Sailing down to Bridgetown Barbados

On Thursday 11 January we had planned a relatively prompt start to move down to Bridgetown. After getting BV ready to go we had expected to be lifting the anchor at around 10am but, just before we did, a familiar yacht, Bruno’s Girl, made her way into the anchorage. Moving to Bridgetown was temporarily put on hold so that we could welcome Philip, Claudia and Lynne and congratulate them on completing their Atlantic crossing. 

Bruno’s Girl arriving at Port St Charles   

Setting off from Mindelo on 27^th December they had made a marginally slower crossing than us but had experienced much bigger seas and stronger winds (max 50 knots). They had also had a few minor electrical problems with their radar failing and some peculiar AIS error messages but, more significantly, their gas-strut kicking strap (vang) had failed and then jammed which had prevented them from using their mainsail. Despite all that they had arrived safely and in good spirits. It was lovely to catch up and compare notes on our experiences. However, they had a boat to clean [Ed: and some sleep to catch up on, no doubt!] and we wanted to move on, so at midday we left and headed south towards Bridgetown. 

Speightstown from seaward    

There was a good breeze so we didn’t do anything energetic like hoist the mainsail. Instead we unrolled the genoa and just gradually sheeted it more closely as the wind moved forward of the beam as we travelled south. It was interesting to see the west coast from seaward, particularly Speightstown which we had visited a few days previously. 

Some of the coastline is relatively urbanised with holiday apartments and hotels. 

But most is quite sparsely built-up and it is easy to imagine what the island must have looked like when the first Europeans arrived with the beautiful white sand beaches and overhanging trees. 

We saw a plenty of catamarans anchored off – probably mostly day-trip yachts enjoying the fabulous beaches..
Gradually the coastline started to get more densely built up.

Our planned anchorage at Carlisle Bay, Bridgetown is south of the city’s deepwater harbour so we had a good view of the cruise ships visiting the port before we needed to start thinking about stowing our sails and sorting out the anchor. The cruise ship dock is huge and can, apparently, cope with 6 of these giants at once!   

Once past the deepwater harbour we rolled away the genoa and motored the last mile or so into wind to the yacht anchorage. It was relatively busy with small yachts like BV and a couple of square-rigged ships but there was plenty of space for us as well. So we dropped anchor not too far from the entrance to the Carenage, the old Bridgetown harbour, and made plans for a visit ashore.   

Bridgetown, Barbados