Earlier this year, I was sailing through the Caribbean with Richard Thomas on his classic 44-foot cutter Strider. We were on our way from Union Island to Carriacou. Richard and I, both from Maine, are partial to wooden sailboats. We wanted to visit the shipwrights on Carriacou who still build boats the-old fashioned way.
We rounded Jack Iron Point, a craggy cliff on the southeastern tip of the island, bound for Tyrell Bay. A hundred boats were anchored or moored along the half-mile beach. We found an open spot, launched the dinghy and went ashore.
While Richard handled the customs paperwork, I checked out Carriacou Marina. It has a storage yard with a Travelift. There’s a crowded dinghy dock, a mini-mart, laundry, showers, a chandlery and Las Iguanas Restaurant. The storage yard seemed full, with small yachts and fishing boats on the hard. I saw large blocks of concrete, but no tie-downs in the ground, and no hurricane pits.
Similarly, at Tyrell Bay Marina, we found a large storage space and a Travelift, but also a dozen catamarans and a dozen yachts on poppets. None of the boats were tied down, and there were no hurricane pits.
This is worrisome, I thought at the time, having survived my share of bad storms in the Caribbean throughout the years. But no major hurricane had hit Carriacou in 20 years. The last one, Ivan, was in 2004.
We walked along the village road, where a few knock-together bars and barbecue shacks sat along the beach. We found a lot for boaters to like on Carriacou—two air-conditioned and well-stocked supermarkets, a dive shop, a general store, a sail and canvas shop, and a few restaurants—but we wanted to find the wooden boatbuilders.
On the east side of the island, we saw two wooden fishing boats under construction, beneath the trees on the beach. But no one was around.
Alas, our hopes were dashed. I was back in Maine by early May. Richard sailed Strider north to Bermuda.
And then, Hurricane Beryl swept through the Grenadines, destroying much of what we’d seen on Carriacou.
Jonathan Petramala, a YouTube documentarian with WxChasing, flew into Carriacou the day before Beryl hit. He and his team also toured the island the day after Beryl. They talked with locals, who helped to document the destruction. Many of the lovely locations I’d photographed during my visit were wrecked or outright gone.
The cruising community is doing what it can to help. Lexi Fisher from Doyle Guides assembled a list of relief organizations accepting donations. Caribbean Compass and Cruising World magazines spread the word too. The US and the European Union pledged millions of dollars in immediate aid.
Cruisers on the less-affected islands headed to Carriacou with supplies. Samaritan’s Purse, a relief organization, sent a portable distillation system to extract fresh drinking water from seawater. Once the airport reopened, the islands’ governor flew in to survey the damage.
Hurricane Beryl was a category 4 storm with winds of 140 knots. It will be years before things return to normal on Carriacou.
I hope the wooden-boat builders don’t give up. And I hope that, someday, I get a chance to return and meet them.
