Updates Windward Islands |
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| Last edited:06/30/08 |
SPECIAL UPDATE The Caribbean Caricom countries have signed onto a protocol called API. It seems likely we have now escaped the consequences of this bureaucratic nightmare for this year. But keep current here
Click to post your own updates or read others Corrections to the 13th edition. (2007-2008) (Sorry, I jumped the gun a bit taking off the updates to the last version, but the new ones will be available by December 20th 2006) You can download the waypoints given in this guide from our GPS page. The names of the waypoints are given in the new guide on the sketch charts. CORRECTIONS TO GUIDE (not updates) Page 39 - Mileage Chart On the lower tier, Castries, Marigot, Pitons, Vieux Fort, have been repeated and the lower set should be replaced in the same order with: Kingstown, Young Island, Admiralty Bay, Friendship Bay. I f you would like to print out the graphic again, I have posted two version below. The first should print out from any internet cafe, but I am not sure what quality you will get. The second is higher resolution if you have a program so you can make it print out at the correct size (the correct size is about 5 inches by 8 inches mileage chart - any internet cafe Page 350. Sketch chart error -
there is a waypoint error in our sketch chart of Grand mal to Beausejour
Bay. The waypoint for Grand Mal reads 12° 04.4'N Page 261 Auberge des Grenadines Ad. web page is: www.caribrestaurant.com not as spelt in the guide.
Dive Grenada I was working with Phil at Dive Grenada in the positioning of buoys for the new marine park on Grenada's west coast. He pointed out to me later that I did not mention his dive company. My fault - so here it is. Dive Grenada offers a friendly, flexible and personal service to all our divers. Located on the famous Grand Anse Beach at the Flamboyant Hotel, we are strategically based to reach the majority of dive sites in only 10 minutes with our custom built dive boat. We are offering ‘Tax Free’ diving and a 10% discount to all ‘Cruisers’ that use us over the next 12 months (offer closes August 2007), this discount is applicable to both Diving and PADI Training Courses. If you are moored or alongside in St Georges our Dive Boat can pick you up on the way to the Dive Centre. For more information look at www.divegrenada.com or contact Phil Saye at info@divegrenada.com navigational notes The Beacon marking Montezuma Shoal off Mustique missing. This is a dangerous shoal, both a cruise ship and several yachts have come to grief here. The marker has gone and it is unknown when and if it will be replaced. In the meantime the Mustique Company has put out a small privately maintained black and red buoy. It would be hard to see before you were too close. They do try to put a flashing strobe on the buoy at night, but cannot get out to do so if the swells are bad. Wreck in Bequia The yacht "Tail Wagger" has sunk in Bequia on the Hamilton side. I am awaiting GPS coordinates. In the meantime, the port are planning to put a green marker on it. Take care (From Sally at Caribbean Compass) MY UPDATES TO THE GUIDE ST. VINCEN T AND THE GRENADINES A change in the customs fees - you now pay $35 EC per person per month, the charter fee yacht license is now $5 EC per foot per month, occasional charter license is $125 EC. There is now a penalty of $20,000 for not clearing in. The Tobago Cays National Park is up and running. The charges are $10EC per person per day. It is a big improvement. The islands are clean and pleasant again. They have put in a big restricted area for viewing turtles and the water taxis are obeying the speed limit which is 6 knots for ALL craft including dinghies. A lot of building is going on in Buccament Bay in the area to the east and south we show as an anchorage. Harbor walls have been built. I saw this by air, and have not been in. I would advise anchoring on the other side of the bay for the time being. UNION ISLAND A Union island cruisers net now covers the southern Grenadines. It is on VHF: 68 Monday to Friday at 0900 GRENADA The West Coast Grenada Marine Park outlined in the latest guide seems to be on hold. Much building is also going on in Port Louis (the old GYS) in Grenada. Yachts can at the moment anchor in the lagoon, but have to fit in around the workboats. Remember there is a good anchorage outside the harbor off Ross Point. Henry Safari Tours tells me they are now in a position to offer their yacht services in Carriacou and PM as well as Grenada. I am also happy hear that Henry has won the 2006 Yachting Award from the board of tourism. He certainly deserves it. MARIGOT BAY, ST. LUCIA Bob Hathaway is now running the marina and moorings in Marigot Bay. 20 moorings have been installed. Price is $25 US per night, most goes to maintenance, surplus goes to the local marine park. You get free wifi. Three friendly monohulls of around 40 feet or less can raft up if that helps. If you can find room to anchor out of the way, no one will stop you. Hurricane chain has also been installed for the hurricane season and to protect the mangroves. A pump-out station will soon be installed. The channel is now marked with red and green marker buoys. Contact: 1-758-451-4275/285-4515,
marina@marigotbay.com,
VHF:16 MARTINIQUE Customs in Marin and St. Pierre are now do-it-yourself on a provided computer. You print the form and have to get is stamped. The system is simple. We need a downloadable program so you can do it on your own computer and take it in on USB. As the system is there is no way to save it so you will be reneterng much of the same data every time.
