Tomia is busy!

We are doing a dive course here in Statia, and studying some theory. Anthony says aaargh, he thought he would never have to do an exam again.

More to follow soon, including ash plumes from Montserrat, surge warnings, and mountaineering goats.

Different Voices - A Guest Blog

Different Voices – A Guest Blog:

With wonderful generosity, Celia and Anthony have been sharing their Caribbean island-hopping life with ourselves (Tim and Linda) for the last two weeks [mid December]. And now, with equal generosity and a trust exceeded only by that of letting us both loose at the wheel in a 25-knot wind, Celia has handed over the Tomia Blog to us as ‘guest contributors’.

Tim’s Guest Blog:

My goodness, what a responsibility, and how to use this 15 minutes of fame to offer some additional insights into the lives of the couple through whom we weekly live vicariously this Caribbean dream, and which Celia already describes so well?

Of course a regular subtext of the blog is that this is not a dream. It is a reality and, like most realities, has its share of drudgery and challenge. So the first thing to report as an interested observer is that, as anyone who knows them would expect, C&A tackle every aspect of their new lives with energy, determination and their habitual sang froid. Whether it is a blocked cooling inlet to the generator, a broken cog in the wind turbine, a misbehaving wind-scoop (to make the lives of their fore-cabin-sleeping visitors more comfortable) or the embarrassing ignorance of said visitors when it comes to the basics of ship-board life, they take it all in their stride.

But are the ‘they’ who do so the same two people who sailed away in 2008? Let’s describe them. Anthony, sans front tooth (see blog posted in Tobago Cays), with several days’ growth of stubble, tanned almost to the shade of Tomia’s newly re-laid teak decks, lean and muscular, is almost piratical in his Caribbean look. As I study the photograph of him and Celia taken before the voyage began, which is in the centre of the collage of pictures of family and friends on the forward bulkhead of the main cabin (home and family are always present), it’s true it is the same man. But I suspect that this – the one here now – is a slightly more sun-mellowed Anthony who, had he arrived on Dominica thirty years earlier, might well have slipped into the local life, hanging out with Moses and SeaCat and Pancho, the Dominican locals whose company he evidently enjoys, absorbing the music and whatever variety of rum punch is on offer (though not, we are sure, the ganja weed also continually between the lips of these friendly Rastas).

And how to describe Celia? No teak deck comparison here – only the finest shade of Caribbean chocolate, blended with local rum and applied translucently to any area not hidden by her very fetching and sea-bleached bikini. Blonde hair perfectly in tune with the sun-kissed life she is now leading and, if the look is now more wind-swept than ‘created’ by a London stylist, it is as appropriate to the outdoor life she now leads as any previous look was to her former existence.

In short, Celia and Anthony are clear proof that these days we all have the opportunity, should we seize it, of staying vigorously, sensationally and genuinely young in body (no thoughts of botox and plastic surgery, please) well beyond the prospects of previous generations.

Body and spirit – yes, that too. As the Reggae rhythms drift lazily across the water from the bar on the shore in Portsmouth (the Dominican one), so Celia’s tanned hips start to ... [here Tim got a bit enthusiastic, so, to paraphrase, I am well and happy, and can occasionally hula hoop for a few consecutive seconds. CM] Later in the week she also demonstrates spectacularly that she can ... [Ditto] I wonder if she will post the photo on the blog? [No way]

So have they become a Caribbean couple? That is more difficult to answer because, in their very British and thoroughly organised way, they have successfully packed an extraordinary portion of the Caribbean experience into just two weeks for Linda and myself and, in so doing, as they themselves admit, accelerated their own lives to about three times their normal speed. Personally I don’t believe that they are ever anything but well organised, (mostly) pre-planned, eminently practical, wholly sensible in their approach to the sea, thoroughly curious for knowledge as well as experience, and as much the perfect hosts as if we had been staying with them at Hemley Hall Cottages on the banks of the Deben. So if in both some element of a deep-seated Caribbean nature has been revealed over the past year, still good old British nurture holds sway. Could that change? Perhaps that depends on just how long they plan to remain here – and that is one of the few issues which from time to time rises I suspect above 2 (from 1-10) on the ‘dilemmometer’ scale for them.

