Spring Break Sailing Trip: St. Vincent & The Grenadines

As I notice the tan starting to fade from my tremendously successful sailing trip two weeks ago, I realize that it's time I made a posting about it. In my defence, I was waiting for our boat's photo-swapping session (since I took very few) but as it's taking a while to actually happen, I figure I'd better get someting up, then maybe add more pictures later.

We left Boston at 6:00am Saturday, March 18, and returned Sunday, March 26 at 11:00 pm. I mention these times because they give you some indication as to the (in)convenience of our flights...indeed we required 4 seperate flight segments to arrive at St. Vincent, and 5 to get back to Boston.

Besides the transit however, the trip was awesome. My boat consisted of Anne-Gaelle, a girl from my section, Sonya Thomas...a girl I met through some ice-breaker activities during the first week, and three others I hadn't met (Luke Ingles, our Aussie skipper and a stand up guy all round, Lucy Chen, Luke's friend and section mate, and Lorena Droba, Sonya's section mate). Happily, our boat meshed really well socially, and we spent a lot of time laughing, sometimes even at my jokes and general tom-foolery.

At a great bar on Mustique, Sonya talked me into doing a karaoke version of "Copacobana" by Barry Manilow (it was an easy sell) and we surprised ourselves at how (frighteningly) natural we're able to sing that song. We had more fun than the audience.

On a typical day, we sailed a good 4-5 hours, usually around mid-day to afford a leisurely breakfast before setting sail, and allowing us to get into our next harbour nicely in advance of sunset. Then we'd either prepare a meal on-board (we were nicely provisioned, and had a gas stove as well as a charcoal bbq) or would go ashore and try a local restaurant.

There were 5 other HBS boats in our group, so there was a healthy amount of socializing on the boats and the establishments on land, providing a good opportunity to meet new people and mix up the group from time to time.

Roughly, our route was as follows (each transit representing a day, except for Bequia, which was two):
St. Vincent --> Mustique
Mustique --> Tobago Cays
Tobago Cays --> Mayreau
Mayreau --> Bequia
Bequia --> St. Vincent

On our off day at Bequia, we decided to race another boat of first year students to a nearby beach...roughly 1.5 hours away. They had a larger boat and a professional skipper, so they gave us a 10 minute advantage. It was a ton of fun, and Luke was great with the tactics and the fine tuning of the sails. Meanwhile, the benefit of having had the girls go through tacking and jibing the day before really paid off, and we beat the other boat by a good 5 minutes.

Of course, out boasting was well out of proportion to the significance of the victory, but we considered it an extension of the team building exercise.

I should also mention that we fancied ourselves a Pirate ship, with the entire crew decked out in bandanas and eye patches. Another HBS boat had the odassity to fly the Jolly Roger, so after several bottles of wine one evening, we convinced ourselves that we'd better steal it and fly it on the true pirate ship. We stole over in our dinghy just past midnight, and I attempted to climb over the side of the boat. After several unsuccessful attempts, Luke pointed out that right beside me was the bathing ladder; an observation that greatly expedited the mission.

So despite the punishing flight schedule (4 flights down, 5 flights to get back to Boston) it was a sensational trip, and I'm seriously considering doing it again next year.