The watermen and waterwomen.
Operating a business like Swimvacation puts me in a position to meet all kinds of people, but some of the most intriguing are the watermen and waterwomen that cross my path. These are people who have mastered multiple aquatic skills like boating, scuba and free diving, swimming, fishing, spear fishing, ocean rescue, sailing, surfing, and paddleboarding. I’m probably missing a few but you get the idea. These people are as comfortable on and under the water as they are on land. Most have grown up on the water, and make their living there. It’s not just their skills, though. There's an intangible quality, something I can sense but can’t accurately describe.
Our guest skipper on Flamboyant, Touché.
I’ve known our Captain Jason is a waterman, but this is the first time I’ve worked with our new Captain/waterman Touché. I watched as he set and trimmed sails and set 3 fishing lines all at once, in heavy 6-foot swell and chop in 20-knot winds, moving around the deck as I would in my perfectly still, not moving at all, kitchen back home. This guy has salt water in his veins.
Robert came to visit us on Flamboyant on an early morning pre-swim splash.
We woke at Isle de Ronde (Round Island) and had a nice swim around the relatively calm bay. I saw a turtle, a southern stingray, and a pufferfish within my first 20 strokes. I had a feeling we’d be seeing a lot of wildlife this week.
We soon set sail for Carriacou, into the big waves and 20-knot winds. I was in a bit of a dramamine haze, but stumbled up to the captain’s chair to catch up with guide John, who was sailing the boat at this point while Touché was slapping his hand on the side of the boat. “I’m calling the dolphins in , I saw one off the bow” he said. At this point the boat is heaving pretty wildly, but I crawled out to the bow on my belly, holding on to the lifelines, and proceeded to slap the boat, as well. Within a few minutes, about a dozen very large bottlenose dolphins appeared, playing and riding our bow wake. They're so fast and muscular, and I’m jealous of the way they move effortlessly to keep up with us at about 10mph. They can swim at speeds up to 30mph, so this was no bigs for them.
I focused on stills, but John and Taylor got some awesome video of our dolphin pod. Don’t miss it at the bottom of this post!
This is Grenadian “Guava Cheese” which is not a cheese at all. It’s a sort of solid guava jelly. Miriam suggested we pair it with actual cheese as they do in Mexico. Suddenly Jemima appeared with a wheel of bree and WOW was it amazing.
We pulled into Tyrell Bay, Carriacou to check out of Grenada for our trip north, to St. Vincent and the Grenadine Islands. We tend not to swim or spend much time in the sun here in the middle of the day, it’s very hot. Chef Jemima put out a Jamaican lunch that was out of this world tasty.
Hurricanes don’t hit this end of the Caribbean as much as the rest, but when they do, they tend to put a lot of boats up on shore here in Tyrell Bay, and there are lots of wrecks both old and new. We planned a swim now called 3 wrecks, starting near a tugboat that was pushed up on a rock during 2024’s Hurricane Beryl, past a really old wreck that is basically just a pile of rusted steel now, ending at an old tanker that got reefed here long ago, its parts strewn along the bottom. The last time we swam here was before Hurricane Beryl, and the damage it did to the older wrecks and to the hillsides is extensive, though I can see the trees and shrubs are filling in nicely.
A quick sunset sail to the northern end of Carriacou brought us to a little bay where we are totally alone, both of our boats bobbing in the fading sunlight. We all gathered on the bigger boat Elvira for cocktails (negronis), then a delicious roti meal. Coconut pudding and a spiced rum digestif for the finale. All this sun and swimming puts all of us landlubbers and watermen and women to bed early.
Hopper
And here’s a little video of mostly dolphins but other small moments from our beautiful day, with content contributions from Taylor, John and Miriam. The music you hear is composed and created by my son, Finn Weafer using ONLY his voice - no other instruments!