so we anchored out and used one of the moorings outside the harbour.. great location, great to swim…After a total of three days, we went to Union Island (this is the part that all winds are not easterly) so it wasn't easy to arrive in Union Island.. (oh, and did i tell that i only then discovered that my electronic maps I use in my chartplotter/gps) only went until Grenada, so i was at a blind, all of a sudden, maps wise. Good thing that my friend Alastair Newman from SY Baltic Sun, had installed the Open CPN ocean navigation program on my laptop, including a link to the boats gps, so i still had a very detailed navigation system as a backup. Union Island was just awesome, great place to be, and a great place to scuba dive.. water is blue, no its green, no it is turquoise, no it is light blue.. anyway..then on to Tobago Cays.. Actually  hard to describe… the water, the place, the snorkelling, wanted to stay longer, but this time around, not enough time..


Let us go to… Sint Maarten… (where my sister, her daughter and two friends were waiting for our arrival).. Well it didn't go that way.. The first couple of hours… great sailing indeed, but the winds turned again, and couldn't really maintain the planned course, after a night of not making a lot of progress, the decision was taken to go to Martinique, and wait a day for the winds to improve.. What a nice surprise.. All so well organized, a dingy dock the size of a soccer field, never seen something like it, and as soon as you are on land.. you are in France…croissant, wine and an almost impeccable city… clean, well organized… (i was able to get an up-to-date electronic map for the chart plotter, so that problem was solved). In good spirits we left the next day, and yesss.. the wind direction was great, and during the day Onda Boa developed speeds of 8 to 9 knots.. we just breezed by Dominica, Guadeloupe and the next morning at sunrise, we were passing Montserrat (still smoke out of the volcano..)..




The wind eased of a little, but we arrived early evening in St Maarten.. ( i actually don't like to arrive at night at strange ports, and this was no exception, so we dropped anchor in Simpson Bay, surrounded by several large mega yachts, and only the next day met the family.

So, the next post will be about the family visit, the all female crew, unexpected haul out, paradise beaches, and other adventures…
All the best,
Pieter