Barbados - Time to slow down

We arrived in Barbados just before midnight on 22nd of December 2021, from Cape Verde. Our journey to get here started from Leros in Greece on the 29th of July and took us through the Aegean into the Ionian sea, across the boot of Italy, through the Aeolian Islands, to Sardinia and the Madalennas, then to Spain, briefly revisiting the Balearics before schlepping along the Costa Del Sol and the Costa Blanca and into Gibraltar, for some major electrical work. Then it was back to Spain and to The Canary Islands before our unplanned side trip to Cape Verde, and then our Atlantic crossing to Barbados, our 6th country in 2021 and just 5 months! We have travelled over 6,641 nautical miles in that time. And so here we are - ITIKI and crew are a little worse for wear, but we made it and now it’s time to s…l…o…w      d…o…w…n……

​We are in the Caribbean islands, we are on island time, and even though we have things to do and problems to fix we have to go with the flow and accept that this is going to take time. Also it Christmas and there are public holidays to work around, and unlike Australia everything closes for these and on Sundays. Slow down, breathe, relax, accept the pace…

Barbados lies 80nm to windward of the rest of the Lesser Antilles, and hence missed out on a visit from Columbus & Co. Instead it was “discovered” by the Portugese in 1536, on their way to Brazil – they were impressed by the bearded fig trees on the island and named it Isla de los Barbados (the island of beards!) – and the name has stuck. The English set up a colony in 1627 and the island remains strongly attached to its English traditions, including language, the police uniforms and Anglican churches. Sugar was the main source of income and wealth generation through the 1800s and of course this relied heavily on the slave trade of course - the Islands current inhabitants being descendants of these African slaves.

​So here we are in Bridgetown, Barbados, anchored off a long and beautiful white sand beach of Carlisle Bay with the most spectacular turquoise and crystal clear water. Before we can relax completely though, we need to complete some formalities.

Check out the colour of the water and sand!

​There are a couple of cruise ships approaching the port so we head around to the customs dock inside the port at around 9am. As described in the pilot book, the dock is a high concrete one with huge fenders, better suited to cruise ships than small yachts. We do our best to position ITIKI so that she is not banging up against these monsters and end up mooring in front of some fellow Aussies on SV Tuleta, who have been circumnavigating for several years. They have been waiting on the dock since arriving from Madeira the previous evening. We wait on the boat until the officials come to us with paper forms to fill out. One of these forms is required in duplicate so carbon paper is provided – when was the last time you saw that stuff? Of course, I put it around the wrong way so had to fill the 2nd form out by hand! It took about 3.5 hrs to get cleared. We could get free WiFi on the dock and download our Covid PCR test from Mindelo. These along with our time at sea and vaccination status meant that we did not have to undergo further quarantine. We can go back to our anchorage now and continue catching up on sleep.

Arrivals dock, ITIKI is dwarfed by a cruise ship

​Bridgetown is a busy and bustling place. People are wearing masks in the street and everyone is militant about temperature checks, hand sanitising and crowd management indoors. It’s very busy in the supermarkets and shops. English is the official language here and everyone seems friendly, happy and helpful. Cruise ships have returned and the tourist hoards are everywhere. Christmas is around the corner and perhaps it’s the festive spirit. There are people wearing santa hats and reindeer horns, which seems so out of place in 30C heat – but then again we do it in Australia! There are some really spectacular hairdos as well, mostly on the women but some of the men too! Braids, dreadlocks and cornrows interlaced with colours and beads, no two styles alike. The hairdressers here must be real artists!

Cathedral in Bridgetown

​I am inspired to get a haircut while I am here, too short for dreadlocks or braids so I opted for a very short and practical cut! We also found a few street vendors selling some fresh produce and bought a few things, but it’s quite expensive – did I just pay A$14 for 1 pineapple?!
 
Christmas day was celebrated in the usual way, (well apart from spending a couple of hours cleaning the boat). We had the oven on most of the day making it even hotter! I made bread and then we went ashore and had a walk along the beach and swim in the surf. Did I mention the water colour here is amazing! It’s pretty warm too, about 26C! Christmas lunch is roast chicken, roast potatoes and pumpkin, Moroccan carrot salad. Oh and some French Champagne! The obligatory after lunch nap was followed by swimming off the back of the boat and then Christmas pudding with homemade custard around 5pm - and we are completely stuffed and exhausted – well we are still catching up on sleep after an Atlantic crossing!

Christmas celebrations

​Boxing day morning and Team Cushla (that we met in Mindelo) arrived late last night and swung by to say hi! It was lovely to see them.
 
We are slowly getting ITIKI back in order after the crossing, mainly cleaning and fixing a few small bumps and bruises. We got the spinnaker out to take a look at the damage. It’s fairly extensive but actually not as bad as we thought. Mainly the bottom half. The wing seems fine fortunately, but it will probably have to wait until we get to Martinique, where there are more experienced sailmakers.
 
With public holidays over Christmas and new year it is difficult to get much done, we spent quite a bit of time on the phone to Garmin, who were fantastic, trying to diagnose our autopilot problems. We would then go out of the anchorage to try to recalibrate according to their suggestions and report back to them on our next call – unfortunately nothing worked though and Garmin kindly agreed to replace the Reactor 40 under extended warranty (thanks Covid!) - so we just need to figure out how to get it to us!

Cheapside Markets

​Conscious that it has been 6 months since our last Covid vaccinations, we did a bit of Googling and managed to get a Pfizer booster shot courtesy of the Barbadan government. A very straightforward and easy process and no cost! How good is that.
 
