The sail from Tyrrel Bay to the marina in St. George’s was a bit longer than our recent trips, covering about 40 nautical miles, roughly 6-7 hours. Before entering the marina, we anchored just outside the bay as it was already late afternoon. We used this opportunity to clean the boat of algae and seaweed to improve our speed. The warm waters here are teeming with life, so things grow quickly. We put on our diving gear and got to work. There was plenty of algae, and the barnacles were quite established, making it difficult to scrape them off and reduce drag while sailing.

The plan was to restock on fruit and other supplies here and then head to the ABC islands (Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire), also known as the Dutch Antilles.



St. George’s itself is a nice little town with a beautiful semi-circular harbor, ideal for a marina and a cruise terminal. At the top of a hill stands a small fort built by the French, but after they lost Grenada, the British expanded and further fortified the town. The name St. George’s doesn’t have much to do with the French, but it’s easy to find information that the town was originally called Port Louis, which is, of course, the equivalent of St. George.


The locals are very friendly and welcoming. We even happened to witness a football match, which was a bit of a surprise. Until now, we’d mostly seen locals playing cricket, a British legacy, but here, for the first time, we saw football.

We were sitting on the boat when someone knocked, and Damjan went out to see what was happening. After a few minutes, he came back in and said, “Come out and hear this.” I went outside and saw a young man and woman in their early twenties sitting in the cockpit. We greeted each other and introduced ourselves. Oskar and Ana, they said. I sat down, and they began to tell their story… They took turns speaking, almost as if they had rehearsed it. Interesting, to say the least.


They had started hitchhiking from somewhere in Poland, aiming for South America, with the goal of reaching their destination in under 100 rides. They were currently around their 90th ride, having crossed the Atlantic by hitchhiking on a sailboat in Gran Canaria. In Belize, they had worked on diving tours to earn some money for accommodation, and so on… I interrupted them because I had a feeling where this was going and asked, “So, what exactly do you need?”
Oskar said, “If you could give us a ride to South America, we can help by cleaning the boat, cooking, etc.” I looked at Damjan, and we both immediately agreed. “Sure, no problem,” we said, “but we’re going to the ABC islands first, and then we’ll see about Colombia.” From what we understood, there was quite a bit of chaos in Venezuela with the change of government and the crisis, so we wanted to avoid that, even though Venezuela is very close; the Paraguana Peninsula is less than 20 nautical miles away.
They were overjoyed and said they had never been picked up so easily. They asked if it would be okay for them to go say goodbye to some people and pack their things; they didn’t have much. “No problem,” we said. “We’re here today, and we’re leaving for Aruba tomorrow afternoon, so take your time. We still need to do some shopping.”
With just the two of us on board and four cabins and four bathrooms, the boat was practically empty again. They would be with us at least until Aruba, and then we’d see. I was also thinking that Cartagena in Colombia was a good option. A friend had told me what a great city it was and that I had to visit it, so here was another reason. From what I could tell, Serbian citizens needed a visa. I decided I would figure that out when we arrived; there would probably be better options there than here.
Our guests arrived, and we settled them into one of the cabins. They were still a little in shock, but they would get used to it. They offered to buy some food, but we told them we had more than enough for all of us, so they didn’t need to get anything. So, now we were carrying stowaways! I had heard about this, but I had never experienced it myself. We added their passport details to the crew list, and we were ready to go. We would take care of the paperwork in the morning.

We had a longer trip ahead of us tomorrow. Compared to the short distances between the islands so far, we had about 560 nautical miles to Aruba, which would take us two days. We needed to plan our departure so that we arrived in Aruba in the late morning.