Carriacou
True Colours
James Scrimshaw
Sat 7 Feb 2015 16:25
Getting ashore at Hillsborough was difficult, the dock was not designed for small dinghies. After clearing in (immigration, customs, port authority, all in separate buildings) we wandered through the town, visited the small museum, and then looked in vain for a cafe. We had been told that this was the only port of entry! But we then found we could have cleared in at Tyrrel Bay, which explained why there were only three yachts moored in Hillsborough harbour.
So late morning we motored around to Tyrrel, about 4 miles away, going past the Sandy Island nature reserve. In contrast to Hillsborough, Tyrrel Bay was full of yachts, but it's a big bay (with a couple of tricky shoal patches) so there was plenty of room for us to anchor ( two attempts, so James put on his mask and snorkel to confirm the anchor was well dug in).
Carriacou is known for its beachside boat building (there were three Carriacou sloops racing at 2014 Antigua Classics week) and we particularly wanted to see this, so when offered a taxi tour of the island by a boat boy (actually a very corpulent man) we accepted. Probably a mistake. His 4x4 was a wreck and could hardly climb the hills, and he was more interested in discussing world affairs than telling us about the island. On the plus side, we went down some tracks a normal taxi probably would not have taken us, and we did see the boat building. No plans, moulds or jigs, just built on the sand by eye, with a beautiful result.
Carriacou means "island surrounded by reefs", and the East side in particular had reefs stretching the length of the island, with few breaks. The breaking waves and the varying colours of the water were truly beautiful. The island itself (population 7,000) is largely unspoiled, but there are many really nice houses built, our driver told us, by locals who have returned from living in the UK, and profited from the massive growth in UK house prices. (With the cost of the average UK house, you could build a large mansion in Carriacou)
One of our objectives has been to visit the Tobago Cays, and we had decided to do this as a boat trip, to give James a break from skippering. We had thought that, as It is much closer, it would be cheaper to do it from Carriacou than from Bequia but no. So in the absence of beaches for swimming, or much else to do (we did have a good meal at The Lazy Turtle, run by a couple from Jersey), we decided to return to Bequia.