Sailing to the Tobago Cays

Leaving Petit St Vincent    

Petit St Vincent (PSV) was a fabulously beautiful anchorage, very much the idyllic island that we tend to think of in the Caribbean. However, we had another special location planned for our next stop - the Tobago Cays. So, at 10 am on 3 February we lifted our anchor and set off north.

Sailing past Palm Island (top) and Union Island   

Our route took us through the narrow gap in the reef surrounding PSV, past Palm Island and then up the east side of Union Island. Just past Union Island we caught a large mackerel which we ate for lunch.

The rather pretty anchorage on Mayreau just west of the Tobago Cays   

We were hard on the wind and so sailed to the west of Mayreau and then tacked towards the Tobago Cays. That gave us a great view into the pretty anchorage at the north end of Mayreau; maybe one for our next visit, it certainly looked rather full as we tacked by outside.   

Our first anchorage between Petit Rameau and Petit Bateau Islands   

Tobago Cays is a very popular anchorage [Ed: justifiably so] and most people try to stop inside Horseshoe Reef just to the east of the islands. It was, however, blowing quite strongly and so we decided to anchor between Petit Rameau and Petit Bateau Islands to get a modicum of shelter. From here we swam to Petit Bateau, walked across the island and then snorkelled back to BV through the gap between Petit Rameau and Petit Bateau Islands. It was a lovely swim and we saw plenty of attractive live coral and shoals and shoals of pretty reef fish plus a large barracuda which we tailed cautiously from a distance for 15 meters. It was our first taster of the excellent coral reefs here and so we planned, in the morning, to move closer to Horseshoe Reef to see some more.

Our rum cocktail sundowners were matched by a beautiful sunset and then, despite the call from the boat boys for us to join the barbeque on the beach, we had a great meal on board [Ed: we had too much food in the fridge which needed eating and some would have been wasted if we had eaten ashore.]

In the morning, before moving anchorages, we tackled a job we had wanted to do for a while; end-for-ending the anchor chain. We’ve used the anchor so much over the last 5 years that the galvanising has been scrubbed off the first 30 metres of chain by the seabed. To try to avoid getting even more rust marks on the deck, we wanted to use the other end of the chain. That involved anchoring BV with the kedge anchor and its chain and rope warp and then removing the main Rocna anchor from the main anchor chain. We left the anchor on the deck and lowered the middle of the chain onto the sandy seabed. The bitter end of the chain is spliced onto a 50-metre length of octoplait warp and so, with all 100 metres of 10mm chain out of the locker, the first job was to undo that splice and then redo it on the rusty end of the anchor chain. Then we had to wind the chain back into the anchor locker and redo all of the length markers. Finally, after a couple of hours work, we could re-attach the main anchor to the chain which meant that we were ready to move BV to the more popular anchorage inside the Horseshoe Reef.

Tobago Cays, St Vincent Grenadines