TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Worth watching...

..a system, currenty, heading just south of us but already showing some potential.Our friends below us should watch this too..

...heading mainly West south of us..

Hoping this does not stall out and makes its way West since we will down on 4th of July for 10 days. Hopefully perfect weather as it clears out.

Does this feel early to anyone else?

Sure feels early to me....

I am scared for September.

We are down in Cayman diving for our anniversary (got married here on a dive boat). Have been having rain bands from 94L and warily watching 95L….at least if she stays S our fleets in BVI will be safer….

Happy Anniversary my friend...

SST anomaly is through the roof

Thanks for the anniversary wishes Bailau - I believe you are island bound - have an excellent trip!

Last day at Pink House looking over your West end anchorage...than on boat until 7/7. Tuesday looks the worst so far when ironically we are on a dock at Leverick for our Baths/Coco Maya run.

We'll be down sailing July 6-14. Watching closely and hoping the storms stay away!

We will be there Cruising July 12th through the 27th.
Hoping the weather cooperates.
We didn't buy travel insurance and starting to wonder if we should have.

Hopefully you should be ok, but with the way the hurricane season is scheduled to go this year, perhaps it would have been a good idea.

For months the forecast has been for a busy hurricane season. Our property was rebuilt and strengthened after Irma, but we took additional steps this year, including adding hurricane panels to the PGT Miami-Dade sliders. We had custom stainless hinges made for our garage doors, and every door has horizontal bars inside and outside the hurricane shutters. Every downspout has multiple clips epoxied into the stone.

Unfortunately there could be debris from the houses on either side of us, which remain unrepaired since Irma. That is frustrating.

Here's hoping we get through hurricane season unscathed!

I hope so...great house and my wife's favorite

No shear… recon on the way to get readings. Cat 4 heading to the islands!

For Beryl, as of 8AM today (June 30), Barbados, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Jamaica, The Cayman Islands, and Cancun are in the projected path. The rest of the Caribbean should be OK

Looks like just a bit of a breeze in the BVI. Might need 1 reef. Winds around 20 knots.

Take a look at Vesselfinder between Grenada and Trinidad and Tobago. Massive flotilla of boats heading south. Grenada has been regarded as outside the hurricane belt for years but is right in the firing line of Beryl!

Zanshin's boat was last tagged in St. Lucia. He's been offline for several weeks so I hope he's ok and his boat is in a protected location.

How does Vesselfinder work? I don't really know anything about AIS but I thought it was basically ship to ship - I broadcast my position with a signal strong enough for local receivers to see me and I see others around me broadcasting their position. How is all of this (local) information being collected and collated for display on the site?

Eh, that doesn't really explain the part I'm curious about. There are two things I'm unclear on.

1) A ship is in the middle of the Atlantic with no other ships around it (within range of AIS?) - who sees it's AIS signal such that it can be shown on the Vesselfinder map?

2) If I see, on my AIS, a bunch of boats around me, and another boat sees me but wouldn't normally be able to see some of the boats that I see, does he see them by virtue of him seeing me? Does he see what I see? I could imagine it's kind of like a mesh network where each transmitter/receiver repeats what it sees. In that way, I could see an overall picture being built up and eventually getting to a land-based (or other upload-capable receiver) that could upload their entire picture to a central DB somewhere.

1) Satellite AIS - paid supplement for MarineTraffic.com or VesselTracker.com.

2) There can be terrestrial repeaters, but I have not seen nor heard of ship-based repeaters. We generally see a range of 20-24 miles with our antenna at the top of a 58-foot mast.

https://www.navcen.uscg.gov/how-ais-works

Cheers, RickG

I've just finished the Newport-Bermuda race; having delivered a Jeanneau 53 called "Challenge Accepted" from Norfolk to Newport, then raced to Bermuda and delivered the boat back to Norfolk. I had planned on storing "Zanshin" in Tyrell Bay on Carriacou this season, but the timing and flights from St. Lucia were better, so I stayed there. Thankfully, getting hit by Irma was enough and I doubt that the boat would have survived another hit by Beryl; the images from Carriacou are terrible.

By the way, Marinetraffic has a free app which allows you to broadcast an AIS signal if the phone has connectivity. It will only show up on Marinetraffic, though.

Glad you survived this one Arnd.

Ocean Song was part of The Great Grenada Exodus or as some were calling it on Sunday, “The Beryl Run”. We had been anchored off Sandy Island, Carriacou on Friday morning and decided we should position ourselves in Woburn Bay, Grenada over the weekend just in case Beryl continued to stay south or worse, took a jog farther south. On Friday night my wife and I had dinner with friends (very experienced world cruisers) and we all felt reasonably confident Grenada’s southern bays would be safe. We started prepping our boats for TS conditions on Saturday. By early Saturday evening preparations were completed but Beryl’s projected path nudged slightly south. We decided to get up at 4:00am and if the projected path had moved any farther south, we would up anchor and head to Trinidad.

