We had an atrocious sail from Grenada to Bequia at the end of last week. The winds have been resolutely blowing strongly from the north-east making any journey further up the Windward Islands chain a tricky one. Still it was a journey we had to undertake with our next set of visitors due into St Vincent on the 23rd. So we looked at the forecast and picked what looked to be the best weather window to get us here in time. So expecting winds of between 15 and 20 knots ENE we set off and motor-sailed up the leeward side of Grenada only to hit high winds on the nose as we left the top of the island bound for Carriacou. We made it a little salt-encrusted fed-up but hopefully that the onward sail the following day to Bequia would be better. How wrong could we be. It was worse, all the eights ... Force 8 winds and 8' waves every 8 seconds. Through in the fact that one of the seams came unstitched on the foresail meaning we had to furl most of it away, it was a hard slog and one we don't want to be repeating any time soon.
So now we're relaxing in Bequia for a few days and are very glad to be back here. It's a beautiful small island with some great restaurants and lovely beaches, if still very windy. We managed to get the sail down in a 10 minute respite when the winds dropped and it's now at the sailmakers being restitched. But it's sunny and warm so we're not complaining!
