Sailors' Guide to the Windward Islands

Publisher: Chris Doyle Publishing in association with Cruising Guide Publications 11 th ed. 2002 £ 17.95

Reading a new edition of a sailing guide is a salutary reminder of the need for vigilance and careful pilotage as a complement to passage planning and research. This 11^th edition of Chris Doyle’s superb guide to the Windward Islands contains a good example of how things change. Comparing the new version with the 10th edition and referring to the section describing my favourite Caribbean island, Bequia, revealed a new wreck “which rises to the surface” in Friendship Bay and “is an easy place to lose an anchor”. Certainly not in evidence at the surface last February, we may have been lucky because I’m sure we anchored there, or thereabouts!

The Windward Islands describe a crescent with Martinique in the north and then, running south, St Lucia, St Vincent, Bequia, Mustique, the remaining Grenadines then down to Grenada. All the Chris Doyle guides contain chartlets of anchorages. These are very clear but inevitably occasionally omit details that can only be obtained from a full-scale chart. For example in the approach to the Tobago Cays, a highlight of any Windward Islands cruise, the Imray-Iolaire chart (corrected September 2000) shows an isolated 1.5m shoal (rep) that is absent from Chris Doyle’s sketch. I cross-checked this feature with the (uncorrected) Admiralty chart in the CA library and it is in fact marked there as well. Maybe local knowledge says that the marked shoal can be ignored but a comment one way or another would be reassuring for the first time visitor.

But this is a quibble. The book is yet another example of a ‘must buy’ from the Doyle series. It will be a constant companion when sailing in the region and a fireside read for the winter months. - SRD

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