Yacht­ing in Grena­da and the wider Caribbean de­vel­oped as an in­dus­try in the 1960s with the ad­vent of the first char­ter boats and the de­vel­op­ment of cruis­ing on yachts as a lifestyle. Since this time, the wider Caribbean has be­come a well recog­nised des­ti­na­tion of choice for yacht­ing tourism, ri­valling ar­eas like the Mediter­ranean in pop­u­lar­i­ty. By the late 1960s, Grena­da ri­valled An­tigua for the size of the yacht­ing in­dus­try in terms of boats and ser­vices. The po­lit­i­cal up­heaval of the ear­ly 1980s dis­rupt­ed the growth of the yacht­ing in­dus­try in Grena­da, as well as the econ­o­my in gen­er­al, al­low­ing oth­er Caribbean is­lands to de­vel­op yacht­ing fa­cil­i­ties far ahead of Grena­da.

Dur­ing the 1970s and 1980s, the de­vel­op­ment of the yacht­ing sec­tor on oth­er Caribbean is­lands was con­sid­er­able: The British Vir­gin Is­lands be­came a ma­jor yacht tourism des­ti­na­tion; An­tigua and St Mar­tin be­came the is­land of choice for "su­per- yachts"; while T&T be­came a ma­jor ser­vice des­ti­na­tion. Last year the Camper and Nichol­sons Port Louis Ma­ri­na in Grena­da record­ed an in­creased berthing of su­per yachts and reg­u­lar yachts, as com­pared to the 2010 sea­son. Dan­ny Donelan, sales and mar­ket­ing man­ag­er, said that "from the be­gin­ning of May un­til No­vem­ber, all of the big mega yachts nor­mal­ly go to the Mediter­ranean." How­ev­er, he said that sur­pris­ing­ly, in 2011 the yacht­ing sec­tor a few mega yachts stay­ing in the Caribbean. He at­trib­uted this to the fact "that Grena­da and the Port Louis Ma­ri­na are out­side of the hur­ri­cane belt."

Donelan said the fa­cil­i­ties, ser­vices and friend­li­ness of Grena­di­ans have con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to this in­crease. "Right now, we have about five big boats at the Ma­ri­na." Adding, "We have al­so had quite a few boats that have just come in for week­ends and have en­joyed the ser­vice so much that they have de­cid­ed to stick around for the whole sum­mer. Ani­ta Sut­ton, pres­i­dent of the Ma­rine and Yacht­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of Grena­da, said this in­crease is as a re­sult of the im­prove­ment of lo­cal fa­cil­i­ties and ser­vices. Ac­cord­ing to Sut­ton, the sec­tor record­ed more than 900 boats for the 2011 sea­son. "We are def­i­nite­ly see­ing more boats in the ma­ri­na than last year and they are tend­ing to at­tract the slight­ly larg­er and high­er spend yachts," she not­ed.