Day 1
At midday, after a two-hour wait for crates of bottled water and vats of petrol to load, the horn blows and the ferry slowly chugs away from the port at Kingstown, the capital of St Vincent and the Grenadines. We are headed to the storm-hit islands of the Grenadines. Passengers, returning to what remains of their homes, huddle to the back of the deck to avoid the rain, as the vessel tumbles in the bitter grey sea.
The Grenadines is a chain of pristine islands that runs southward from the island of St Vincent and continue as part of the country of Grenada, in the Southern Caribbean, about 200km from the South American mainland. Among them is the private island of Mustique, a favourite holiday spot of the British royal family. Prime Minister Boris Johnson controversially spent Christmas on the island in 2019, at the invitation of the Von Bismark family, descendants of the first chancellor of the German Empire. Further south lies Canouan which once hosted a golf course owned by Donald Trump. Unlike the visitors who sun themselves in neighbouring St Lucia and Barbados, the Grenadines attract an exclusive set for which a yacht is a basic prerequisite.
But on the last weekend of June 2024, the harbours of the Grenadines were emptied of their yachts. A Category 5 hurricane was approaching. Dubbed Beryl, it was one of the strongest hurricanes of recent years, breaking many meteorological records for its fury and intensity. In late June and early July, it devastated part of the Caribbean. So, before the arrival of Beryl, the rich yachties had sailed south, seeking shelter in Trinidad and Tobago, outside the hurricane belt. According to that country’s government, by Sunday 30 June, around a hundred yachts had arrived or were on their way. Locals on the Grenadines, mostly the descendants of enslaved Africans, were left to the mercy of a mighty tempest. How they fared unfolds as we head south, toward the southern Grenadines, where Hurricane Beryl made landfall on the morning of 1 July.
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