26th October 2025 | Odometer: 196nm | St Vincent & The Grenadines
Mayreau Round Two
Leaving the Tobago Cays, we hopped back over to Mayreau for a night in the gorgeous Saltwhistle Bay (aka Carnash Bay on Google Maps) – a lengthy journey of 20 minutes haha. This has to be one of the most pristine beaches I have ever experienced. I absolutely loved it here.
The bay is a deep horseshoe, and very comfortable inside. I sup’d around and went to shore. The water is a gentle gradient into clear, calm water over bright white sand. Swimming is a dream and the sand is so soft and comfortable. With palm trees all along the beach and hanging way out over the water you can get a winning combination of beach and shade.
It’s understandably a very popular spot with the charter cruisers and watching some of the super confident captains come in at high speeds into the anchorage is also entertaining. There is a lot of… chaos… from the charter cats doing things haha. We were glad we came in early and could just sit on the back deck and laugh at the show… as long as it wasn’t too close to us! haha.
A particular moment that stood out was when a massive charter cat came cruising into the bay between boats with quite a bit of pace, then the captain pulls out a huge conch shell and blasts two long horn blasts on it! It was surprisingly loud! He rips a fast 360 right on the edge of the beach just as we were sure he was about to run aground, comes flying back through to grab a mooring ball right next to us. While still moving along at quite a clip one of the guests onboard dived over the side 🫣 – this is pretty dangerous with engines still running and props spinning in the water. The captain blithely carried on whilst the other passengers ran about yelling and making a general ruckus at the guy who had jumped in. It was… definitely a minute haha.
Dragging ourselves away from the entertainment, we decided to take a quick check of the bilge to be sure it was still dry – only to find nope… it was… really full. Well we were in a marine park and definitely not the place to empty bilges! So we closed the floor and pretended we hadn’t seen it for another night! I really hope the bilge pump doesn’t fail!
I enjoyed some hammock time (or rather “cocoon” time) then later found a nice shady spot for a fresh coconut (plus a sneaky dash of malibu haha. Ryan snorkelled all up along the point.
We went for a long walk along the windward side beach and had it all to ourselves, such an amazing feeling in these beautiful places. The sargassum weed tends to pile up significantly on the windward side of these islands; it becomes a strangely spongy surface to walk along.
The swimming throughout this bay is just super nice, at only 2 – 2.5m deep with clear water and sandy bottoms, many folks just swim to shore from their boat or SUP. Absolutely gorgeous. It’s quite a party bay with lots of folks drinking cocktails along the beach and in the water; the larger cats are partying and music filters through the evening air. People were jumping in the water, swimming and just having a great time til late in the night.
Overnighting in Canouan
Although we intended to stay a couple of nights here, we ended up picking up the next day and shifting round to Canouan again as a northerly swell had picked up in the early morning and was rolling us around a bit. We were both looking at each other like 🤢… time to go!
Canouan was a good opportunity to empty the bilge… again. We were thinking this might be still related to the hot water system? Hard to tell as there was quite a bit of oil from the engine in it… we decided to put engine nappies in to keep all the oil separate and maybe we would be able to figure out where it was coming from.
A sunset snorkel and SUP was a nice way to round out the day. The starfish here are prolific and enormous – Ryan got a cute shot of one going for a walk.
Bequia Beckons
We trekked back up to Bequia, avoiding the unfortunate “hell zone” north of Canouan. I spent quite a bit of time watching the flying fish leaping off the water in our bow wave.
Arriving in Bequia felt like arriving back to a good friend’s house – comfortable and pleasant. We anchored in almost the exact same spot and were ready to relax… only, yes, the bilge was full of water – again!
Except, this time, it wasn’t completely full of oil (yey!). After a small taste test we concluded it was seawater. But how? We inspected all the possible places seawater could be getting into the boat… then, ah hah! Ryan realised it was the bilge pump in the middle of the ship!
I tried to do a little sketch to show what we found… the thru-hull is very poorly placed. It’s only just above the waterline! So when you are stationary it’s all good, but when you are underway and the boat leans over (the dashed blue line) – the seawater comes in the hole, flows down to the pump and back flows into the bilge! The bilge fills up with water and it’s only after it gets quite high that the bilge pump turns on and pumps some out. This is actually an insane installation of a bilge pump as it’s completely opposite to what it’s supposed to do!
Not sure what we are going to do about that! We ran around town provisioning and also topped up with water once more from the water delivery boat. It was kind of awesome as a cruise ship was anchored in the harbour and they were delivering passengers to and from the dock. The cruise ship looks so otherworldly next to the quaint architecture of Bequia; exacerbated by the dinghies / life pods for passengers that look like little spacecraft too. It really felt like a sci fi underway; advanced civilization landing amongst a small village.
The cruise ship put on a great fireworks display on the beach next to us that evening; and it felt like a private display just for us.
The evening was rounded out by one of our neighbours dropping by to gift us a fresh fish as they had caught so many they didn’t want to fillet anymore! It was the perfect ending to the day as I had just been debating what to make for dinner and the answer was handed to me – fish and salad wraps. Obviously some of the local chocolate for dessert – I am totally hooked on the St Vincent chocolate – it’s ridiculously delicious!
Bequia easily remains one of my favourite places on the trip so far.
Onwards to St Vincent
We departed early and headed to St Vincent island for about a 3 hour journey. This was such a chill trip and the conditions were really nice throughout. Although we intended to stop in the Blue Lagoon on the southern end; on arrival it was just really uncomfortable with no protection from the waves. The first mooring ball we tried to get was totally broken and there were several other damaged ones in the bay. It felt all a bit rundown and not really worth the discomfort!
We headed around to the next bay up the coast line; Wallilabou Bay. On arrival into the bay you are greeted by this huge rock arch – it looks pretty epic! And familiar!?
This trip is starting to feel like we are on a tour of the Pirates of the Caribbean film set!
Wallilabou Bay has really leaned into their identity as a film set for one of the towns in the movie; and the restaurant here has set up a lot of props and kept the building facades etc. It’s pretty cool but also getting to be a little dated now. They still have the dock from where this moment was filmed and lots of tourists come just to see that – it’s a bit funny though as in classic movie set style; the real dock is completely separate and they built just this tiny bit of dock out in the middle of the bay to shoot this scene haha.
The west coastline along St Vincent is truly awesome. There are steep cliffs exposed and dropping straight into the water; while the topsides are covered in vibrant greenery. The palm trees peek out from amongst the dense foliage; and a surprising number of agave and other succulents and cacti are hanging precariously from the rocks. Fig trees abound and some have grown to epic proportions dangling their new roots from way up the hillside down the cliffs. The cliffs bound beautiful bays, some filled with rocks, others with striking black sand beaches. Many of the cliff edges have eroded out underneath creating dramatic overhangs, deep crevasses and many, many caves. The best way to find these is to watch for the water exploding out the small openings when a large swell rolls in. Each time you think you have seen the best or most dramatic point, you come around to the next bay and find a whole nother incredible scene.
We hit the hay early as the next day we were going to climb the Mount Soufriere Volcano!
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