Whats the best route starting from Martinique for a year in the Caribbean?

[Tin Tin]

You said want a less touristy route north of Matinique:


Dominica - Portsmouth
Guadeloupe - day hops up the coast.
Antigua - busy anchorage but good stop off point
St Barths - very busy but a good stop off
Anguilla - Road Bay very low key place
St Croix - Buck Is snorkel is worth while
SVI - Culebra (Ensenada Honda and Culebrita )
TCI - Grand Turk / then Sapodilla Bay (great scuba diving)
The above might take a month or two.
It is easy to spend the next 4 months in the remote parts of the Bahamas you will need to be well provisioned up in TCI

Mayaguana - port of entry - very remote place
Acklins Island - various

Jumentos (almost no infrastructure there)
Great Exuma - Georgetown to restock
(The Exuma chain is well worth exploring but can get a little touristy)
Long Island -for Fuel
San Salvador - another beautiful low key place (need right weather window)
Cat Island - low key great beach anchorages, religious site
West Coat of Eleuthera - pretty low key places all the way to Spanish Wells

Avoid Nassau
Abacos - getting touristy again, but not over the top, a few charter boats around.
USA check in West Palm Beach

USA - St Mary's Georgia / Cumberland Island - pretty quiet place.



Nearly all the above can be done in daylight except for the stretch from Virgin Islands to TCI

[dougweibel]

We will have very few dates and places fixed on the calendar. Most times we just get up in the morning and see what direction (if any) we want to go. We may be wandering in some direction but decide on the spur of the moment to back up a couple islands. That approach worked very well for us in the Caribbean last year.

Start by making a list of the big pictures dates and places. Rearrange that if necessary for it to make sense - i.e. don't put too many miles travel in a short period of time. Then leave all the short term planning for later. Big picture stuff is things like where do you want to spend hurricane season and where/when have you agreed to meet guests. Leave all the short term details to be decided as you go.

Given you are starting in Martinique and said you like less touristy places think about spending a few of your early months in Dominica, The Saintes and the Grenadines. Be a little open minded, while also being conscientious. Many people told us we would be taking big risks for petty theft or worse anchoring anywhere in Dominica other than Portsmouth or Rosseau. However we spent quite a few nights off Mero beach without problems. We found the website Navily.com to be very useful in the Caribbean. It is a European equivalent of ActiveCaptain I guess and lists many more anchorages in the Caribbean than AC.

[merrydolphin]

Originally Posted by Kettlewell

Follow the tradewinds and head south then west over to Colombia, the San Blas Islands, Panama, north to Central America and then up to maybe Florida and the Bahamas. Possibly Cuba along the way. As several have mentioned you need to get somewhere safe or at least a hurricane hole by the end of June. Or, you can stay down in Panama which is south of most hurricanes. You can be all by yourself in parts of the Southwest Caribbean and Central America if you want to. Easy to get away from the crowds.

This sounds very ambitious for a new to you boat and just getting started in serious full time cruising. I would stick with the Eastern Caribbean. LOTS to see there and you will learn the most and least popular places. And yes, when it starts to be serous hurricane season, you want to be at or near Grenada ( a great cruising destination). And if the rare storm is headed that way. You will have plenty of warning.

I always headed for Trinidad/ Tobago. Unless just a minor storm. Trinidad is south of the hurricane belt. And don’t be fooled. Some say Grenada is safe, well usually but if a serious storm is headed that way, and it does happen occasionally ( and yes, they have been clobbered before….badly) I head to Trinidad. Just an overnight sail away. Otherwise you can plan with rare exception that the winds will be NE-E in the winter and SE-E in the summer. You can anchor on the west side of darn near anything and be OK. In the summer you will get occasional Easterly Waves that will temporary interrupt this pattern. But you will find the E Caribbean one of the best SAILING destinations in the world. This is NOT true in the west and northern part of the Caribbean.

The other huge plus of the E Caribbean is that although there are rain squalls. Thunder and lightning is not very common. Hallelujah! I hate lightning. It can ruin your day (and your boat). Other parts of the Caribbean have more, often much more of this very undesired weather.