Our Grand Adventure

10th October 2025 | Odometer: 55.4nm | Grenada

The Sandy Island of Carriacou was our next destination – although only a short hop around the point from Tyrell Bay to the marine park, it was a bit rolly as we came around the corner. 

The marine park here requires you to pull up a mooring ball if you are in the protected areas. It was quite windy and in shallow, tight quarters to navigate to get the mooring ball. Here is my driving path to pick up the ball!

I think the neighbour came out to have a laugh and eventually the marine park ranger showed up and gave us a hand. Ryan loyally replied we were “practising” when the ranger asked if I was having trouble manoeuvring. 😆

It looks and sounds bad, but one of the key things our training captain stressed to us over and over is it doesn’t matter how long it takes or how many goes you have, you just stay calm and try again. Sometimes conditions out of your control throw off the perfect line you had (e.g. a water taxi ripping past and throwing up a huge wake at just the right moment to make reaching the mooring ball impossible, or, the marine park ranger put his boat right between us and the ball while he was ‘helping’ us haha); and there is nothing for it but to loop around and try again. I’m pretty pleased to say we stayed calm and collected through the whole thing and the only bit that got my heart rate up was when the wind was really pushing us and we were turning quite close to the shore and the depth dropped to 1.5m ~5ft (we need 1.2m ~4ft of water for our boat hahaha 😅 ).

The mooring ball we got was absolutely fantastic and we couldn’t have asked for anything better! The winds died down later in the day and the view was incredible.

We snorkelled around the bay and went for a walk along the beach. We saw a turtle within a few moments of turning off the engines; just a really beautiful spot.

Although it was a bit overcast and dark for snorkelling, we made a short “aquarium” style video to show some of the cute little fish around.

They say cruising is just boat work in beautiful places – well, here is Ryan installing our starlink.

And of course, we enjoyed the sunset with a rum on the roof.

Dragging Ourselves Away

Despite how gorgeous this spot was, we only stayed the one night…. We FINALLY had haircuts booked with a hairdresser who did caucasian hair! Winning! But to get to this appointment, we needed to get back to the mainland Carriacou.

We made our way to Hillsborough Bay where the cruiser’s guide assured us we could pull up the dinghy at a beach bar and catch a bus over to Tyrell Bay where the appointment was…. Regrettably, we had underestimated the hurricane damage again and all that was left of the beach bar was one pink wall and some concrete.

Without any trees or a safe dock to tie the dinghy to we really couldn’t leave it here for hours… so we upped anchor and headed back round to Tyrell Bay. This time, we took our sweet time finding the right anchor spot and once we had it, and we settled in we both felt way, way better than last time. 

Even though there were boats all around we had checked out to ensure that all were on anchor, there were no fishing moorings to hook us and there was definitely 100percent plenty of room. A lot of folks we have met have advised staying onboard for at least an hour after anchoring to keep an eye on how the wind and anchor settle out. We have taken this advice to heart and always do this when we anchor. Dropping the anchor takes about 20minutes or so and generally shifting the boat around just takes time. But, it’s all worth taking the time to do it right as we both felt infinitely better about this spot and where we were.

The Best Hair Salon Ever?

We had organised this hair appointment via Facebook Messenger based on some recommendations in one of the local cruiser pages. Karin was great! She told us to meet her at one of the local eateries right next to where we docked the dinghy. We let her know once we were there and her boyfriend came by and picked us up. After a short drive up the hill to her bar, Lucky’s, we were sitting outside on the verandah with beers getting haircuts to this view:

It’s actually a wonderful experience to have your hair cut and not have to stare at yourself the whole time. 

Karin knew all about Carriacou and had been there for several years. She filled us in on the status of quite a few of the hikes and trails I had been wanting to do around the area while she gave us both very much needed haircuts.

I mentioned I had been craving a pizza and she recommended a local bar on the way back to our dinghy. After the cuts we wandered back via there and grabbed a steaming hot pizza – ham, salami and pineapple – delicious with a thin crispy crust and lots of cheese.

We headed back to the boat – this time we had remembered to leave a light on for our return!

Turtles regularly make appearances around the boat, and each night we saw a white bat fishing for tiny surface fish. Pretty hard to capture but we had a go – it definitely liked the light off our boat as it attracts the little fish to the surface.

A much more successful experience of Tyrell Bay!