Southern St Lucia is a dodgy area

[KellysEye]

>You may recall we got close to some action in St Vincent in 2007, and in speaking with the young coppers who came out on their RIB, I was surpsied when they quietly told me of several other similar serious incidents in the preceding months.

Hi John.

I don't know if this was the action you came close to but this involves a skipper, who we talked to, who charters his boat out of St Vincent and is armed. One night his boat was boarded by one man but he chased him off. He reported it to the coastguard, who know he is armed, and they said why didn't you shoot him. The next night he saw the same man boarding another boat, he called the coastguard and he got in his dinghy to chase him off but he the man had seem him coming and headed for the beach. The coastguard arrived and he heard the double click of a machine being cocked and they raked the beach with gunfire. He went ashore the next morning to see if there was a body but found there was only blood. The next day the Prime Minister went on TV and said if anybody boards a boat and is shot the police will take no action.

 

[Malo37]

>A bit of a generalisation but Caribbean islands consistently comes second only to South Africa in most U.N. violent crime league tables, a notable exception being Cuba.

It is definitely a generalisation the great majority of murders in the Caribbean are in Venezuela and Trinidad involving drug gangs. As I keep pointing boat crime is relatively low in the island chain as witnessed by www.safetyandsecuriynet.com. I keep mentioning it but few seem to look at it. The UN figures are murder not violent crime, total murder rates by country have nothing to with boat crime.

UN statistics are broken down into many categories of crime eg financial, rape, muggings, assault, murder, property etc. Venezuela is classified as South America rather than Caribbean.

 

[KellysEye]

>UN statistics are broken down into many categories of crime eg financial, rape, muggings, assault, murder, property etc. Venezuela is classified as South America rather than Caribbean.

But your post was: A bit of a generalisation but Caribbean islands consistently comes second only to South Africa in most U.N. violent crime league tables, a notable exception being Cuba. Which is giving no specific data and therefore no practical use and wrongly scaremongering, whereas I've have given specific and useable data. Perhaps you could post the boat type crime figures by country to see how they match with The Caribbean Safety and Security net.

 

[TQA]

Hmm I am a liveaboard in this area and the only two places I avoid are Chateaubelair in St Vincent and Vieux Fort in St Lucia.

The North end of St Vincent grows a lot of top quality 'herb' and Chateaubelair is where the deals go down and it gets loaded onto boats.

Vieux Fort has had an ongoing boat theft problem for some time now. Possibly the bad guys are now in jail.

As for the rest of the Windward and Leewards I am happy to anchor and go ashore during daylight hours anywhere. At night like anywhere in the world there are areas where I am cautious, just use your common sense.

 

[KellysEye]

Years ago were anchored in Soufriere, St Lucia where some Rastas live and at 13.00 we saw a boat drop drugs off, it came from the south so presumably St Vincent. Interestingly the police had raided the Rastas camp an hour before, our bet was they were in on the drop hence the early raid. Needless to say once we realised what was going on we looked away.