Caribbean Island Price Comparison Chart
Being the bargain hunter that my mother trained me to be, I spent considerable time comparing prices between the various Leeward and Windward islands. My price list was born after I sent 20 postcards from Guadeloupe, thinking it would be the cheaper option, only to find that I would have paid a fraction of the postage in Dominica (and gotten more interesting stamps than good old Miss Liberte).
We went cruising because we wanted to live independently and away from the stresses of our every day lives. That’s why we preferred anchoring in the quietest, least convenient places for long periods of time. So we stock piled supplies on the bigger islands (a month’s supply at a time, minus fresh fruit we would pick up along the way, mostly thanks to boat boys) and could then head out to the smaller islands without worrying about running low on the basics or having to move on only because the cooker’s butane had run low. I met one sailor who complained how expensive it was to buy supplies in the Caribbean, only to find out he was shopping exclusively in the small islands you want to visit most, but least want to shop in for lack of selection and high prices: Mustique, Bequia, Carriacou, and the like! (You can support their local economies by paying for local produce, handcrafts, or services there). It pays to invest a couple of days stopping in the bigger places to get yourself supplied for the real gems. Of course, this assumes you have time on your hands! Therefore, this list is more helpful for the liveaboards than short term charterers.
So here you have it, my Caribbean food & supplies shopping guide! It is organized into five parts, which you can reach by clicking on each line.
1. BEST PLACES FOR PROFESSIONAL BOAT REPAIRS OR CHANDLERS
2. BEST PLACES TO STOCK UP ON FOOD IN OVERVIEW
First, the easiest places to stock up in, listed specifically:
3. FOOD PRICE COMPARISON CHART
I recorded prices for basic products across the islands: milk, beer, bottled water, bread, and diesel, as well as postage rates. For exact numbers, look at the spreadsheet below, which has prices in a standard format: EC$ (Eastern Caribbean Dollars) and liters for simplicity (converted in some cases from US$ and Euro and gallons). These are raw prices from spring 2008 - these will have changed but I think they will probably change proportionally island to island.
If you bought one of each of the food items on each island (milk, beer, bread, water), you would pay the following total:
St Lucia EC$12.69
Puerto Rico EC$14.18
Martinique EC$15.29
Guadeloupe EC$15.81
St Marten EC$17.52
Grenada EC$18.78
Antigua EC$20.63
This is hardly a scientific study but I hope it gets you started with your bulk food shopping! Bread is the least reliable price I list here since there is no consistent weight to use for comparison. The base data can be found in the table below.
| Island | Milk | Beer | Water | Bread | Diesel |
Postcard to US |
Postcard to Europe |
total of 1st 4 products |
|
| EC$/Liter | EC$/bottle | EC$/1.5Liter | per loaf | EC$/Liter | EC$ | EC$ | EC$ | ||
| Antigua | 5.07 | 3.21 | 5.35 | 7.00 | 2.20 | 0.75 | 0.90 | 20.63 | |
| Dominica | 1.00 | 1.00 | |||||||
| Grenada | 4.50 | 2.83 | 3.45 | 8.00 | 2.87 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 18.78 | |
| Guadeloupe | 6.27 | 4.53 | 1.94 | 3.07 | 4.12 | 3.41 | 4.09 | 15.81 | |
| Martinique | 5.45 | 5.48 | 2.15 | 2.21 | 3.65 | 15.29 | |||
| Puerto Rico | 4.11 | 3.82 | 0.94 | 5.31 | 2.40 | 14.18 | |||
| St Kitts | 3.00 | 3.00 | 3.50 | 2.88 | 0.80 | 1.00 | |||
| St Lucia | 5.34 | 2.60 | 3.00 | 1.75 | 2.80 | 0.65 | 0.70 | 12.69 | |
| St Maarten | 6.30 | 4.41 | 2.00 | 4.81 | 3.26 | 2.67 | 2.67 | 17.52 | |
| St Vincent | 4.85 | 3.00 | 10.00 | 2.27 | 1.00 | 1.05 |
RECYCLING:
Most islands have no recycling, so I saved up recyclables to the extent possible to bring to the islands that do recycle. Recycling is available on:
4. MY FAVORITE FOOD PRODUCTS FOUND IN THE CARIBBEAN
5. GENERAL TIPS for FOOD ON BOARD
BREAD: Once we started baking our own bread, we became even more independent of shops and enjoyed delicious home made bread while out in remote anchorages. It was also better than the plain white bread we found in most places! This recipe is really easy and is credited to Chris Doyle. I changed the flour mixture to create a heartier bread but you can also make it with all white flour. TIP: It is easiest to prepare several batches by doing all the measuring at once and combining the dry ingredients for several loaves in zip lock bags, one bag per loaf of bread. So when it was time to make a bread, I would just mix those contents with water. This is really helpful when you are underway!
No Knead Bread recipe – by Chris Doyle, grain mix by me
2.5 cups flour, ¼ teaspoon dry yeast, 2 teaspoons salt, ½ as much water as flour
(I made double loaves with 2 cups white flour, 1.5 whole wheat flour, 1 cup rye
flour, ½ cup flax)
Mix the ingredients, let sit overnight covered with a plastic bag.
(I eventually bought a big tupperware for this purpose)
In the morning, flop the dough onto board covered with corn meal and let sit for
2 hours. Bake the bread in a metal pot wtih lid. Heat up the pot and lid for 30 min
before putting the dough in it. Bake for 15 minutes covered, rotate it and continue
for 15 minutes more, then take the lid off for the final 15 min at 450F (230C) (all
very relative in a small oven! We used full heat!).
BAKING: Since the oven had to heat up hot for the bread, I often baked something else in the warm up period, like muffins or brownies, to make the most of the butane being burned anyway. We liked baking goodies like brownies on board. Most brownie mixes require you to add eggs and we had a problem keeping eggs reliably without refrigeration. So we tried to buy non-egg brownie mix – they don’t come out as fudgy, but are still good.