Safety in St. Lucia/St. Vincent

[Tupaia]

Originally Posted by FlyingScot

Define lock up your boat. Do you lock every door and hatch?

Yep, custom Crimsafe screens.

[Sailing Nirvana]

Originally Posted by FlyingScot

Define lock up your boat. Do you lock every door and hatch?

Many cruisers sleep with hatches open as not to wake up dead from the heat!

This was more my question about locking the boat up. I like to leave a hatch open if possible.
My other question was should we remove the outboard motor from our dinghy at night also?

[caradow]

Padlock your OB to the dingy and chain the dingy,. You may be able to actually run the chain through the OB lifting handle in the front of the engine. Do suggest removing your gas tank.

This will not deter an accomplished thief however . Sometimes they come with chain cutters.
They even work in the light of day in St. Martin!
BTW I never removed my OB from the dingy but it was locked.

Also leave your hatches open so you can enjoy the weather you came for. A closed hatch will not deter someone wanting to get at you personally but you may want to carry bear spray and a flare gun could come in handy.

Guess this is more than you wanted to know but I do hope you would at least have thought about it.

[boatman61]

Considering St Lucia is allegedly such a dangerous place for cruisers I have often wondered why it continues to be the destination for the ARC Rally over the decades.. do they lay on special police boat patrols for the weeks the boats are there or what.. surely not every boat goes in the marina.
Personally I have never had anything stolen off my boats in the Caribe, not a dinghy/motor theft.
I have had damage caused by selfish a$$*ole cruisers at dinghy docks however.. "Bugga.!! No room for my Rib, oh hang on, I'll park it on top of that cheap $500 dinghy.."

[s/v Jedi]

Maybe y’all need to refresh your memory

https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...nt-157437.html

https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ns-275534.html

https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...il-205845.html

[CaptJimFrei]

Let me tell you a story about anchoring in Cumberland Bay: This was in 2005 aboard a bareboat. I was the skipper with 5 other pax. Of course as we entered the bay, several boatboys made their approach. I randomly waved one over. Now I like to swing with the breeze and told him "no stern anchor, bow only" He guided us over to a sandy spot in about 12 feet of water. After we got the anchor set, I invited him aboard for a bottle of water (or beer if he preferred).

As we were talking, he kept admiring my white polo shirt I was wearing. He finally told us his mom had died the day before and the funeral was in two days. And he had no nice clean white shirt to wear. Now the kid was wearing a raggedy-ass oil-stained green T-shirt. I offered to switch shirts with him. As we did, tears welled up in his eyes and he said he now had a nice white shirt to wear to his mom's funeral.

The kicker is that my shirt had a 'Thee Doll House' logo on it. Thee Doll House was a strip club in Raleigh that gave out polo shirts for certain VIP room experiences. At least the kid had a clean white shirt for the funeral.

[RBCurtis]

Originally Posted by Flagman101

Been sailing these waters for many years.
Never had an issue.
Never felt in any danger.
Do take normal precautions. Do you lock your house doors at night?
Don't be the easy prey.
Lock your dingy, don't leave your cameras and valuable for everyone to see.
Seems it"s always the same stories

What he says.

Spent many weeks in St. Lucia and SVG last winter without incident. Anchored all over the place. We generally kept our dinghy on the davits at night, with the motor and fuel tank chained to the dinghy and the dinghy chained to our catamaran. Just didn’t want to be an easy target.

Boat boys can be persistent but we never experienced any behaviour I would call aggressive. I suggest just being clear and unambiguous regarding any goods or services that you do or don’t want. We also had kids come to the boat on occasion asking for stuff like cookies and Coke, so also be clear about what you are or are not willing to give away.

Probably our favourite area in the Caribbean thus far.

[CaptJimFrei]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

https://safetyandsecuritynet.org/ has the best database

Only time, in 25 years of bareboating, we had a theft off the boat was in Cane Garden Bay, Tortola. A camera and some loose dollar bills were stolen while we ashore for dinner.

I have never been back to Cane Garden Bay.

[hpaabor]

Its not how thing "are" but how we perceive them. I was surprised to learn today that if you go by numbers in the US today you are twice as likely to kill yourself that get killed by someone else and if you go by numbers again twice as likely to overdose than suicide. But statistics don't matter. its what we imagine - hence more fear of sharks than bacteria in oysters. Heard people "saying" that they were afraid of St. Vincent. We chartered from there and everyone we met were absolutely lovely. Incidents happen everywhere but it seems some people sit by a computer and echo (embellish?) them according to some strange prejudices. - I remember someone telling me that they always took their Uzi when going to the Bahamas. I found it a bit strange given that they did not feel a need for where they were .. Miami My prejudice would have reversed that view. Listen to people that actually travel and ignore the keyboard adventurers.

[Nicholson58]

We live aboard seven months each season. St Vincent is troublesome. Check into Bequai and hang out in the Grenadines. OK in St Lucia with caution. Rodney bay marina for long term stay or flying out.

