Port St Charles Barbados

Port St Charles    

Port St Charles is a modern, fully man-made harbour. There’s an inner, excavated lagoon which provides moorings right next to the upmarket houses and apartments that surround the water. The outer harbour has a very small number of moorings for superyachts and beside them is the yacht club and the all-important offices for the authorities, which made it such an easy place for us to check into Barbados. We spent 4 nights here and found it to be a very pleasant anchorage and place to relax after our Atlantic crossing.

M/Y Nero   

Chardonnay of Solent departing for St Lucia  

Sharing the anchorage with us was the rather splendid motor yacht Nero. Also sharing the anchorage for our first day there was Chardonnay of Solent but Mike, Helen and Josh had plans to head off to St Lucia and so on Monday 8 January we waved farewell to them as they set off for an overnight passage northwest.

We actually the first couple of days largely working on BV. We hadn’t given her bottom a scrub for 2 months and, after spending most of that time in harbours, she definitely needed some attention. We had also rigged up some extra things just for the crossing, such as an additional spinnaker halyard, and so they needed to be taken off. Most were small jobs but the bottom cleaning was a chore we split over 2 days. During the crossing, a good-sized colony of goose barnacles had even developed around BV’s stern area, something that we hadn’t expected at all. However, during our time at Port St Charles we noticed that the same had occurred to all the yachts which had crossed the Atlantic. Fortunately, they came off remarkably easily and so after our efforts there and on the rest of the hull BV had a perfectly smooth bottom again.

Port St Charles Yacht Club   

The entrance to the residents’ area of luxury
 houses and associated moorings    

The Port St Charles Yacht Club was not only a lovely place to enjoy a beer and check e-mails, it was also a safe place for leaving the dinghy whilst we went ashore. A bridge connects the Yacht Club with the mainland shore, close to the residents’ area, and from there it’s a short walk to the main road.

Looking back towards the Yacht Club from the bridge   

The beautiful clear waters close to Port St Charles   

From here we turned south for a 20-minute walk to the nearest shopping area, Speightstown.

As soon as we could, we cut in from the main road back onto a smaller coast road. Here we saw a sign warning drivers of sea turtles crossing the road. We had seen several turtles swimming in the anchorage but typically they always dived when I got my camera out.

BV in the anchorage, looking rather small beside MY Nero   

This coast road runs right beside the beach and so we were treated to more views of the beautiful turquoise seas and fine sand beaches and we could also look back towards the anchorage off Port St Charles.

Port St Charles, Barbados