ANOTHER ROBBERY IN CHATEAUBELAIR "Just after midnight I was woken by the radio. ‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is yacht Chakita, yacht Chakita’ came a English female voice. She was very clear - so not too far away. I waited to see if MRCC or coastguard would pick them up, but when she repeated her call, I responded. It seems Chakita was one of the two yachts parked off Chateaubelair that we’d seen the lights of as we passed by. She was less than 2 miles from where we were, and underway. They reported they'd been boarded, attacked, threatened and finally robbed by three guys with machetes, one also waving a gun. We took all details to relay should MRCC come on, but in the meantime suggested they come to us in Wallilabou. As they made thier way here, we used our recently purchased Carib mobile to get hold of the police. Chakita is a chartered Dufour 385. The young husband and wife crew – Steve and Katherine Jones from Yorkshire, UK – were half way through a two week charter, and sailing back north to their charter base on Martinique. They’d stopped in Chateaubelair to dive, snorkel, and spend the night, and were asleep in their forecabin when they were boarded around midnight. Steve challenged the guys from below, who threatened to shoot unless the hatch was unlocked. When Steve went on deck he bravely tackled the boarders, and suffered a couple of deep cuts to his head and some cuts to his naked body before being overcome. The boarders held a machete to his throat as they screamed at a semi naked Katherine to give them what money they had. She handed it over, but they continued to threatened to kill them unless she produced more.The police arrived within 30 minutes in a old but fast rib, with lights flashing. They tied up on our other side. After listening again to the attack details, and checking out what little evidence was left around, they took Steve and Katherine off on their boat to see a doctor, and promised to return them later in the morning. " (REPORT FROM ONLINE LOG 23 DEC 07) This is just one of about 4 recent reports of such incidents in Chateaubelair. This seems to be the only anchorage affected. Extreme caution is advised if using this anchorage overnight (no day time problems so far). If you go, note the following numbers; Police emergency 911 / 999 Coast Guard Operations: Tel: 457 4578 / 457 4554 Chateaubelair police: 458-2229
VISA INFORMATION Do you need a visa for St. Lucia? St. Lucia has just downgraded their list so fewer countries need visas. However, Australia, and New Zealand do. Check out their list: Happily the visa exemption list for Grenada is much longer Check here: http://www.grenadaconsulate.com/VISA_EXEMPT.htm And those that Do need a visa for St. Vincent are so few they fit on one line: Immigration visas are required from nationals of the following countries: Dominican Republic, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The People's Republic of China, Iraq, Iran and Nigeria. And the list is here for Martinique or other French Islands
CRIME NOTE Update April 11 08. Things have been pretty quiet in the Windwards this year with the exception of Chateuabelair. Of course there have been the occasional thefts, on this front I would like to report one bit of good news. Shalimardue's dinghy was left chained to the dock at Gros Islet for karaoke night. The chain was cut and the dinghy missing. Within two days constables Auguste, Clarke Hyppolite and corporal Emmanual, found the dinghy and returned it immediately. Well done. Update 10 Dec 2007. Since the crime notes below the last year has been unexceptional. The occasional thefts but I have not heard of anything out of the ordinairy. Update 20 Dec 2006. St Lucia now has a hotline for yachties direct to the marine police. Dial HELP on a St. Lucia B-mobile or any land phone. It does not yet work on digicel but will soon. In the meantime many coastal police stations now have VHF radios. Kudos to all concerned including Miasl. Update 28 march 07. In winter 06 we had an unusually heavy spate of nasty crime. These included: four armed robberies in the Grenadines and St. Vincent in one night, three by the same man with a pump action pistol grip shotgun, A multiple rape of two young women and the beating of their mother while hiking Soufriere in St. Vincent, a rape aboard a