[Montanan]

References:

https://safetyandsecuritynet.org/

https://www.stvincenttimes.com/svg-r...rimes-in-2021/


https://www.stvincenttimes.com/categ...es-st-vincent/



2016:

https://thevincentian.com/svg-among-...-p12826-97.htm

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37274708

Crime is universal, but so is lack of reasonable caution and awareness.
I suspect more tourists get hurt or killed visiting Yellowstone or Glacier National Park by Griz, Bison, Moose, Elk or simply stepping into the hot springs or from slipping into one of the cold-water rivers.
"Bear Spray" never leave home without it. If it will deter a mother Griz, it will deter a robber. Best to be deployed outside the cabin, effective to 30 to 40 feet. We learn to literally shoot the fog from the hip so as to not be delayed by having to remove the canister from the holster.

[GrowleyMonster]

Originally Posted by Shanachie

Using this philosophy to rate safety, you would not venture anywhere in the United States.


From rural Texas to Chicago, there are terrible crimes committed every day. Read enough police blotters -- or watch a Fox News channel -- and you will be afraid to venture outside of your home.


A better measure would not be random accounts of lurid crimes -- they happen everywhere -- but crime statistics.

Well, to be fair, at least in the US there are fewer impediments to arming yourself and being able to protect yourself and loved ones. In most of the world, you do not get that option, or I should say you risk running afoul of local law and going to a third world prison for literally years. Currently, I can't think of any popular cruising destination where keeping a gun onboard is really practical these days, outside the US. So you are much more at the mercy of the criminal element, in foreign ports. One might well conclude that a lower incidence of crime does not necessarily translate into greater safety.

Sometimes you simply have to make a choice between taking a real but small risk of being a crime victim, or not going anywhere or having any fun at all. Take normal precautions. Ask others what precautions they take. Some security measures are a PITA and you just have to decide the question of risk vs convenience.

The harder target will run a lower risk of being victimized. The criminal wants a low risk, easy access, high value target, and will select victims accordingly. Leave all your possessions unprotected and access to your boat free and easy, and you shouldn't be too surprised if you are the first and most often boat to be hit by thieves or worse. But do you want to lock yourself up into your own private prison cell? Close up the boat and run generator and A/C all night, when out on deck a nice gentle breeze is blowing? It is a balancing act, a set of compromises, like in so many aspects of boating. You have to evaluate your own risk aversion in choosing security precautions and destinations. When it is only a property crime, sometimes you just have to shrug it off and carry on and be glad that the perpetrator did not have rape or murder on his mind.

[Montanan]

Perspective:

In 2020, the U.S. Virgin Islands had a homicide rate of 49.26 per 100,000 people — Jamaica, next closest to the territory in number of murders per capita — had a rate of 47.01 per 100,000 people.

https://vifreepress.com/2020/05/usvi...2C000%20people.

During 2020, the murder / homicide rate for St. Vincent / Grenadines was 30.67 per 100,000 whereas for the entire USA the rate was 6.81 per 100,000; but that is comparable to the District of Columbia the capital of the USA, at 30; and only modestly more than the State of Louisiana 21.3 and the State of Mississippi at 23.7 and Alabama at 15.9, New Mexico 15.3, South Carolina 12.3, Maryland 12.2, Georgia 11.4, Delaware 11.3 . . .

Would you attend Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans?

FYI: New York was 4.8.

And here in The Last Great Place - 4.4 [sadly disproportionately disappearances of our native American women and girls]

Maine has the least at 1.7

Bahamas 18.8 and the British Virgin Islands 3.3

Now to jump the pond, when evaluating homicide rates in the UK one has to step up a magnitude of order, as the rate is about 10 per MILLION. Yeah, not many guns in the UK / BVI, but let us not go down that discuss hole and rapidly sink the thread.

[rslifkin]

Unfortunately statistics like that don't show the whole picture. What they don't tell you is how many of those homicides are random-ish vs how many are more avoidable (such as a product of neighborhood arguments, drug deals, etc.). So the statistic alone doesn't quite tell you how much risk you're exposing yourself to.

[dannc]

Originally Posted by rslifkin

Unfortunately statistics like that don't show the whole picture. What they don't tell you is how many of those homicides are random-ish vs how many are more avoidable (such as a product of neighborhood arguments, drug deals, etc.). So the statistic alone doesn't quite tell you how much risk you're exposing yourself to.

Yep.

Over the last few months or so, there have been three attacks on tourists in Dublin. Two of the attacks were in a tourist area and one was not. We have walked through both areas where the attacks happened. The tourist area I would stay away from because it is a tourist area. The other place is not bad at all and is near a bus station and a Garda station along with other places to visit and work. One of the attacks was targeting a tourist and the other it is not clear. The one guy attacked near the bus and Garda stations was attacked by a group of teenagers. He was in a coma for quite some time and there was no word on WHY he was attacked.

The house we rented in Dublin was in a decent neighborhood but my Spidy Sense went up a bit in some of the area grocery stores that had groups of teenagers hanging around AND quite a bit of obvious security. A year or so after we had rented, a homeless man was beaten to death in the alley behind the house we rented. He was killed by a couple of teenagers.

There were places we walked in Dublin, and we have done quite a bit of walking in Dublin, more than we do in our local cities, that were getting a bit iffy. Trash on the streets, graffiti, razor wire, alarm systems, etc. Having said that we would go back, and as Filch said to characters in Harry Potter about to enter the Forbidden Forest, "You have to keep your wits about you."

Later,
Dan