Sailing to the Tobago Cays

A lazy day in the Caribbean

All photos © copyright Matthew Brace

The good ship Beauty is a 49ft (15m) Windward Islands sloop owned by the wonderful Petit St Vincent private island resort in St Vincent and the Grenadines. When the wind picks up, her amiable skipper Jeff Stevens takes guests out for a sail to some of the stunning nearby reefs and cays.

I have a healthy fear of being on the ocean in anything other than a kayak under my own control yet in just one day Beauty and Jeff gave me new-found confidence.

Despite knowing next to nothing about sloops, cutters, schooners, ketches or any kind of marine craft, I felt that Beauty creaked in all the right places as she pranced through the tame Caribbean waves. She had a solidity that made me think only a Category 5 hurricane could hurt her.

She was also something to see. Her sand-white sails and sky-blue decks matched the colour palette of her Caribbean home. From her starboard ropes she proudly flew the green, blue and banana-yellow flag of St Vincent and the Grenadines.

Jeff and I sat at the tiller and cruised north past Union Island and Palm Island, heading for the Tobago Cays. It was a perfect Caribbean February day. The sunshine warmed our shoulders and shone through the crystal-clear waters, illuminating white sandbars and emerald reefs, just feet beneath the surface. A thin scattering of ribbed cirrostratus clouds rode high up in the sky and there was just enough breeze to keep us moving at a steady clip. Beauty passed modern yachts and a couple of muscly speedboats but none of these had her class and breeding.

An hour or two later—time becomes less and less important the longer you spend in the Caribbean—we were lowering the sails and anchoring. The wind had dropped and all we could hear was the comforting slap of wave on hull. Cast your mind back to the scene in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl when Captain Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swann were marooned on a palm-fringed island. Elizabeth blew up all the rum by throwing it on a bonfire, which prompted Capt Jack’s much-quoted phrase: “Why is the rum gone?” It was filmed here in the Tobago Cays on a tiny, idyllic islet called Petit Tabac.

Since the global success of the film and the Pirates franchise, Petit Tabac has become less idyllic. On the day we showed up, it was pretty busy with visiting yachts—their skippers and passengers doing their best Capt Jack impressions—so we moored to the north of Baracal Cay instead.

I had stressed my passion for snorkelling and Jeff said this was the spot. The Tobago Cays Marine Park was declared a wildlife reserve in 2006 by the government of St Vincent and the Grenadines and it’s known for its turtles, which is what I had really come to see.

I applied mask and fins and threw myself overboard. The current let me drift across the reef using barely any energy. I then swam back to Baracal and around its southern tip to a designated turtle reserve.

The coral was not in the best condition but the other marine life more than made up for it. In an hour I spotted three turtles and swam with one of them into the channel between Baracal and its neighbouring cay Petit Rameau. I kept a safe and considerate distance from the turtle, which was made easier by the clarity of the water. I stayed about 8ft (2.5m) away but could still marvel at the intricate colouring on its shell, lit perfectly by the sunlight. The turtle tired of my attention after a while, waved a flipper and dived too deep for me to follow.

There’s something magical and uplifting about snorkelling with turtles. Something that, at least for me, beats all other aquatic adventures. Maybe it’s their innocence, their gentleness, their grace. Or maybe their wisdom; they have been on Earth for 100 million years—longer than snakes or crocodiles—so they’ve seen a thing of two. Being with them in their habitat must surely melt all but the hardest hearts.

“I thought you’d decided to swim home,” said Jeff when I finally clambered back on board Beauty. I’d been snorkelling for nearly two hours and had completely lost track of time. He was barbecuing lobster and pouring Cuba Libres. Thankfully Elizabeth Swann had not breezed in and blown up the rum this time.