St. Vincent & The Grenadines, Caribbean

by Greeba Cochrane

Jim and I have just spent 2 weeks sailing around St Vincent and The Grenadines in a 45.2 Sun Odyssey sailing boat.  We took our daughter, her husband and her 3 little children with us (aged 2, 4 & 6).

February is meant to be the dry and settled season in this part of the world, but of course because we were there this could not happen!  Gale force winds, waves 3.5 - 5.0 metres and small craft warnings were in place all the time we were there.  This meant we spent the time sailing well reefed and the children did very well spending their time looking out for the biggest waves possible.

Of course, we had to do some diving there. 

The first dive we did was with a company called Grenadines Dive.  This company is based in Union Island - a beautiful island paradise. They came and collected us from our boat where we were sheltering from the winds in The Tobago Cays.  They took us for a dive on Horseshoe Reef - a fabulous coral reef just outside the Cays.  There were absolutely wonderful corals to be seen and loads of fish and the dive leader was very aware of preserving and caring for the coral so we were warned not to damage the huge fan corals by dangling pieces of equipment.  We saw a huge nurse shark, it swam into our midst and then took fright when it realised it was surrounded by 7 divers so quickly swam away again. 

The Grenadines Dive company did not check for our qualifications and its dive boat was very basic.  There was only room for one diver to prepare to dive at a time so it was impossible to do buddy checks.  As soon as each person was ready they had to jump over and descend the shot line to wait at the bottom at about 4.5 metres. Jim and I were very pleased that we already know each other’s equipment well but we do like to check each other before a dive. Anyway it was a lovely dive and everyone enjoyed themselves.

We did 3 more dives with a company called Dive Bequia.  This was a much more professional company.  Our qualifications were checked and we were given excellent dive briefings. They came and collected us from our boat where we were anchored and they charged $70 for 2 dives a day including air and weights.  We thought this was good value.  With them we saw endless beautiful corals and shoals of fish again.  We saw the largest Moray I have ever seen sheltering with a huge nurse shark under some enormous boulders.  It must have been at least a metre in girth so I dread to imagine how long it must have been.  It took me some time to realise what I was looking at because of its size.  Also, we had sea horses, nudibranchs, octopus, juvenile jack fish, lobsters, very delicate spider crabs and a bright yellow frog fish pointed out to us.

I would recommend this area to anyone for diving.  The scenery was fabulous and all the people were so friendly. We certainly would like to go back there to sail and dive again. 

BedSAC