- Boat type — Carriacou sloop, entirely wooden hull
- Launching — 2007, or January 12, 2008, depending on the source
- Length — 43 feet — approx. 13.1 m
- Built by — Baldwin DeRoche aka «Balo»
- Built in — the island of Petite Martinique
- Current base — St George's, Grenada
- Originally ordered by — Jeff Stevens
- First owner — Peter de Savary, who gave it his name
A work by Balo
Savvy is the second-to-last sloop built by Baldwin DeRoche. The boat is operated on a charter basis by a crew made up of shipwrights and fishermen from the villages of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique, who tell passengers about this two-hundred-year-old tradition.
Savvy has competed in all the major Caribbean traditional sailing events: Grenada Sailing Week, Bequia Easter Regatta, Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta, West Indies Regatta, Carriacou Regatta, and Mango Bowl. The sloop participated again in the 2026 Carriacou Regatta Festival, alongside Free in St. Barth, Margeta, Glacier, Windward Pride
Commissioned by Jeff Stevens
Savvy was not commissioned by the man for whom she is named: it was Jeff Stevens who commissioned her from the shipwright Balo.
A British man living in the Grenadines, Stevens had spent three years building a seventy-three-foot schooner with his own hands, constructed with Grenadine timbers and the help of carpenters from Carriacou: Jambalaya.
He had been living aboard it since 2002 and used to take clients from the private resort of Petit St. Vincent out to sea. This time he wanted a smaller sloop, for day trips with few passengers.
Even before the boat was finished, its destination changed: it was sold to Peter de Savary, the British businessman who was then developing a marina in Grenada. The sloop took his name.
Purchased by Peter de Savary
De Savary had discovered Grenada as a child in 1952, and said he owed all his subsequent investments on the island to that memory: Port Louis Marina, which he sold for fifty million dollars, the Mount Cinnamon resort above Grand Anse, and the Mount Edgecombe plantation. Starting with an African export company in the 1960s, he went on to build and then sell the St. James's Club, the Carnegie Club at Skibo Castle in Scotland, and the Pendennis shipyard, presided over the Millwall football club, and led more than seventy hotel projects.
But first and foremost, he was a sailor: more than thirty boats in his life, the Newport Bucket, the St. Barths Bucket, and above all, the British challenge for the America's Cup in 1983, defeated in the Louis Vuitton Cup final by Alan Bond's Australian syndicate—the very same syndicate that, a few weeks later, wrested the Cup from the Americans after more than a century of dominance. That such a man would buy a hand-built wooden sloop on a beach in Petite Martinique speaks volumes about the value of these boats. Peter de Savary died on November 1, 2022, at the age of seventy-eight.
The Launching
Savvy was launched in Petite Martinique on Sunday, January 12, 2008. The launch remains memorable: the wooden rollers collapsed under the weight of the lead keel, the tugboat's towline snapped, and it was ultimately the coastal freighter Adelaide that pulled the sloop into the water. They had to work quickly: the boat needed to be rigged and ready to race in the Port Louis Grenada Sailing Festival at the end of the same month. Caribbean Compass described it at the time as a forty-footer; the classic yacht registries now list it as forty-three feet.
The date is disputed. The current owner of the sloop gives 2007 as the year it was launched. The press at the time, however, reports the launch as of January 12, 2008. Both versions could be reconciled: the boat could have been launched as a bare hull in 2007, then left Petite Martinique rigged and motorized in January 2008. Nothing confirms this to date.
The money from the sale did not leave the island. Jeff Stevens immediately reinvested it in a second, larger boat, which Balo launched eleven months later: Beauty of Petite Martinique.
On that day in January 2008, a young Grenadian man, Danny Donelan, watched the launch from the beach. He would later say he had never seen anything like it: the pomp and tradition surrounding the launch astonished him. He decided that day that he too would have a boat like that. Six years later, around 2013, Peter de Savary sold it to him on favorable terms, believing he was capable of preserving this legacy. De Savary was his former employer.
Bought by Danny Donelan
Photo: Savvy Grenada Sailing Charters
Danny Donelan is Grenadian and fell in love with the sloops of Carriacou. His older brother taught him to sail, and he was already racing at fourteen. He worked under Peter de Savary before buying the boat from him. He initially ran Savvy on weekends while keeping a day job, then, at forty, he left the corporate world to found Savvy Grenada Sailing Charters.
His principle can be summed up in one sentence: the captains of his boats are shipwrights, and their first mates are apprentice shipwrights. Passengers don't listen to a guide; they listen to the men who build these boats. He only does private charters and races every year in Grenada Sailing Week, the Bequia Easter Regatta, the Carriacou Regatta, the Mango Bowl, and sometimes he ventures as far as the Antigua Classic or the West Indies Regatta in St. Barth.
He would later buy shares in another sloop from Petite Martinique, Beauty of Petite Martinique. He therefore owns the last two ships that came out of Balo's hands.
A charter boat that has become an island landmark
Savvy is therefore available for charter: to come and sail in a traditional way on one of these historic sloops of Petite Martinique is to taste the authentic Grenada and two centuries of shipbuilding traditions.
Sources
- Caribbean Compass, February 2008, Susan Payetta — Launching in Petite Martinique
- ClassicYachtInfo — Savvy sloop specifications
- Forbes, July 23, 2020 — Meet The Man Keeping Traditional Caribbean Sailing Alive In Grenada
- Caribbean Beat, No. 113 — Peter de Savary: smelling the nutmeg
- Boat International, November 2022 — Yachtsman and entrepreneur Peter de Savary dies
- ShoutOut Miami — Meet Danny Donelan, entrepreneur and boat captain
- Savvy Grenada Sailing Charters — savvygrenada.com
Contact — Savvy
- Site — savvygrenada.com
- Facebook — savvygrenada
- Instagram — @savvysailing
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