Fleeing a volcanic eruption

Kia Koropp and family up-anchor and grab their face masks when a cloud of black ash descends on the Grenadines

- Kia Koropp

No circumnavigation is complete without a collection of ‘one-up’ stories to tell. We’ve hiked dormant volcanoes and looked into the fiery pit of active ones during the decade we’ve been cruising. Recounting these unique experiences has been fun. Thanks to La Soufrière in St Vincent, we can now add ‘running from an erupting volcano’ to our collection of tales. This is how my husband, John, and I experienced the event while cruising in the Grenadines with our two children Braca (nine) and Ayla (seven) onboard Atea, our 50ft Ganley cutter-rigged sloop.

No longer is cruising the Caribbean defined by a carefree transit through a succession of islands. In 2020 it became all about negotiating the complexities of Covid regulations which require an in-depth understanding of the current policies of each country and result in less movement within the archipelago. The French islands are currently closed to non-French citizens and the large disparity between the cost of PCR tests and the varying quarantine requirements means you have to do your research before moving on. Having done our research, we settled on spending a chunk of our time in the Grenadines where, after the pain and price of entry, we would be rewarded with a large group of idyllic islands to slowly explore. What we didn’t include in our list of considerations was the disruption of an active volcano.