{"id":3523,"date":"2026-03-28T11:22:41","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T11:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/?p=3523"},"modified":"2026-03-28T11:22:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T11:22:41","slug":"carriacou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/carriacou\/","title":{"rendered":"Carriacou"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Champagne sailing for Hugo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The consensus was that we would be mad to sail from Grenada to Carriacou on Wednesday and then all the way back again on Friday.<\/p>\n

This Caribbean wisdom was assembled around a table in the One Love Bar in Prickly Bay. The table was for four but already accommodated five old West Indies hands – and now, with a bit of shunting around, made room for seven, and four more bottles of Carib, this being happy hour (two for four East Caribbean dollars – about \u00a32.25).<\/p>\n

Going north at the bottom of the island chain is a pain, given that the Trade Wind is the \u201cNorth East Trade\u201d. No problem up in the Virgin Islands if you\u2019re heading for the Dominican Republic, but down here, your course is actually going to be east of north \u2013 and don\u2019t forget the current going east to west between the islands.<\/p>\n

Anyway, why would we want to come back so soon anyway? Carriacou is lovely.<\/p>\n

Ah yes, well, this is where I get to show off a bit. At the ripe old age of 76, it appears I still have my baby teeth \u2013 or had. The last of them crumbled soon after setting out from Gran Canaria en route to St Helena. I had the remains extracted soon after arriving at the end of February and am now embarked on an apparently endless series of appointments to get a bridge fitted to fill up the gap.<\/p>\n

And the next appointment was on Saturday. The difficulty was that my 23-year-old son Hugo has come to join me and is expecting some typical Caribbean \u201cchampagne sailing\u201d. I could hardly expect him to hang around Grenada for three days (no matter how cheap the beer).<\/p>\n

\u201cNever mind,\u201d said Paul (Sigma 36, Dartmouth UK), \u201cleave the boat in Carriacou and take the ferry back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey run commuter ferries every day from Tyrrell Bay to St George\u2019s,\u201d said Mike (South Africa, old double-ender, rudder in pieces \u2013 all numbered in the hope of putting it back together.)<\/p>\n

You see: Our $4EC was well spent. Whatever you want to know, head for the One Love \u2013 and sure enough, it really was hard work going north. We set out at six in the morning and arrived sometime after eight at night \u2013 and it was only supposed to be 38 miles.<\/p>\n

Never mind, Carriacou is lovely \u2013 even if the bay is full of dismasted boats left over from Hurricane Beryl and waiting for insurance companies to find buyers looking for a \u201cproject\u201d. Hugo after a cheap boat, but even he baulked at the catamaran astern of us with the port bow entirely missing.<\/p>\n

The main problem was that the only ferry running on a Saturday was the car ferry, which takes two-and-a-half hours each way and leaves at five in the morning.<\/p>\n

This is not something that troubles you if you are having lunch at the Gallery Bistro where John and Anne Osborne from Huddersfield serve the best food on the island \u2013 which people will cross the street to tell you as you sit eating it at a little wrought-iron pavement table (although, of course, on Carriacou, there are no pavements.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Anyway, we decided that if you\u2019re after \u201cchampagne sailing\u201d, it\u2019s a bit silly to spend five hours on a ferry when you can ride the trade wind back to Prickly Bay at the best part of six knots all the way, ending up with just five (very snappy) tacks from Point Saline into Prickly Bay \u2013 even if we did arrive back in the One Love after they rang the bell for the end of Happy Hour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The consensus was that we would be mad to sail from Grenada to Carriacou on Wednesday and then all the way back again on Friday. This Caribbean wisdom was assembled around a table in the One Love Bar in Prickly Bay. The table was for four but already accommodated five old West Indies hands – … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3526,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523\/revisions\/3526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}