Now, Celia has asked us particularly to report with ‘fresh eyes’, on all that they have been experiencing and she reporting over the last many months. What are the principal impressions? Before giving them, I have to go back to Celia and Anthony, because what is clear is that they invariably prefer the simple and unpretentious, the real and occasionally raw and the basic and unsophisticated aspects of Caribbean life. Not for them manufactured, manicured and molly-coddling marinas. Not for them islands of affluence and life with the jet set. Yes they have visited Mustique, but as soon as we started to make arrangements to come here it was clear that the Caribbean they wanted to share with us was very different from that of Princess Margaret and Noel Coward. And although we flew into Guadeloupe (officially part of France), they were patently not going to be happy if we didn’t fairly rapidly set sail for their favourite and much less developed island of Dominica – conceding to us a two-day ‘acclimatisation’ stop in the tiny Les Saintes islands just to the south of Guadeloupe.

This, in a nutshell, is what we have done: sailing, swimming, snorkelling, fishing, rainforest walking, waterfall pool dipping, flora and fauna-identifying, eating, sleeping, wandering, chatting, making music, reading, laughing, learning (about wood, rum, chocolate, coffee, Christopher Columbus and the battle of Les Saintes) – and then doing more of all the above at another small town or bay either on Dominica (8 days), Guadeloupe (2 days), Les Saintes (2 days) or sailing in between. And it has all been wonderful.

Key impressions? How compact yet complete life is on 43 foot Tomia; how rain here is a blessing not a pain; the friendliness of the Dominicans; the seeming acceptance and enjoyment of life as it is, without apparent yearning about what it might be; the very basic wood and corrugated iron-roofed shacks that for many are home to a whole family; the wonderfully vibrant colours everywhere; the speed with which the sun goes down; the clarity of the stars in the night sky; the podginess and pastiness of the tourists off the cruise ships in Roseau (and I fear of C&A’s two guests); the power of a 160-foot column of water as it hits the pool at the base of Victoria Falls (quite impossible to swim against, but glorious to try); the excitement of seeing a dolphin alongside; the exhilaration of sailing with a 20-25 knot wind on the beam; the blueness of it all, the variety and profusion of the fish to be spotted when snorkelling and the thrill of a wonderfully coral-covered stretch of rocks (tempered by reflection on how much bleached coral there is also); the fierce but happy and noisy style of electioneering here (the Dominican General Election was on at the time); the glory of the rainforest, with its profusion of leaf shapes and sizes and above all its extraordinary GREENNESS and WETNESS, equally intense; how phenomenal an experience a 60 metre diameter lake of boiling water really is (see Linda’s blog below); how ‘French’ and how much ‘easier’ Guadeloupe is than Dominica, with its own strong attractions but without the occasional ‘challenges’ of the latter (one senses that a larger number of people in Guadeloupe live ‘simply’ compared to a significant number on Dominica who live in or close to poverty). One could go on and on……


Linda’s Guest Blog:

I don’t have the depth of knowledge that Tim does about Celia and Anthony so I am not able to compare the couple with whom we have just spent two magical weeks with the husband and wife who set sail from Southampton all those months ago. These are some of my impressions of who they are now, and I trust something of what I share will make their life out here in the Caribbean real for those of you who delight in reading this blog. I feel privileged to have shared this time with them.

Tim has been around boats much of his life , which pretty much left me as the novice on this trip. Learning the essentials such as how to effectively flush the toilet, be economical with the shower water and how to find my way round the contents of the well-stocked fridge were all top priorities. Both Celia and Anthony from the outset encouraged us to get stuck in with many aspects of life on board. Rowing the dinghy from Tomia across the bay to the delightful French bakery at Les Saintes to get our daily supply of baguettes took me back to my teenage years on the waters at my local reservoir. A task I was readily able to embrace. But who’d have thought within days of this that I’d be at the helm of Tomia, attempting to steer a straight course (!) - Anthony’s concerned face popping up from the chart table at one stage said it all - in strong winds and cross currents on our sail from Les Saintes down to Dominica. This created a real sense of exhilaration and achievement as we felt the boat flying as effortlessly as the silver-tipped flying fish which kept us close company along the way.