yacht in Gros Ilets St. Lucia, an an attack and beating and stabbing (non-fatal) on board a yacht in Dominica. The police have worked fast and well and made arrests in the cases in St. Vincent and St. Lucia. The accused are being held without bail. Things now seem to be pretty normal - this does not mean crime free - there is occasional theft and dinghies disappear, but nothing exceptional. The two places where the crimes were not solved were Chateaubelair where there had been a series of crimes and the one in Portsmouth Dominica. In the case of Chateaubelair I advise caution for the time being (lock yourself in at night). In the case of Portsmouth, a group of local Indian river guides are running patrols at night and since then everything has been fine, through you should anchor somewhere around the Purple Turtle, not way off on the south side of the bay where the incident occurred. It also has to be said this volume of violent crime was way above our normal levels, and even so it affects just a tiny proportion of our total visitor population. But if you want to take personal precautions against such crime there are some easy things to do. For example, install a Radio Shack chime alarm (about $26) that will wake you when someone comes in the cockpit. This should be backed up by a very loud siren or air horn that you can manually set off if the chime should sound. A big bright light would also help. Link to alarm if you are interested More inconvenient is to consider locking yourself in at night. Some cruisers already do this, but you need to make some kind of hatch that lets though air and repels armed and dangerous criminals. stainless steel bars is one way to go. Your entrance is also your escape exit so you have to design anything you do so you can get out fast.
YOUR COMMENTS
Martinique Yes I checked out Le Sud, it is a lovely restaurant and Maryse is warm and welcoming, just the kind of place cruisers appreciate. She is now doing an inexpensive crepes menu in addition to the normal one. Unfortunately things are VERY quiet in Marin right now. I hope she manages to hold on....
”Martinique
- despite what you say about getting propane at a location near
the airport believe me you can't - we spent nearly a day trying and were
lucky enough to have a hire car. Cruisers need to be warned to top
up before arriving or have a butane regulator to hand (as long as their
appliances can use it).” Actually it is worse than that. After an explosion a year ago (nothing to do with yachts) they refuse to fill any kind of tank that is not theirs. All you can do now is buy a French Butane tank (if it will work with your stove), which you can trade in at gas stations and supermarkets. This will be good for the French islands.
ST. LUCIA They have just completed a new dinghy dock for access to the Super J
Mall in Rodney Bay Lagoon, St. Lucia. The best part is that there is now a
paved and lighted walkway from the dinghy dock to the street. We were
delighted to find that this also provides easy access to the variety of
restaurants, bars and nightclubs in Rodney Bay Village. The entire area is
well lit and active at night. This is a major improvement over the
previous dilapidated and unlighted dinghy dock. We now feel very
comfortable visiting this area at night.
St Lucia Holding in the outside areas of Rodney Bay needs a comment - some areas are excellent others are hard coral and need to treated with extreme care. You can find
a really bad bit right off the entrance channel into the inner lagoon It may just be the two closest to the caves, or maybe the conditions were unusual, I have moored here frequently and never had a problem. You
MUST warn people about how rolly the Piton anchorages can become
especially at the turning of the tide. The BAT caves were almost
untenable yet there was less than 15 knots of wind. If rolling
is a problem, the moorings where you go stern to the beach would be
better. Larry Jeram-Croft,
SY 'Tiger Frightener' Jeanneau 42
GRENADA BEQUIA The email for Simpson Engineering (aka Fixman) has changed to: dee.williams@hotmail.co.uk Bequia Dear Chris Oh yes, For anyone that
does not know, Doris Fresh Foods is now on Back Street behind customs.
Thanks Steve on Fairwinds for reminding me to post this.
visitors
since Aug 03
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