April 27 – Mai 13, 2025; 18601 nm and 2245 days after departure from La Rochelle

To be honest I didn’t know much about Cayman Islands. “Money laundry” popped up in my mind due to old movies I guess and of course “offshore accounts”. Neither of those qualities were of any interest for our stop. That said we also didn’t look any deeper in all of those potential financial advantages Cayman might offer. More important for us was the location of Gran Cayman. The passage from Cuba to Panama is not a straight line as you need to keep a good distance to the Honduras/Nicaragua coast due to potential pirate activities. That makes the Caymans a perfect stop. So dividing the trip and enjoying for a couple of weeks a developed country sounded suddenly very tempting.
After about 36 hours we arrived on the 29th of April in the morning at Georgetown at Gran Cayman island. Via VHF we were welcomed by an incredibly friendly port officer who pointed us to a free mooring and explained what to do and where to go for check in. Not only was the international check in super fast as all offices were in one building as well the officials were super relaxed, friendly and helpful. It would make checking in so much more fun if all the countries were as welcoming as in Georgetown. On the other hand, we probably wouldn’t appreciate such kindness anymore. To top it all, the whole procedure was at no charge. Incredible! (In average we usually pay around 300 US $ for an international check in.) That included even a 30 day cruising permit. What a nice welcome! And imagine, in less than 30 min we were already sitting in a little cafe and enjoying a very British warm scone.

Strengthened after our short coffee break we explored little Georgetown. Every single building, bar, restaurant, street or place was in tiptop shape. Many shops offered expensive jewellery or watches tax free plus -of course- the usual touristy stuff. For us much more interesting was the huge supermarket “Kirk”. This fancy market offered just everything one could dream of. Any kind of veggies, fruits, food and a big selection of cheese and fresh meat including real Italian salami products. It would have been paradise if the prices wouldn’t have been so incredibly expensive. It even topped by far the Bahamas or prices in the US! Still, we were very excited to be able to purchase from such a variety. Just that we carefully chose what we really, really wanted. Something like: 200 gramm of Italian salami, 200 gramm of real Italian mortadella, a real piece of parmesan only a few veggies and as another fancy treat some grapes and apples. What a yummy first purchase! A few days later we also checked out a farmers market hoping to get better priced fresh veggies but that unfortunately turned out to be a bit disappointing. Only two huts were offering nothing special. Friday and Saturday they said, more farmers would offer there products, but that was too late for us. After spending 4 days in Georgetown we were keen to explore more of Cayman and headed to the North Sound. A pretty big protected bay in the north west of the island with the reputation to be a great snorkel area. The fact that fishing and taking any marine life out of the water was prohibited, resulted in a healthy marine environment. Plenty of super relaxed fishies liked swimming with and around us. Curious if we might taste they even started to nibble at our fingers with no fear. Even sting rays, so used to humans (because tour boats take tourists out to “Stingray city” to feed them) swam towards us checking for some goodies. But as soon as they realised we didn’t have anything to offer they floated past us in their impressive majestic way.
We had anchored close to a reef about half a mile away from Stingray City. (According to google:”The area is famous for having a large congregation of friendly southern stingrays, where visitors can swim and interact with these magnificent creatures. The rays at Stingray City are remarkably docile and are accustomed to human interaction.”) From there we had a perfect sight of Stingray City. It was kind of hilarious to see all the boats gathered together at one small spot and seeing 100 of humans walking in the sand to touch/watch and feed the rays. We were happy to be further away from all the hustle and definitely preferred snorkelling without many human legs surrounding us.
Even though it was a very beautiful place and as said a great snorkelling area, we didn’t like to stay longer. The anchorage was way too rolly which made our stay, if not in the water very uncomfortable. Therefore after another snorkel the next morning we headed over to star fish beach at the east side of the sound. Here we found a nice and mostly calm anchorage. Well let’s say it was calm between sunset and about 10 am. In between, there as well many boats came by to let the tourists out in groups to watch the star fishes which were enjoying the shallow sandy water. Oh and sometimes we got really lucky! Then some super fast and noisy jet skies loved to use us as a turning point for their speedy rides. Wasn’t that nice?!