If the sailing was something new and a challenge, when we reached Dominica I all too soon realised how my life in London had ill prepared me for what lay ahead. Celia and Anthony have honed and toned their muscles while they’ve been away. A sedentary job with the occasional game of tennis little prepared me for the rigours of climbing up steep, rugged pathways through the rainforest to see the Boiling Lake on Dominica –14 miles up and down and then up again, across bubbling sulphur pools, past tumbling waterfalls, all the while keeping an eye out for the elusive sisserou parrot, Dominica’s national bird! No parrot, but we did see a neatly coiled 8 foot boa constrictor sunning itself after a satisfactory kill. The skin was a subtle, surprisingly sensuous blue/black. While the snake scarcely shifted a coil, we all regrouped our energies and continued on our hike. The arduous climbs to reach the lake were well worth it, however, as we watched it roil in clouds of steam below us, the heat coming from volcanic activity some mere hundreds of feet below the lake. Enterprising locals a few miles away make good use of the hot water as they carry it via bamboo pipes to supply hot water sulphur baths where hikers can rest their weary bones.

We have been in search of the less travelled bays and Celia and Anthony have generously shared their favourite haunts with us as we’ve journeyed through Guadeloupe, Les Saintes and Dominica. They have made some good contacts along the way and it’s been heart-warming to hear them greeted by welcoming young men in fast motor boats, men who offer their services as guides, ferrymen for produce such as bananas, grapefruits and bread and, very importantly after a week on board, laundrymen for our sticky tee-shirts. One friendly guide, ever-present with a strong, helpful hand and a smile, was Pancho who led us on our demanding Boiling Lake tour and then on a river rock scramble up to Victoria Falls.

Days of activity have been followed by most welcome evenings of relaxation with rum punches (Macoucherie rum bought directly from a local distillery), sipped while sitting on board Tomia or on sandy, palm-fringed beaches watching spectacular sunsets. When horizons have been clear of cloud we’ve looked in hope and expectation for the elusive rayon vert. Anthony claims he’s seen the green flash as the sun’s rays depart to leave an inky black night, studded with stars.

Celia’s made sure our artistic side has not been neglected. She fell immediately on some new clarinet reeds we’d brought out for her and then promptly produced a treble and descant recorder. She and I enjoyed ourselves playing duets – not so sure about our captive audience! - while Tim practised his blues harmonica. I did wonder at what the nearby boats must have thought as strains of simple classical and more modern pieces drifted across the water to them.

Two weeks in close proximity can sometimes risk straining friendships, but we all remarked how well we’d got on. This was in great part achieved through both Celia and Anthony’s relaxed attitude and infinite patience with someone who was coming to grips with shipboard life for the first time. Every new day presented fresh Caribbean delights – diving pelicans, darting hummingbirds, the hint of dolphins ready to play, to name just three. Coming back to snow-bound London makes the sultry Caribbean seem much like a dream now. But Tomia, Celia and Anthony are still very much living that dream and I’m so pleased to have been able to share in their special adventure.

Hereward Cooke

We have just had friends on board for two weeks, who are preparing a guest blog, but our tragic news is the sudden death of my beloved uncle Hereward, last week. He was only 70, and apparently fighting fit; he had just bicycled 150 miles to Copenhagen as part of the Christian Aid delegation to the climate change conference.

He was a marvellous, kind, loving man, generous-hearted, opinionated, and determined to make the world a better place. I do admire him for not taking the easy and obvious path, but working hard all his life for what he thought was right. He had the rare ability to hold strong views – on a wide variety of subjects – but not to antagonise those who didn’t agree with him, and a fearless determination to put his Christian principles into practice on every possible occasion, while never taking himself totally seriously. He threw himself whole-heartedly into everything he did, from bullying Norwich Council into changing the paint they put on telephone junction boxes in order to make fly-posting impossible, to leading the Lib Dem group on the same Norwich Council twenty years later.

The last time we were all together was at my cousin Arthur’s wedding in Colorado this August, at which Hereward officiated. We had a lovely happy family time, helped as ever by Hereward’s easy good humour and never-failing ability to see the best in people.

He was, in short, a good man, and we shall miss him very much.

Martinique

Friday 27th November 2009, day 406, 7,477 miles. 14° 38’.66 N, 061° 08’.50 W. Case Pilote, Martinique

We scampered up to Martinique, with a lovely 15-20 knots from the south east, and gently undulating rollers that rush us along at 8 knots. The moon is new, so the stars shine brightly as we skim along. This is still one of the great pleasures of this trip – moving freely from place to place as and when we wish, using only the power of the wind. Being able to up and off when the time feels right, no searching for cheap air fares, or packing, or wondering about where to leave the car. Very nice.

