Sailing South

We spent almost a month in Bequia which seemed like only a few days. It is a little island that is hard to depart, not physically but mentally. It is also the first steppingstone down the Grenadines; each a small gem on the azure sea to Grenada. But this time we didn’t stop along the way and sailed directly to Carriacou. We haven’t been there since 2019 and decided to spend our last weeks this season there. This is the last island in the Grenadines but is part of Grenada. Our cruiser friends on Roxy sailed to Tobago from Bequia and we were going to sail with them, but it is a bit of a slog getting there. It is southeast of Bequia, hard on the wind against a strong current and so it is mostly “uphill”. I guess we just were not up to it!

Not that is not worth it. We have been to Tobago, a few years ago, on a “vacation” from Trinidad. A fast ferry from Port of Spain, Trinidad and a few days in a small inn was well worth it. Perhaps in the future we’ll return with the boat but for this year we elected to go to Carriacou.

It was a great sail down from Bequia. I have found that you pay for a great sail by paying for it on other days when “unpleasant” sailing is the order of the day. We have only one more leg to sail to Trinidad, and hope to arrange another great sail. We have a few weeks to pick the right day! Another cruiser friend on Miclo 3, sailed along with us. We exchanged pictures.

We are now anchored in Tyrrel Bay. One of the things that disturbed James Mitchell, was the trend that public music took on the Islands in the last 20 years or so. Mitchell was St. Vincent and the Grenadines PM in the late 1980’s to 2000 or so. He commented on the volume of the music whenever a party, bar, or parade was organized to socialize. That became endemic in most islands now as the sounds of party nights go for hours at a time. Any holiday is celebrated by day-long, into the night non-stop music blasting away. In Rodney Bay St Lucia, Bequia, and now here in Tyrrel Bay, we have been subjected to this. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, and so the celebration with ear splitting music started at noon today. We are anchored a quarter of a mile off-shore and can clearly hear the sound inside the boat. The video does not do the sound justice as the base beat pulses can’t be captured on a cell phone. But even with poor hearing, there is no mistaking the 120 beat base line of the music.

The beat is almost always 120 beats per minute – just enough to raise your pulse below critical. I wouldn’t comment on the actual music as that is a matter of taste. Regardless of musical style, the volume itself is indefensible. And I have bad hearing. My theory of why this occurs is as follows. Not everyone has the equipment to properly hear the nuances of this music. In order to compensate for this, when music is played, it is shared by the whole island at the same time. This necessitates, a volume sufficient to cover the whole island. Apparently, radio stations are too old school to serve this purpose. I don’t doubt that the equipment used for this purpose was the same ones used by the band Spinal Tap: amplifiers that went to 11 and 12.  

Tyrrel Bay is lovely. We will spend much time here and plan to go to Sandy Island, Paradise Beach and maybe other west coast anchorages.

By June we will be off to Trinidad. They too have the music turned up but fortunately not in the boat yards! They did have Party Boats with this sound that go out at night. I think the Venezuelan’s at the time, 12 miles away, enjoyed the music. A few years ago, we attended a night of The Battle of the Pan Bands in Port of Spain. I described it as a hurricane of sound in intensity and nearly the same in effect. Our jam sessions on board Kalunamoo are not nearly as boisterous. My amp only goes to 10.