Our Grand Adventure

8th October 2025 | Odometer: 51.9nm | Grenada

While at Hog Island, we had gotten the word – our final packages had been received at the Grenada Yacht Club… we just had to go round and pick them up. We were very keen to start heading northwards but the weather was not quite ready for us – our boat would not do well in Northerly swells in the northern areas of Grenada we wanted to go to but these were forecast to die down after our third night. Once the weather was ready for us we set out to go!

On the morning of departure we woke up around 6am, breakfasted and putted around the point back to the Grenada Yacht Club. We got there right as it was about to open so we pulled up on the fuel dock and tied off. (We were a little proud of ourselves as this was the first time we had pulled up ourselves and I had had to step off to handle the lines myself. No help from the dockmaster ).

Once the staff were ready, we filled up our water tanks (first water tank fill up!) and I headed up to the office to get our final packages. I was glad I had the chance to say goodbye to Steve, one of the local guys who works in the marina. 

Steve is the most cheerful person to be around and is constantly waving, calling out greetings to passing by friends on boats and wants to have a chat. Although I’m never entirely sure if we are having the same conversation, he is so friendly and cheerful he always bring a smile. I’ll miss his enthusiasm around the marina for sure.

Heading North

We carried on up the coast line past a number of small bays and towns. We had originally thought we would spend some time in these but we were just too excited to be heading north and decided to keep on going – our first Island Crossing!

We skirted the exclusion zone past an underwater volcano called Kick Em Jenny; with the interesting rock formations of Rhonde Island to our starboard side (right side). The weather was perfect for trawlers, barely a ripple, but not so perfect for sailing – we passed two sailboats travelling at a snail’s pace of 1 knot.

Tyrell Bay, Carriacou

Arriving into Tyrell Bay, Carriacou was a bit nerve wracking. It’s a relatively full harbour, and there are a LOT of busted down boats from Hurricane Beryl which hit the town in 2024. We anchored up, and only after we were all set and engines off realised that one of the boats next to us was on a mooring ball… hmm… this called into question all our assumptions of swing radius and distances between other boats. So with a little anxiety and lots of checking the wind we determined we were ok and decided to wait and see how it went. Ryan also dove the anchor to check it was set correctly.

We met a Canadian couple who bobbed over from their boat on pool noodles to say hi. We had unintentionally anchored right next to the only other trawler in the bay, a lovely little Kadey Krogan 39. The Kadey Krogan trawlers was the style we were wanting to buy when we were boat looking so we both had major heart eyes for it immediately haha. The four of us nerded out over trawlers and swapped stories. They had to pull it out for some work to be done the next day.

The sunset in a new location was such a weird feeling. We were both feeling a bit excited, a bit anxious for our first night on anchor. The sunset was gorgeous from the roof; and the view around the bay was really interesting with a lagoon to the northern side, the hills rising on the eastern side and a point to the south.

The following day, we decided to explore Carriacou, I had read so many great little things to see and do in the cruiser’s guide for the area. I hadn’t realised just how out of date the guide was…. Nearly everything had been destroyed in Hurricane Beryl in July 2024. Many of the shops had closed, there was little food to be had and a lot of destroyed houses and shops. The folks here are very much still in recovery mode with most houses having only one or two habitable rooms restored and visible damage everywhere still. 

It must have been absolutely terrifying for them to be here through the hurricane; with sustained winds of 240km/hr (150mph), the Category 4 storm caused near total destruction. The UN reported 100% of the population was affected. I don’t know where people even went while it was happening as the houses don’t have basements and for weeks after getting food and shelter was a massive challenge with incredibly rough sea states delaying deliveries of aid and the runway being reduced to fly by sight only. 

Given Grenada is considered a hurricane hole or safer area; a lot of boats were tied up into the mangroves. Even though a lot of boats survived the event an enormous amount are missing masts, stanchions or were sunk completely. The mangroves had catamarans flip completely upside down; and the bay is full of markers of sunk boats.

Despite all this, the people here are super friendly, we are regularly greeted and told to “enjoy de island!” and “welcome to carriacou!”. There is no need to ever walk quickly anywhere and the main road is more like a nice walkway where you occasionally step to one side to let the cars pass. I’m so impressed by the resiliency of the people here, and I hope I can take this feeling of gratitude for having anything at all, and remind myself of it whenever some silly first world problem gets me down in the future.

We went to the chandlery for some boat repair / maintenance / project items and found it decently stocked. The grocery store was a slightly different matter…

Hmm… provisioning may be a challenge here!

The Night of Errors… or, the Night of My Terrors

After heading back to the boat we decided to re-anchor as two fishing moorings had gone under the hull while we were away from the boat, the wind would be shifting and we were potentially going to swing further than we were comfortable with.

So we re-anchored – Ryan felt better but I felt very nervous. After waiting an hour to see how it settled out we decided to do the walk to the point I had read about. We tied up our dinghy at the marina and headed straight up a hill! It was well steep! The walk was meandering with cute houses all around. The views through the breaks in the scrub were gorgeous and we encountered quite a few sheep (which I swear looked like goats but the locals assured me were sheep 😂). The views over the southern end of Carriacou were gorgeous.

Tyrell Bay from the Hillside – can you spot Perspective?

We headed back to the marina where we intended to get a restaurant dinner. Delicious food and a pina colada – it was a great meal. While we were eating a big squall blew through and the rain came down really hard! We checked the radar and saw that there was a bit of a break between squalls coming… we quickly paid up, and dashed back to the dinghy…. Only to find the swells had pushed it underneath the dock! 🫣

This is NOT GOOD. It had swung round underneath an open section neither of us had noticed on the way in and it was getting bashed into the underside pretty hard. We were both upset at ourselves for not noticing the dock did not have protective planking to the one side – the wind had changed direction since we arrived. After pulling it out we were very relieved to find it only had surface damage on the engine case and seemed otherwise unharmed. Phew.

Dinner and the walk had both taken longer than expected so we were making our way back to the boat in the dark (another first). We had forgotten to leave the anchor light or back deck lights on when we left (oops) so we were trying to find a short, small trawler at night in the dark in the rain with lots of bigger yachts around us. The water taxis come flying through at high speeds and I couldn’t stop imagining one of them plowing into us.

We found our way back to the boat but the squalls had kicked up quite a bit of choppy waves meaning getting back on board was a bit more intense than expected. Remember also this was our third night ever getting on and off the boat with the dinghy… so everything was new and different and just a little stressful already. 

To add to the feeling the wind direction change had swung us around and we were now CLOSE, like 1 boat length close, to a catamaran behind us that had previously been next to us (eeep). For experienced old sea dogs this might be perfectly fine but I felt like we were trying to reverse parallel a double semi trailer in a Woolworths car park. Everything felt too close and too choppy and it was dark and rainy and new and frankly everything scared me right then.

I pretty much spent the next hour sitting in the pilot house feeling sick and scared and anxious. Despite Ryan’s reassurances I couldn’t seem to snap out of it and had a pretty miserable evening worrying about everything. The delicious dinner was a distant memory and the cocktail felt like a regrettable choice. After watching the surrounds for long enough to reassure myself we weren’t in fact going to drift away and crash into someone’s expensive yacht I sent myself to bed and tried to pretend I was anywhere else. The phrase “next time we just build a damn house!” may have passed my lips.

I’m pleased to report we woke up in the morning. The boat was fine, we were fine and the dinghy was fine. We upped anchor and headed off to our next destination. We can only get better at all this…. Right? 

Right!?