For our second visit to Martinique we go into Le Marin, on the south east corner of the island. The town is at the head of a great big bay, with little mangrove-lined inlets all round. It has a reputation as one of the best hurricane holes in the Caribbean, and we can see why. The entrance to the bay is along a winding channel, not quite adequately buoyed, so Anthony is forced to suspend disbelief as I call up directions to him from the chart plotter, doglegging around unmarked reefs. To our delight, Minx, a boat we met in Grenada, is anchored just behind the spot we have chosen. We keep meeting lovely fun people everywhere, then they sail off and we sail off, and we never know when or if we shall see them again. Minx very sweetly bring us back a couple of baguettes from town – ah, la France.

The rest of the day is spent sorting out why the bilge fills up with water every time we go to sea. We first noticed this on the way up to Carriacou – I gave the bilge a few pumps for appearances’ sake, and … kept on pumping. We got to Carriacou, floated at anchor, nothing came in. Up to Bequia, the same thing. At sea, but only when we are sailing, the water comes in, at anchor it doesn’t. On the trip up to Martinique, we were pumping every half hour, 20 or so pumps, and noting the number of pumps in the log so we could see if it was increasing. Keeping at the back of our mind that we were passing the marina at Rodney Bay, where they could lift us out if necessary. At anchor in Martinique, no more water.

The diagnosis is that it must be coming in from the port side, as the harder we heel, the more water comes in. What have we repaired recently which involves water? The watermaker? The wrong side, and anyway the water in the bilge is salt-ish (as well as diesel-ish and all sorts of other things-ish beside, no doubt some swarf, a bit of engine oil …). The loo? Already checked and rechecked, and anyway, the forward part of the bilge is dry. The cockpit drains? A little damp, but no more than usual. In the end, Anthony checks the bilge pump, and, yes, that’s it. It’s non-return valve presumably failed as soon as it was installed, turning it from a bilge pump to one that works in reverse – an eglib pump. Luckily, now we know what the problem is, it’s easily fixed.

Le Marin is set up for yachts, with plenty of chandlers, repairers and welders, and we make good use of them, as well as the internet café (with boulangerie attached) where we spend hours tracking down parts and having them sent to our friends who are coming out to join us in two weeks’ time. They will get a prize if they can work out what all the assorted elbows and brushes and joints do. In the café, a tiny green gecko scampers around the table, very tame and inquisitive, but uninterested in proffered crumbs of chausson aux pommes. His tiny nostrils, and horse-like muzzle are available for close inspection. These geckos manage to appear like a small cute household pet, while showing absolutely no evidence of warmth for humans. So much for the effect of a bright enquiring eye!

Joy of joys, being in France, we can go shopping for cheeses and salami – our fridge now has the good stink of any decent delicatessen.

One day we take a break from cosseting Tomia, and rent a car and go off for a tour of the island. We take the scenic route up to Fort de France, then the N3 up through the centre of the island. In the southern part it is agricultural, much more organised than in the English (i.e. independent) islands, where it is more scrappy: little bits of cane with a few dasheen in between. This looks like “proper” fields, with somebody actually taking a rational approach to what is planted, how, when, why …

We drive up through the rain forest, around the base of the cloud-shrouded Mt Pelée, the volcano which erupted so devastatingly just over a hundred years ago. And then to the East coast, which we can never visit on Tomia, and drive down past lovely bays, with the Atlantic rollers crashing in. We lunch at Le Phare, unprepossessing from the outside, but good food inside: we eat le menu of accras de morue, poulet rôti avec frites, glace rhum raisin. Madame is most chatty and amusing, and we taste some nice banana flavoured rum. And then, get this, we find a palm-lined beach and sit on it for an hour or so. That doesn’t happen so often. On the way back, in the south, we drive through more rolling pastures, the trees are not parkland oaks or chestnuts, but still the resemblance is there.

It is all very French – it’s not like France, it is France. France with breadfruit and sugar cane, but still la France. One way to put a chill on a conversation with a friendly Martiniquais is to ask if they’ve been to France: “Vous voulez dire le métropole? [The mainland?]” they ask pointedly. Because how can you go to France when you are already in France? The France of Géant Casino, Conforama and Hyper U, of pharmacies with neon green serpents endlessly twirling down neon green staffs, the France of “sandwichs, snack, boissons”, “cédez le passage”, “chien méchant”, “ville jumelée”, of Travaux soutenus par l’Union Européenne, the France of strikes, Canal +, dual flushes and smelly cheeses. Workmen still sit by the side of the road in the shade, but here they are being lectured by someone who is visibly a foreman. Unlike the other islands, the Martiniquais see nothing essentially incongruous in the phrase “fun run”, and nothing sensible or healthy in working through your lunch hour. The cows may have the crescent horns and spiky shoulders of their African forebears, and an attendant court of egrets, but they are still destined to become steak tartare, or a cleverly butchered onglet, not an anonymous collection of gristly lumps for beef stew. This is France au bout de ses ongles, France to the shiny black tips of the boots of the blue-jodhpur’d motorbike traffic cops.

