Prior to Hurricane Ivan a couple of years ago the conventional wisdom when going south was to be in Grenada by the end of March/mid June and you would be safe from Hurricanes.

Ivan a Category 4 Hurricane changed cruisers perceptions completely, damaging over 90% of Grenada and damaging 100's of yachts afloat and in storage on land. It was also felt that serious hurricanes made their presence felt later in the season with the peak months being August and September. Hurricane Arthur in 2008 made his appearance on the 31st May and Bertha meandered around the Atlantic from the 3rd until the 20th of July before crossing the Caribbean islands.

Consequently we are now having to keep moving south and will bypass St Lucia where we made our Caribbean landfall and also St Vincent that unfortunately has a poor reputation of drug related crime among a small but troublesome minority of the population. This should give us the opportunity to spend time in the many islands that make up the Grenadines before reaching Grenada in time to explore the island as well as keeping an eye on the weather for approaching hurricanes. Fortunately the USA have developed a superb early warning system and it is possible to get pretty accurate advanced warnings and we intend to be heading west towards the end of the first week of June and then south to Venezuela.