31st October 2025 | Odometer: 207nm | St Vincent & The Grenadines
The day after our volcano hike, we shifted the boat around to Cumberland Bay – just one bay to the north. We did a stern-to docking and tied off to a palm tree.
We spent all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday in a completely chill state. We didn’t go ashore at all and basically just recovered, swam and completely vegged out. The weather decided to match our mood and there were several days of grey, raininess. This suited us perfectly as we enjoyed doing very little in the cool weather. The bay was really empty – just us and one other couple on a sailing monohull; we were in the off days from the charter boat cycle.
We did a little snorkelling and I SUPed around the bay each evening. We watched the local fisherman catch bait fish and enjoyed the views of the black sand beach surrounded by steep cliffs. Sunsets over the water framed by the bay were also delightful.
The snorkelling was starting to get a little more interesting and the birdlife was very entertaining also. Being here really did make us both feel incredibly lucky š
The Battle of the Bilge
We thought we had finally figured out why the bilge was full of salty water – a poor installation of a bilge pump.
We now had a choice facing us – install a check valve to prevent flow back into the boat or re-route the entire outlet pipe and add an antisiphon loop. The first one is cheap and easy, but the valves are known to fail after a short period of time (1-2 years) and require a fair bit of maintenance. The anti-siphon loop is also cheap and requires no maintenance but it is a pain in the butt to install due to the locations of the pipes / outlets etc for this particular pump.
Hmm, we decided to go with the anti-siphon loop and planned our install. Funnily enough, it turned out we had all the parts needed in our plumbing box, brand new, from one of the previous owners. Ryan jumped in the bilge to fix it with the spares lying around and wah-lah – done.
Because the anti-siphon loop is higher than the water line, even when heeled over, water will not be able to feed into the boat from the ocean. Feeling optimistic that bilge water problem is solved – crossing my fingers and toes! š¤
Leaving St Vincent & The Grenadines
In order to leave St Vincent and the Grenadines we needed to check out of the country at one of the immigration offices. On Monday morning, I rang the head office and asked if the Chateaubelair office was open; they said yes, opening at 8.30 am. I double checked, so we are good to check out today? Yes, yes.
All good then, we pulled up our anchor and moved around to Chateaubelair. After anchoring and waiting and dinghying into the main town; we get to the immigration office – closed on Mondays. Sigh.
We didn’t really want to stay in Chateaubelair and so we headed back to Cumberland Bay again for another night. We dinghied around to Walillabou Bay for the immigration office there.
Here is a classic “reality” of boat life – the immigration office is opening at 4pm, but they don’t actually get there til 4.40pm… annnnd you forgot to put rid on and my apparently my blood is way more delicious than Ryan’s… so I have to march around pretending to be the Minister for Silly Walks for 40 minutes to keep the mosquitoes off haha!
“Pirates”
You might wonder if we had to check out in Wallilabou Bay, why didn’t we just take the boat and anchor there again rather than going to Cumberland and then traversing around on the dinghy. Which leads into the other aspect of boat life I haven’t really covered much so farā¦ the boat vendors.
In Carriacou, there was a friendly guy who would swing past your boat on his little runabout and see if you needed anything. He would take trash, or bring you back fresh fish or produce for a small fee + the price of the fish. We bought a fish off him once and it was delicious. He was very polite and didn’t bother you at all.
As we headed into the Southern Grenadines there was a few more boat vendorsā¦ Pretty much whenever you arrive into an anchorage someone would approach you and offer to tie your lines to the mooring ball for you for a small tip. In a marine park, its usually the ranger and there is no fee its just part of the marine park fees for the night. Great!
Then there are the other boat vendors, they approach and offer you fresh fruit, or coconuts or to take your trash or go and buy things for you. Many of them sell home made jewellry etc. This wasn’t too much through Union, Mayreau, Canouan. Generally, they are very polite, don’t approach your boat too close and not overly pushy. They leave you alone after you say no or buy a coconut or bananas or what not. No issues here.
Everyone had warned us about St Vincent though that it was different and less safe. The stereotype definitely exists for a reason. On arriving into Wallilabou Bay (our first bay in St Vincent) we had not one but FOUR different guys hanging about in hard little boats. We were doing our first stern-to tie up and had called ahead to the restaurant for a mooring so we knew one of them was from the restaurant.. but which one? No markings on the boats, just four random guys yelling for our attention.
We figured out which one and tried to talk to him while ignoring the others, but while we were still anchoring – Ryan was driving and I was out the back dealing with the lines – there was one guy yelling at Ryan trying to get his attention to buy bananas or some such; another guy was literally standing on his boat and hanging off our back railing trying to talk to me while I was trying to tie us off – most disconcerting. And the last guy was just hanging out staring at us both. It’s incredibly hard to deal with a new anchorage, a new anchoring tie up, and multiple men trying to get your attention and stay calm and not crash the boat into the broken down dock we are tying to. š”
We both found the St Vincent boat vendors quite confronting compared to other areas because they would come right up to the boat and grab onto it while they were trying to talk to you or make a sale. Sometimes this felt very intrusive especially if they stood up and leaned over onto the deck; or basically were on our swim platform. Meanwhile, their hard hull boats are literally banging into the side of our boat and there is now some deep gouges and paint scrapes all along both sides of Perspective.
Due to their proximity and the damage we knew was being done, it made it hard to empathise or want to buy things from them. This was further exacerbated by some of them asking for beer or demanding a glass of water. Another cruiser we chatted to about it commented that the boat vendors here have spent so much time thinking about the Pirates of the Caribbean they have become them! It’s become a bit of a code word for us now – there’s a lot of pirates here!
I don’t know, I have such mixed feelings about it all. The yachts bring much needed income, and we want to support the locals in a reasonable way, but we are also not keen to just give things to the rude and pushy guys as it ensures that they will try that again with the next yacht. The more yachties have bad experiences and they talk about it to each other; the less people want to go there, which overall leads to less money for the locals.
We were warned off St Vincent many times for exactly this but chose to go there anyway. I am very glad we did because the volcano hike was amazing, the first few nights in Cumberland Bay were lovely and we had an incredibly delicious dinner at one of the local restaurants. I don’t know if we handled the situations correctly or if there was a better way we could have done things but we did the best we could.
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