Bequia and St Vincent

Saturday 21st November 2009, day 400, 7,350 miles. 13° 07’.95 N, 061° 12’.12 W. Young’s Cut, St Vincent

And here we are, back in Bequia for a couple of days. It hasn’t changed – not surprising in six months, though to us it seems more like a year. The Rasta vegetable market is in full swing, with the nice old lady by the door with her grey plaits and floral print cotton shirt-waister, there is a terrible smell of sewage outside the post office, and the things we have had posted to us a month ago have not turned up. The vendors are spread out along the pathway by the water, with their palm leaf baskets, shell jewellery and crocheted caps in red, yellow and green, Doris’s grocery has everything you could want at prices that would make a Harrods customer tremble, and the internet café cum laundry is sprucing itself up, and has painted “LAUNDRY” in large letters on its roof so we can all see it.

On the Monday night we go to hear two friends from Grenada play their happy brand of jazz at an excellent French restaurant, and the following night they have supper with us. Stan is a gentle soul, Czech, emotional, garrulous, expressive. As supper goes on, and the beer and the wine and the whisky soak in, he moves closer and closer to Anthony, trying almost to hug him. Anthony, enjoying himself, at ease, but British, shrinks back and back, until he is squeezed into a corner of the cockpit, arms tightly folded across his chest, while Stan, Slavic and extremely drunk, looms affectionately over him. We finish the evening with a rousing chorus of When I’m Sixty Four, and wake up the 30 year olds on the charter boat moored close by.

Politics is on the menu in Bequia – there are little orange signs and posters stuck all over the place with a black fist pointing down, saying “I voting No”, and the occasional blue one, with the same fist, thumb up, saying “I voting Yes”. We ask several people what this is all about. The nice Rasta girl who makes the shell necklaces isn’t quite sure, but thinks it’s to do with taking the Queen’s head off the currency. The man in the garage is certain: it’s because the prime minister is a t’ief and wants to grab everybody’s land for himself, as well as to give the whole country over to that other t’ief, Hugo Chavez.

The manageress of the bookshop gives us a more factual analysis: the constitution needs changing; it was given to the country by the British at independence, and should be brought up to date. A constitutional commission has sat, taken evidence and made recommendations, many of which have been incorporated into the proposed constitution. But – pause – some people think – here we understand that this is what she thinks, but that she prefers for many reasons not to express this opinion in the first person – that some clauses have been added which are – another pause – not so good. There is a clause which allows land to be appropriated in the national interest, but without full value being paid. There is a clause which allows parliament to appoint the president, taking the power away from the voters. The Boundaries Commission is to be outside the scope of legal challenge. The DPP is to be answerable to the Prime Minister. And – this complaint unites everybody, and angers them more than anything – the government has spent EC$ 4 million on promoting the Yes campaign.

As a background to all this, there is an undercurrent of change all over the Eastern Caribbean. The status of the Privy Council as the highest court is being challenged, both by the British, who appear (from what we read in the papers here) to feel that it is being used for relatively trivial cases that should be decided at local level, and by the governments of the Caribbean, who are toying with the idea of setting up a CCJ, a Caribbean Court of Justice, which will be the supreme court for the region.

At the same time, Latin American governments, led by Chavez of Venezuela, are seeking to extend their influence over the area, and ease it out of the American / European orbit in which it runs. So far, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Antigua and Dominica have signed up to become members of ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of the Americas), an “attempt at regional economic integration based on a vision of social welfare, bartering and mutual economic aid”, as opposed to the free trade principles of CARICOM of which all the islands are members. Iran is an observer member of ALBA, which probably explains some of the wilder rumours we heard in SVG about the purpose of the referendum.

Chavez is not the only one seeking influence: a vote in the UN general assembly, or on the International Whaling Council make you a popular new best friend for China, Taiwan or Japan. China and Taiwan in particular seem to be fighting a quiet war of influence in the islands; each will have a stadium or a hotel or a bridge “Given in a spirit of brotherly friendship” from the people of one country or (most definitely or, never and) the other.


