Journey dispatch #1
Barbados 🇧🇧 to Saint Lucia 🇱🇨
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We’ll continue to share feature articles on climate and nature solutions as well as longer-form travel diaries, but if you want to read the latest, subscribe now to receive our regular updates!
Hello from St. Lucia! After a peaceful crossing from Cabo Verde to Barbados and a short offline break, we were all smiles for our arrival in the Caribbean. It was amazing to touch land after over two months at sea. We had a long list of all the things we wanted to do: go on runs, eat ice cream and fresh vegetables, go snorkeling…
But our excitement about reaching land quickly turned into anxiety when we realized we still had 1,500+ nautical miles between us and Miami. So we rushed to rent the cheapest one-room Airbnb we could find and spent our very first day in the Caribbean… sending emails and eating ramen.
Glamorous, right?
Such is the life on the road! Luckily, our hard work paid off, and the calendar filled up with two amazing organizations to profile and a generous, fun-loving cruising couple who offered to sail us to Saint Lucia. Over the next few days, we hopped on the incredible Bajan busses (just $1.75 USD for a trip anywhere on the island!) to explore around and meet local solutions.
Over the course of our time in Barbados, we met with Solar Dynamics and WIRRED, working on clean energy and ecological regeneration, respectively. While we knew that Barbados was an island with incredible climate solutions before arriving — led by powerhouse climate PM Mia Mottley — we were truly blown away by the passion impact these organizations bring to their work. We can’t wait to share the full stories with you in the next few weeks.
Then, we set off with Danielle and James, digital nomads-turned full-time cruisers who spent the last two years at sea. We were actually their first sail-hitchhikers in all this time — how lucky and grateful!
It wasn’t exactly smooth sailing to get to Saint Lucia, with 25-knot winds and 10-foot waves. We barely slept, and Polo fed the fishes 🐠 again, but at least we arrived in less than a day! We took Friday off, snorkeling through the crystal blue waters of Soufrière in the shadow of the Pitons, and hiking to a hidden hot springs!
We’re now in an interior town called Monchy for a few days before joining another captain in his sail northward bound. The current plan is to prepare a few stories here in Saint Lucia before heading onwards to Martinique, where Polo can load the sailboat with all of the salted butter his little French heart desires.
💡🌳 Solution of the week: Solar Hot Water
How can we save up to 13.4 gigatons of CO2, money, and still enable more people around the world to have the luxury of a hot shower? With solar hot water! This technology is nothing new — the first commercial example actually dates back to 1896 — but it is an incredibly powerful tool in the path towards decarbonization. Barbados is particularly impressive because the country has the #1 solar water heater capacity per capita. What’s amazing about solar water heaters is that they function independently of PV systems, keeping cost low and not requiring complex connections with the electrical grid.
📣💚 Shoutout to: Elize Rostant, Managing Director of WIRRED
The WIRRED project is inspiring by itself, but what really made our visit stand out was Elize. She went above and beyond to show us hospitality, giving us a behind-the-scenes tour of the incredible reserve and sharing her endless depth of knowledge with us on every aspect of the site. We got to see her in action leading her team of 40 people across WIRRED’s many departments (agriculture, community engagements, beekeeping, social action — it’s a lot!) and we were deeply impressed by her leadership style.
❌ 🎒 Travel fail:
After more than two months without camping, we were thrilled at the idea of spending a night on the beach. We found a great little campsite near Speightstown close to some beautiful trees. Perfect. Except, when we woke up in the morning, we realized we’d spent the night under the Manchineel tree, A.K.A the deadliest tree in the world! In Spanish, it’s literally called the “little apple of death”.
Whoops. Luckily, we hadn’t been hungry.
📸 Photo of the week:
That’s for now! Tune in next week to follow us on the journey north!
Sheesh, close call on the tree