We also found the local produce markets at Cheapside, which does seem a little cheaper but still expensive compared to Europe. Pretty much everything is imported, and any local produce is also expensive because of the effort and chemicals it takes to grow anything.

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​We tried to hire a car but it seems everything is booked out over the Christmas period so we mainly explored around Bridgetown. Of course, Barbados is a former British colony so Cricket is a thing here. We tried to visit the Legends of Cricket Museum but it was closed, a victim of Covid. Walking on a little further we were able to visit and do a short tour of Kensington Oval which is the international cricket stadium in Barbados. It has an interesting history as it used to be a sugar plantation. Cricket was segregated along racial lines until the ‘70s. Sir Garfield Sobers and Joel Garner are two of the legends of West Indian cricket and both are from Barbados. The English cricket team are playing here on the 20th of January, but we will definitely not be here for that one.

​As we sit in the same spot in our anchorage each day we have been watching the tourist boats coming and going, depositing their clients in the water briefly before moving on to their next stop. We took the RIB over to investigate and found there is a small wreck not far from us, which has a lot of coral growth and plenty of fish. We snorkelled over that for a bit and then moved to an area where there are turtles and swam with them, as well as the hoards from the day tripper boats.

Birthday Boy

​We saw in the New Year with a cocktail and tuna steaks on the BBQ. Didn’t quite make it to midnight but did wake briefly to see the fireworks.
 
The celebrations just keep on coming as before you can blink, its Keith’s birthday. Its also a Sunday so we weren’t expecting much to be open. We walked along the beach as far as we could, cut through the Yacht club and around past the fort and racecourse and then back down towards to beach. There are reefs and a fair bit of surf on this point. We came across a resort with a beach bar and stopped for a rum punch and Mai Tais and ended up staying for the buffet lunch, which was good value and very nice. They even brought out a cake and sparklers for Keith and sang happy birthday! We had a couple more rum punches just to make sure they were ok, then a swim before a “white knuckle” bus ride back to town. The celebration continued the next day as we had Andy and Julie (from team Cushla) over for dinner for Keith’s birthday. They are a lovely couple and looking at getting married in Barbados. Julie made a chocolate cake for Keith.

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Anchored off the "Just Chillin" Beach bar

​Finally our thoughts are turning to leaving Barbados and heading to St Lucia to meet Debs and Martin, who will bring our all important autopilot component. Any movement between countries these days means one thing – yes the dreaded “brain tickle”. We got a taxi to the Covid testing place which we thought opened at 9:30, but there was already a huge crowd. Waited 2.5 hrs to pay for the test with only one person handling payment. Then we wait to register and get a tube, then we wait to get the test. 3 hrs in total and B$100 each for PCR tests. We were exhausted after that and the day is half gone, so we abandoned our plans to head to the east coast by bus. The results will be emailed to us so we head up to Port St Charles in the north of the island. Its only 10nm further north, but as we will be hand steering to St Lucia we want to make the trip as short as possible. We hand steered under gennaker and main and as the boat was well balanced it wasn’t too bad. Went and spoke to the Port Police and organised our check out tomorrow, then walked in to Speightstown which is about 2kms south. It’s much less developed than Bridgetown but quite a few tourists at the beach bars along here. We stopped for a rum punch.

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​The next morning we checked out of Barbados as we will be leaving at 4am the following day. We upped anchor and moved a couple of miles down the coast to anchor off The “Just Chillin” beach bar in Speightstown. The café is run by a lovely English lady called Linda! After sampling their warm hospitality and yummy rum punches yesterday we decided to take the dinghy ashore and have lunch there - lobster linguine, absolutely delicious! Oh and of course we had a couple of rum punches. We bought some rum from the supermarket and had a lazy afternoon on the boat. A few weeks later we discovered that anchoring is not allowed in this area… Ooops!

Speightsown, Barbados to Vieux Fort, St Lucia; 84nm
Today’s challenge: Get up at 4am, hand steer 84nm to St Lucia. Keep speeds above 7kts VMG so we arrive in daylight, do 2 loads of washing and fill the water tanks. Well apart from the 7kts VMG we managed all of the objectives, arriving just on sunset at the anchorage. Started just after 4am, motoring for a short while until the breeze was settled. We took a punt on a 2 headsail goosewing but it proved difficult to steer in the dark and not quite the right angles. Furled the genoa and then continued with the just the gennaker until daylight, and the put the main up (1 reef) and reached with that before goose-winging. Seas were very confused again with 3 different swells, breeze shifting from 75 to 110 degrees and at times a northbound set of 3kts which felt like we were going sideways to St Lucia. At one stage on the chart-plotter the boat was pointing at St Vincent. We thought it was because of the issues with the heading sensor, but actually it was probably correct as we were fighting the current. We saw a cruise ship on the horizon and on the chartplotter - Celebrity Reflection. We were monitoring them as we were under sail, hand steering to shifty winds and they were just on the edge of our 1nm separation comfort zone. They called us on the radio and said they were altering course by 5degrees to avoid us and asked us to hold our course (?!). We thanked them as this gave us a 1.5nm separation when we finally did cross them. The breeze was up and down, dropping to as little as 10kts at stages, although fortunately not for long as we completely forgot we had 1 reef in the main. We could finally see land about 25nm out, as it was very hazy. As we got closer to St Lucia the breeze started to fill in again and we could gybe the headsail and reach in to our destination – the anchorage at Vieux Fort on the southern tip of the island. We dropped anchor in the middle of the wide bay, opposite the breakwater, about 5 minutes before sunset. We have made it to St Lucia! What a relief. Friday night cocktails were in order!