Grenada may be particularly susceptible to ??? as a leftist government is in power, for the first time since the revolution, coup and subsequent American invasion – or peace-keeping force, depending on your point of view. One of their first acts has been to release from prison the remaining people who were involved in the coup and the murder of the leader of the first revolutionary government, Maurice Bishop. But they have also renamed the airport and main road in his honour, so are keeping their options open.

The French islands, also, are having a referendum on independence early next year, though the consensus so far is that they would be mad to vote to remove the massive financial support that France – and the European Union – give.

A time of change. It may be in places like this that the impact of the financial crisis is ultimately felt, as the over-mortgaged governments of the developed world find they have spent all their surplus on propping up the bonus schemes of poorly-managed financial institutions, and have none left to support the efforts of the truly poor to find a safe path to democracy.


We move on up to St Vincent, the largest island in the group of islands that makes up St Vincent and the Grenadines. A busy island, with a slightly dodgy reputation for crime, and not a great deal in the way of natural beauty, we want to make a quick stop to climb the Soufrière volcano. It is a couple of thousand feet up from the place we leave the car, up through dense rain forest, where we can hear the rain pattering on the canopy a hundred feet above our heads. We hear a few birds with outlandish tinny whistles and resounding squawks, but see none. The last few hundred yards the fog comes down, and we are walking up steep shale – nothing much to be seen at the top but a terrible smell of sulphur, and a vertical drop down the inside of the crater.

The volcano is known as much for its residents as for its eruptions: the impenetrable bush around its slopes is the home of many Rastas, all self-sufficiently growing vegetables, most peacefully tending little plots of ganja on the side, and a few growing industrial quantities for dealing, which is where the crime problem is believed to stem from. One of the guys who lives up in the bush, and had been down for provisions, laid down his laden sack and stopped to chat, with the mist swirling around. What provisions do they bring, I wonder? Tobacco, of course … oil for cooking and lighting? Surely no one would lug a gas bottle all the way up there? Coconut cream, perhaps. A little piece of dried ham, to nibble on when vegetarianism pales? We make our way back down again, collecting a bag-full of sweet- and biscuit-wrappers and jettisoned plastic bottles.

That night, we have a break-in. I wake, as so often, to a sound … a slight clattering, is it just one of the normal noises Tomia makes in the night when the wind or the tide turns? No, this is different. I switch the light on, and the next thing is a quiet footstep over our heads. Then it all happened very quickly, Anthony went on deck and saw our intruder trying to keep out of sight on the side deck – it was an almost moonless night – and shouted and the thief slipped over the rails into the water and swam off with one of our phones, the one that’s good for people calling from England. And that’s it really. Not very serious in itself, but a nasty shock.

So now we go to bed with the washboards in, and my blackest, most clattery baking tray on the companionway steps. And I am able to sleep soundly again.

Tobago Cays

Sunday 15th November 2009, day 394, 7,321 miles. 12° 37’.88 N, 061° 21’.40 W. Tobago Cays

Everybody should see the Tobago Cays at least once in their life, so they get some idea of what it is like to visit paradise. It’s an aquarium writ large, with turtles, rays, tens of thousands of brightly coloured fish, clear blue water protected by the offshore reefs, tiny islands with white sandy beaches …

The water is swimming pool blue, though I hate to use such a suburban comparison for so pure and natural a phenomenon. What else in nature is that colour? Hyacinth and larkspur have more purple, while the bluest of skies never has that tinge of green. The robes of the Madonna are more subdued, less vibrant. Cornflower blue? No. It’s an almost electric, neon blue, but constantly changing, filled with light and liquid. And the waters, being protected, are teeming with fish. It makes you realise the impact fishing is having everywhere else. Turtles, rays, groupers. A flying gurnard, that looks as if it’s walking on its front fins – perhaps the timid cousin of that first fish that climbed from the sea to the land all those generations ago? A 5ft long barracuda, with its vicious gangster stare. Something large and thuggish, staring out from a hole in the rocks, burping patiently while it waited for something toothsome to pass within reach. A flat round fish, at least 12” diameter, circling us with, as far as is possible, an evil look on his face. What was he protecting from us? Once he opened his mouth to reveal five or six tiny but sharp teeth. Many of the black and white splodged, rectangular trunk fish, their tiny little fins fluttering constantly to stay in place – including one quite close to the surface, which, when I pursue it, turns its ugly face on me as if to say “Yeah? Do you want to make something of it?”