Still it was a nice place. In the early morning we did a long walk around the shore line. We passed many beautiful houses and a few rental apartments all sitting right at the beach. Cayman beaches fortunately were public. That was why we could walk alongside the beach. A bit strange though as sometimes we were literally walking through some of the houses backyards. Fortunately it seemed nobody was actually there when we passed. At the end of our walk almost back at Altimate we had found a nice resort/marina/restaurant/beach bar “Kaibo”. Here we treated ourselves with unbelievable good croissants and two delicious fresh fruit juices. However for a price where we could have had at least 4 proper dinner meals in Cuba. Well, that was the difference between a well developed and rich country versus a very poor one. Not comparable at all! Having saved a lot of money for checking in we decided not to think about the prices anymore. Just enjoying the delicious products!
We stayed four relaxing days, enjoyed early morning strolls and sundowner beer at the beach in the evening before we needed some more groceries. We moved over to Governors Creek a perfectly protected and very calm anchorage in the west part of the north sound. A convenient place to buy groceries and explore the famous “seven mile beach”. We could easily reach another -fortunately cheaper- supermarket with the promising name ” cost U less” with a short dinghy ride. Here we got all the groceries we needed for the next couple of weeks until we would arrive in Panamá. Errands done we took advantage of the location and strolled along the “Seven mile Beach”. A loooong beach with many hotels and resorts more to the north and a recreational area with a huge volleyball area to the south end. Of course we were pulled by the volleyball courts and strolled there to watch the young people play. They had at least 6 perfectly equipped beach volleyball courts with top notch net and antenna. Very impressive! Not surprising but still very nice was the fact that the players were as good playing as the courts were equipped.

After a couple of nights we were ready to go back to Star fish beach with a snorkel stop over at Sting ray city. Via social media we had made contact with another sailing boat “Chat eau”. They had informed us about the Carnival parade which would happen the next day, a Saturday, in Georgetown. Of course I was keen to see that parade. Instead of staying another night we lifted the anchor in the morning and sailed back the 15nm to Georgetown. It was a fun 4 hour sail. Enough wind to have a little sailing competition with “Chat Eau” as they were also heading to Georgetown to watch the parade. Ha! We just about made it a couple of minutes earlier to get the closer to shore mooring ball. Yessss!
Our friends Sandra and John from “Knot so bad” who we had met in Aruba almost two years ago happened to have arrived from Guatemala that day as well. What a nice surprise! Of course we wanted to catch up and decided to meet later somewhere in Georgetown. Me, eager and excited to watch the parade pushed El Capitano to hurry up to be in time ashore for the show. The parade was supposed to arrive in Georgetown around 4 pm. So I wanted to be there in time to see all the glory. Yeah well, guess what? We waited and waited and waited. Fortunately at least other people were waiting with us and the police started to close up the road. Still I think we waited for more than one hour until finally the parade arrived in Georgetown. El Capitano rather bored and me still excited. Yippee finally a carnival parade in the Caribbean! I was expecting hundreds of extremely beautiful people in glories, colourful costumes dancing gracefully to Caribbean music. What we finally saw was slightly different from what I had imagined. Only very few people were dressed up in what I would have called a proper costume. Most of the participants were less than half naked and shaking their butts like crazy as if they wanted to mate right on the streets. Kind of hilarious to watch but definitely not glorious. And my hope of nice Caribbean music – at least for my ears- was also destroyed. Deafening noisy soca music was trumpeted from the parade cars and of course each one with a different song. What a delight! Well, I could say it was interesting to have seen the parade but it did not reach even slightly my expectations of pompous carnival parade. I must say I was more than a little disappointed. But hey now I knew what was carnival like in the Caribbean! Fortunately we soon found the guys from “Chat Eau” and went together to a nice bar. Not much later Sandra and John joined us as well and we had a great evening. After a few beers we went to have “street dinner”. Thanks to the event there were plenty of street food huts which offered a lot of dishes. We went for a turtle stew. Cayman was kind of famous for its turtle meat so we just had to try. And I must say, it did taste super nice. Like very tender beef, very delicious. Yeah I know eating turtle sounds mean, but is eating other animals better?

The next day we met at “Knot so bad” to properly catch up in the afternoon. Later we went ashore to have dinner at a beach bar and had some very nice Indian food. Unfortunately it was just a short reunion as we wanted to leave early Tuesday morning. Still we had fun and enjoyed our short surprising come together. Monday we bought a few more fresh groceries, got us and Altimate ready for the 600 nm trip to Panamá. In the afternoon we already checked out to be able to have an early start for the next day. Off we were back to Panamá.