Episode summary:
I spent a day of marine mindfulness cruising across the calm Caribbean waters in the Lesser Antilles, en route to the Tobago Cays. I also channelled one of the Pirates of The Caribbean films and a classic 80s pop music video, then snorkelled with turtles. All up, a pretty amazing day – tropical nourishment for the soul.
If you are wondering ‘what to do in the Tobago Cays’, ‘which Caribbean island is the best to sail around’, or ‘where is the best place to see turtles in the Caribbean’, this episode might have a few answers for you.
Listen to a podcast about sailing in the Caribbean and snorkelling with turtles.
Transcript – S5 E4: Sailing to the Tobago Cays
This week we’re channelling 80s music videos and Pirates of the Caribbean in the warm waters of the Lesser Antilles.
The good ship Beauty is a 49ft (or 15m) Windward Islands sloop owned by the rather wonderful Petit St Vincent private island resort. She’s something to see. Her sky-blue decks and white-sand sails match the colour palette of her Caribbean home. From her starboard ropes she proudly flies the green, blue and banana-yellow flag of St Vincent and the Grenadines, where the resort is located.
When the wind picks up, her amiable skipper Jeff Stevens takes guests out for a sail to some of the stunning reefs and cays nearby.
She’s a beauty
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 give me new-found confidence. Despite knowing next to nothing about sloops, cutters, schooners, ketches – or marine craft of any kind come to think of it – I feel that Beauty creaks in all the right places as she prances through the tame Caribbean waves. She has a solidity that makes me think only a Category 5 hurricane can hurt her.
Jeff and I sit at the tiller and cruise north past Union Island and Palm Island, heading for the Tobago Cays.
It is a perfect Caribbean February day. The sunshine warms our shoulders and shines through the crystal-clear waters, illuminating white sandbars and emerald reefs, just beneath the surface. A thin scattering of ribbed cirrostratus clouds rides high in the sky and there is just enough breeze to keep us moving at a steady clip.
Beauty passes modern yachts and a couple of muscly speedboats but none of these Johnny-come-latelies has her class and breeding.
The wind picks up a bit and so do the waves, as we catch the edge of a tropical squall. As we get some light spray over the prow, I get vivid flashbacks to the famous music video for Duran Duran’s Rio in which the pastel-suited New Romantics posed and pouted on a yacht ploughing through similarly idyllic Caribbean waters, off the island of Antigua.
I remember seeing that video when the single came out in 1982 and dreaming: Where is that and how do I get there? It took me a while but I eventually got here.
Channelling Cap’n Jack Sparrow
An hour or two later we are lowering the sails and anchoring. The wind has dropped and all we can hear is 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 Cap’n Jack’s much-quoted phrase: “Why is the rum gone?” It was filmed right here in the Tobago Cays on a tiny islet called Petit Tabac.
Since the global success of the film, and the Pirates franchise, Petit Tabac has become less idyllic. Today, as we show up, it is pretty busy with visiting yachts – their skippers and passengers doing their best Capt Jack impressions – so we moor to the north of Baracal Cay instead. It’s much quieter and perfect for a snorkel.
Snorkelling with graceful turtles
I am in the water less than 20 seconds – just long enough to test and adjust my mask – when I look up again and see I am more than a boat length away from Beauty. That’s quite a current. I decide to let it drift me across the reef, enabling me to conserve my energy. I then swim back to Baracal Cay on a 90-degree angle to the current and around its protected southern tip to a designated turtle reserve.
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 have really come to see.
The coral is not in the best condition but the other marine life more than makes up for it. In an hour I see three turtles and swim with one of them into the channel between Baracal and its neighbouring cay Petit Rameau. I keep a safe and considerate distance – about 8ft or 2.5m – but the clarity of the water is such that I can still see the turtle clearly and marvel at the intricate colouring on its shell, lit perfectly by the diffused sunlight.
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 seeming innocence, their gentleness… their grace, perhaps. Or maybe it’s 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,” says Jeff when I finally clamber back on board Beauty. I have snorkelled for nearly two hours and completely lost track of time. Anyway, time becomes less and less important the longer you spend in the Caribbean.
Jeff is barbecuing lobster and pouring Cuba Libres. Thankfully Elizabeth Swann has not breezed in and blown up the rum this time.