And all the “pretties”: wrasse and damsel fish, sergeant majors, goatfish with their whiskers churning up the sand, butterfly fish, fairy basslets, the rock beauty and the barred hamlet. Shoals of purplish blue tang, the size of an upturned dinner plate, with their smiling gills and surprisingly yellow offspring. The squirrel fish, russet with puppy dog big brown eyes. The multicoloured parrot fish: stoplight, redband and midnight, and the most colourful of them all, the queen triggerfish, gaudily made up with turquoise and yellow lipstick over bright green foundation.

And why aren’t there photos of all these amazingly coloured fish? Our expensive, supposedly waterproof camera is discovered to be leaking. It has waited till the day before we get to the clearest, most fish-filled place in the whole Caribbean to give up. Another irritation is that, for the second time, Anthony’s front tooth pops out while he is snorkelling, and disappears to the bottom where it vanishes into the sand before he has time to see where it went. So he is back to a piratical grin.

We told Tomia before we left Grenada that she would be well advised to throw up any further little problems while we were there, within (relatively) easy reach of two (relatively) well stocked chandleries. Either she wasn’t listening, or has a warped sense of humour (or she can read, a frightening thought) because Anthony spent most of Wednesday dismantling and reassembling the watermaker, having replaced a shower pump the day before, and sorted a loose wire on the engine the day before that. Now we just have to mend a switch for the other shower pump, fix an occasionally leaking seal round a hatch, and find out a way of retrieving a drill bit which fell into the shower drain and remains obstinately out of reach. If we were Danish, she would be in danger of being renamed Jødtaa – Just One Damn Thing After Another. But she has brought us to this beautiful spot, and for that we are grateful.

Carriacou

Monday 9th November 2009, day 388, 7,298 miles. 12° 29’.04 N, 061° 27’.66 W. Hillsborough, Carriacou.


Carriacou and Petite Martinique. Two tiny islands, with a combined surface area of 6 square miles, meriting just a few column inches in the Lonely Planet guide,. How long can it take us to visit them? We feel short changed and rushed leaving eight days after we arrived.

Carriacou is by far the larger of the two. We anchor in the pleasant Tyrrel Bay, and tie up our dinghy watched patiently by a bus driver. No danger of his driving off while potential passengers are around!

The capital, Hillsborough, is a friendly little place, where the Bullen family seem to hold the reins of commerce, owning the pharmacy, the largest supermarket, and the Industrious Stores. The two streets have the usual shops, all selling the same mix of clothes, shoes, kitchen goods, plastic flowers and chairs, ornaments, and whatever else has taken the owner’s eye. The banks, in a civilised way, have a special fast track queue for senior citizens. A tiny museum shows some Amerindian and Carib relics, and traces some history of the tribal areas from where the original slaves were brought.

We travel out by bus to the village of Windward, the centre of local boatbuilding. Three boats are under construction – or rather, have been and will be, but are “resting” just now. The boats are wooden, built without obvious plans into a solid traditional workboat design, with the look of being able to sail into a whale and not notice. Grenada was pretty laid back, but we notice the change of pace coming to Carriacou, and then down another gear in Petite Martinique. In Grenada, the bus stops for you wherever you want. On Carriacou, it takes you on a free sight-seeing tour, or detours to a passenger’s (I almost said guest’s) office to pick up papers. On Petite Martinique, there is no bus at all…

On an island like Carriacou, where people are so very friendly and apparently content and at ease with their lives, the contrast with the poverty of many is thought-provoking. At first, dazzled by the sunshine, the fruits and flowers, the bright colours, the natural beauty, and lulled by the warmth and directness of every one we meet, the tumbledown houses by the roadside seem just part of the overall picturesqueness and general difference. But then it starts to come into focus: that beautiful slim girl, with the brightly coloured top and intricately braided hair, has just walked out of a two room house, whose windows are rotting, whose corrugated iron roof is patched and rusting, which probably houses a family of six or eight people, all of whom share that unthinkable lopsided privy down by the mango tree.

