Caribbean Blue

It is sundown, and we are preparing to set sail aboard the Irene, a mighty wooden ketch that is almost a hundred years old. The deck is a flurry of activity: of hoisting and winching, coiling, binding and battening down the hatches - all hands are needed for the laborious process of weighing anchor (no computerised assistance on this yacht). As the sheets are released, there is a frantic flapping of canvas on leather and rope, and the mast creaks in response.

I love these daily preparations to sail or to drop anchor, watching the five crew members perform their tasks with a concentration and synchronized energy that is almost balletic. Laurence scampers up the 55ft mast to fix the topsail, and Annalea, the gorgeous second mate, follows to assist. Job done, they sit together on the top beam like pigeons cooing at each other. This section of crew, at least are in love.

It is an extraordinarily humbling experience to sail at night in the Caribbean. There is nothing but you and the wind and the the feeling of the silent sea, so black and vast around you. I lie in the bowsprit watching the hull carve silver trails through phosphorescent water, while overhead Jupiter shines like a beacon from a startling canopy of stars.
Nights are always balmy enough in the grenadines to sleep out in on the deck, at least in the summer months. This time of year is one of the Caribbean's best kept secrets; the yachties are away in June, July, and August, so the beaches are empty and the prices tumble. The seas are calmer than during the Christmas peak season, but there is always a breeze, enough to make a sturdy vessel such as Irene glide like an arrow at a comfortable seven knots.

Our night passage, a 40-mile stretch from Palm Island to Grenada, is the last and longest trip of a trip that begun a week ago in St Vincent - a dramatic island of tangled forests wild precipices, and humming birds.
There we bathed in in waterfalls, and one morning heaved or selves up to the summit of the 3,000ft Soufriere volcano. We hiked through jungles of giant bamboo, trekking beyond the tree line and across the blackened scree to peer into a giant smoking crater wearing a cloak of green moss so brilliant it hurt the eyes.
Later we 'chilled', Caribbean fashion, in a bar called Ferdies Footsteps in Georgetown, eating fried chicken and drinking rum with lime juice behind beaded curtains, while the locals sang 'raindrops keep fallin on my head' with the karaoke machine.

On Bequia and Canouan, we thumped down rocky tracks on mountain bikes to explore deserted coves. We dropped anchor for days near the coral reefs of tobago Cays, snorkeling the shallows and diving the depths at Meyreau to look for wrecks. We even braved a midnight downpour  to barbecue lobster on a bench where a solitary fisherman gave me a conch shell: it now sits on my bathroom shelf obscenely pink lipped and smelling of salt and seaweed.
The Grenadines, or Windward Islands, are the last link in the Caribbean chain before South America, 30 islands spread across a 60 mile expanse of blue. They are a sailors dream: easterly trade winds make for exciting passages on the wilder Atlantic side, while, on the leeward shores, there are tranquil anchorages on the mirror flat bays and lagoons of the Caribbean sea.

Our days under sail passed in a memorable blur of dolphin-spotting, scrabble, and pina coladas, punctuated by ritual five course candlelight dinners. This is all a far cry from the West Country at the turn of the century, where Irene was once a working coal-carrier. In the sixties she was rescued from hard labour and a ships graveyard by her current British owner, who fell in love upon seeing her and made her his permanent home. He then restored her her bit by bit, and only when his family had grown and moved on did he install an engine and a global positioning system - still the only two modern pieces of sailing equipment aboard.
He then transported her to the warm waters of the Windward Islands for private holidays and charters. Irene may be nearly one century old, but she is fully equipped with all the accoutrements and grown up toys that make a good sea bound holiday - ice makers, a piano, air conditioning, CD's, a library, washing machine and diving gear, bikes and dinghies, board games and water skis. she is a ketch of true originality, a beautiful structure of polished oak and pitch pine, and every rope, sail, and binding on her roomy, 117ft deck is handmade. Her relaxed, comfortable style is less Ralph Lauren and more bohemian chic, She is a floating hotel with a soul.

Catherine Fairweather.