Sure enough, by 4:00 Beryl looked to be coming directly over Carriacou - simply too close for comfort. By 5:15am we were exiting Woburn and our AIS and radar showed at least a dozen boats in front of us and within 3 hours, at least 100, perhaps 150 boats behind us. We had a fast sail, averaging 7kn, and entered the pass between Trinidad and Monos Island about 5:00pm. By 6:00 we were securely anchored in Carenage Bay, just north of Port of Spain. We were one of only 3 boats in the outer anchorage, by dawn the next morning there were 29 additional boats anchored.

Of course no one had time to clear out of Grenada. Trinidad announced it would waive all fees for boats seeking safe haven. We were also allowed a reasonable number of days to clear in because squally weather prevailed as Beryl’s outer bands passed and most cruisers did not feel comfortable leaving their boats. If not going ashore one was asked to fly the Q-flag and check in by radio or online and no clearance was required. Many boats have left, heading back up island over the last 48 hours. For those clearing in an information center was set up by the great folks at Power Boats to organize and assist in filling out the sixteen (yes, 1-6) pages of clearance documents required. Admittedly, 6 of those pages were carbon copies. Once completed volunteers drove cruisers to C&I. Of course there were long lines 25 - 40 in queue, but things moved relatively quickly. We had come ashore at 9:30, and we were cleared in by 1:30.

Trinidad has been welcoming and fantastic. A new shopping bus schedule has been created, extra taxis arranged, potlucks, and BBQs have been organized by the marinas. The cruising community has been even better. A couple of boats ran into issues coming over (conditions were sporty leaving Grenada), but folks stood by to make sure everyone was safe. During the crossing there was constant, helpful radio chatter. As we approached the pass at Monos there were more than a dozen boats converging. Literally every captain slowed down and there was an organized and safe, single-file procession through the pass.

Our hearts go out to those affected by Beryl. Loss of homes, businesses, places of worship, and unfortunately lives far outweigh anything we have ever experienced. We lost a boat in Irma, so we do understand the feelings of those losing boats in Beryl. Almost every cruiser is loading up on needed supplies and transporting them back to Grenada.

We are keeping all the people affected by Beryl in our prayers.

Zanshin--glad your boat and YOU are ok.

Ocean Song--thanks for the post. Glad you are OK.

Zanshin and Ocean Song, so glad to hear you were out of Carriacou. So very sad about the terrible loss at that wonderful island. Echoes is on one of the Whisper Cove moorings in Woburn Bay, Grenada and did well. The top gust there was 49nm.

Cheers, RickG

RickG,

That is great to hear! We were very worried about Grenada in general, and particularly Woburn where we spent almost 6 months last year. We heard pretty much everyone in Woburn fared well, wonderful that Echoes and crew are well.

Glad to hear that Ocean Song, Zanshin and Echoes made it through unscathed. Ocean Song, I literally got tears in my eyes reading your post about the good that you experienced in the Grenada boating community. Glad it hasn't changed since I was a boat kid living in Prickly Bay in the 70's. Our family boats Ripple (in Martinique) and Last Mango (in St. Lucia) made it through as well. My brother's old boat, Let's Play Two, that he sold this year, miraculously made it through Irma and Maria, and we've always appreciated the fact that we dodged a huge bullet then. We are scheduled to fly to Grenada from Colorado later this month if anyone needs us to check on boats or bring anything for them personally. We do plan on bringing as much as we can in relief supplies. We have so many friends between Carriacou and Bequia that have literally lost everything I wish we could do more.

Ocean Song... Great to hear your story. We spent many months in the bays at the south of Grenada preparing for our circumnavigation and it was a brilliant time. The cruisers community there is so welcoming. When I saw Beryl's likely path, I guessed there would be rapid exodus for Trinidad as that is exactly what we'd have done. With the final path over Carriacou, I imagine it would have been safe to stay around Clark's Court or any of those bays but just too close for comfort.

Great to hear that Trinidad were sympathetic and welcoming. That wasn't always the case hence the cruisers preference for wonderful but not quite as hurricane-safe Grenada.

Hoping the BVI will follow suit and welcome sailors..and all..not make folks feel like they are getting the third degree for wanting to come here and spend $$$...The time has come for Immigration to learn some customer relations.....

Ocean Song, that was an amazing post! Got a little teary reading it. So glad you and others made it to safe harbor. Sadly, the damage to the affected islands is not being well covered in the US media.

MAYAG, Marine & Yachting Association of Grenada , is raising money for relief efforts. They are buying supplies, providing transportation to Carriacou and Petite Martinique, and transporting relief workers. More at
https://www.facebook.com/marineandyachtingassociationofgrenada

Cheers, RickG

They did not feel that way with Covid. In fact they actively blocked boat owners from leaving. How keeping boats in the BVI helped with Covid I have no idea. Fortunately the USVI allowed boats in without clearing out from the BVI.

@Zanshin - glad to hear you and the boat are safe. And even more glad to hear you are living it up!! Deliveries, ocean races, and more deliveries. By golly.

@OceanSong thanks for sharing! What a great story to read.