By any of the material standards of the West: housing, education, health care, sanitation, pensions, possessions, these people are deprived. They are not living in some Rousseauesque natural idyll, they are living in poverty. And yet, there is no sense, or at least none that we ever pick up, of complaint, or bitterness or resentment, or even unhappiness. My American friend, Bart, says that all we see is the friendly smiles for the tourists, and that a simmering cauldron of anger lies beneath this. I am not so sure. There is a tourist smile, of course, and we see it when somebody is trying to hassle us onto a bus we don’t want to board, or circling the boat with a load of T shirts. But it is hard to fake the open warmth of the greetings all round the islands, hard to fake the ease with which people talk about their homes and families, hard to fake the welcome you get as soon as you show an interest in everyday life and talk about your own.

Which is not to say that you can’t offend people. Starting to talk to someone without first wishing them good day and asking how they are is rude. Losing your temper is a sign of poor manners. Not living up to the local standards of community and sharing is an offence - one which we are guilty of every day, as we glide over the surface in our cocooned luxury.

Then we get a counter-picture to our overall impression of harmony when reading the autobiography of the only person in recent history to have received a VC that was not posthumous: Johnson Beharry, a Grenadian. If you see the book, Barefoot Soldier, it’s strongly recommended. He writes of the difficulties of growing up with an alcoholic father and no income, in the Grenadian countryside. He describes how many young men take the pleasure principle to such an extent that they spend their days sitting on a wall drinking rum. He tells how hard it is for someone with drive and ambition to succeed with the blessings of their community, and how many people there are who want to extend the concept of sharing to simply letting somebody else work, and then pass the proceeds around.

The longer we stay here, the less I realise we know about islanders’ lives and what they think about them. And the more I realise that applying my own language to their experience and expectations will not necessarily lead to understanding.

So back to what we do know about: Our second pair of lobsters this trip is sold to us in Petite Martinique. The advice this time is to eat them fresh fresh fresh, which means keeping them in a bucket of seawater for the afternoon. They are an active and curious couple – or simply find the bucket a little constraining – so we put the bucket in the cockpit when we go ashore. Surely, even standing on each others’ backs, they won’t be able to scale 18” of sheer fibreglass.

Petite Martinique is tiny, perhaps a mile long. We walk the road in one direction, admiring the view north over the Grenadines, picking out Tobago Cays, Canouan, Mustique, and hazy in the distance the outlines of Bequia. Then turn around and walk to the other end of the road, ending up having described a letter C which leaves out the eastern side of the island.

The dogs on this island are different to the standard multi-breed Dogg that populates everywhere else: sandy brown, lightly built, pointy head, ears folded over in neat or lopsided triangles, curly tail held at a jaunty angle. The dogs of Petite Martinique are shorter, whiter, hairier, yappier … we imagine, not so long ago, a visiting West Highland Terrier having a testosterone-fuelled field day in the island’s canine gene pool.

From the island we take the dinghy out to a reef with two tiny islets of pure white sand, one called Punaise (drawing pin) which suits it well. We swim, snorkel, sit on the sand and look at the sea, plan our trip to the Tobago Cays … a Friday evening in November … sitting in the office, darkness has fallen already, streetlights shining on damp pavements, thinking about packing up, but dreading the crowded Central Line, the hordes at Liverpool Street, is it worth staying half an hour longer to have a chance of getting a seat on the train …

On Sunday, in our cleanest [only presentable pair of ] navy blue shorts, we went to the church in Hillsborough back on Carriacou. The church itself is in fine shape, but the attendant buildings next door are still ruined, a legacy of Hurricane Ivan. Although all the windows are open, there is no wind and the heat is stifling. The congregation is celebrating the 90th birthday of Tanty (Aunt) Rose, whose children, grand-children and great-grand-children fill the pews. The tiniest ones presented in a bunch of brightly coloured frills, like sugared almonds, the six year olds best-frocked and simmering with barely repressed mischief. Tanty Rose is wheeled in, frail, bent and cloudy-eyed, and parked, after two or three false starts, at the front, from where a low muttering is heard during pauses in the service. Poor old thing, we think. Not a bit of it. After the sermon, the priest says: “Well, I know you always like to have the last word, Tan Rose” and hands her the microphone. And off she goes. Parents! You should be bringing your children up better, teaching them respect. Children! You should listen to your parents and do your homework. Everybody should be cleaner, on time, more polite, sitting up straight, respecting their elders and betters, working harder, not fidgeting in the Lord’s house. And that, in case we hadn’t realised, means us. It is with some difficulty that the priest regains control of the service.

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We leave you with this advertisement from the Grenadian New Today paper:

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