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 Sometime before dawn this morning a snare drum roll of rain beat out a tattoo on the coach roof of our Gibsea 42', chartered from Sunsail in Sint Maarten. Thunder growled through the night. Rain cascaded from black cumulus clouds swirling over a cacti-studded ridge. A medley of line squalls passed overhead, each ending as soon as it began.
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Anguilla - Sailing for the Stars |
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 I didn't see much on my first cruise through Anguilla Passage in the Leeward chain of the Caribbean Sea. I was crewing for Steve Fossett on a one-hundred-twenty-five-foot catamaran called "Playstation" and we were chasing the Heineken Regatta's round-Sint-Maarten record.
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 This year Paul and I celebrated 20 years of long-distance cruising. As writers and documentary filmmakers we're fortunate that we can work while we travel and since setting sail from Toronto in September 1989 on our first international voyage we have logged 76,000 nautical miles cruising to over 50 countries on 5 continents. And whenever anyone asks, "What's your favourite place to sail?", we both say without hesitating, "The Bahamas!".
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Becoming a Belonger in the British Virgin Islands |
 In Tortola’s far eastern reaches a causeway crosses a strait etched by the Caribbean. It leads to Beef Island, one member of the forty-island archipelago called the British Virgin Islands. Two hundred years ago cattle grazed here. Today it is home to the airport.
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 It looked like we were floating in the world's largest swimming pool. For as far as our eyes could see was the most beautiful sparkling clear water with no land in sight. It was a warm windless morning in early June and as we motor-sailed along over the glassy calm we could see bright red starfish slide by on the pure white sand bottom beneath us.
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 Come winter – when I can’t sleep at night and February grabs me by the throat – I conjure up a view of the falls. But my falls is no mere Niagara. This is Concord, a cascade coursing down the side of a mountain in Grenada. A nation of three islands less than three hundred kilometres from the coast of South America, Grenada is crown jewel of the Windward Islands.
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Guadeloupe's Northern Anchorages and the Rivière Salée |
 You wouldn't exactly say that the French island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean is “off the beaten path”. With a population of 406,000 and an area of 1,780 sq. km., it's among the largest of the islands in the Leeward Islands. There is a major international airport there where thousands of tourists from around the world flood in daily to enjoy the sun and sea and French ambience.
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Hopetown and the Other Loyalists |
 The first thing I see on my approach to Hopetown is an undulating emerald silhouette rising up from the horizon, dominated by a circa-1864, candy-cane-painted lighthouse that still uses kerosene for power.
Inside the harbour is a forest of sailboat masts. A chorus of dancing casuarinas trees, feathery branches seductive as a burlesque dancer's boa, serenades me.
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 Our goal when we set out to cross the Atlantic Ocean aboard our Southerly 42 sailboat from the Canary Islands was to arrive in the Caribbean island of Antigua in time for the legendary Sunday night jump-up atop Shirley Heights. We almost made it.
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Petit St. Vincent - The Real Fantasy Island |
 It is twilight when we step onto the dock at Petit St. Vincent, a tiny tropical resort island snugged down like an anchored sloop in one of the most beautiful bays in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
No Ricardo Montalban waiting to greet us in a white suit, but this is no TV show. This is the real Fantasy Island.
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