“If you haven’t been to Grenada, you haven’t been to the Caribbean,” Keith Mitchell, the island’s Prime Minister, tells me with the broad grin of a man not given to understatement.

In Grenada a “lime” is a great place to be, and “limin’ ” means having a ball. Mr Mitchell is limin’. “What we have to offer is a warm climate, friendly people, and miles of bays and beaches waiting for the right kind of development. We are open for investment,” he says.

Grenada has a 1950s sort of feel: gentle, unspoilt and attractively unsophisticated. A truck emptying the septic tank at a private villa was advertising itself with the slogan: “Number 1 in the Number 2 Business.”

Mr Mitchell is something of an expert on Prickly Bay Waterside, a British-led development that looks ready to take the island into a new era.

Prickly Bay has 70 daringly original contemporary houses and apartments, along with hotel and marina, that are fast taking shape around a former boatyard on the southern tip of Grenada, between the capital, St George’s, and the airport. The first 20 will be ready by Easter, which is fast work given that the whole caboodle was only dreamt up 2½ years ago.

As befits a boatyard, the theme is nautical. At the front, seemingly afloat in the Caribbean, comes a row of five-bed, five-bathroom “marine houses” suspended over the sea on a grid of steel and concrete piles. Their design is a witty take on a super-yacht — all teak decks, bridge-like balconies and sleek marine superstructures. They feature glass flooring, underlit at night to give views of the ocean below.

Incidentally, there is space to berth up to 140 ft of real super-yacht alongside the back door. So that’s $3.55 million (£2.05 million) for the new house, and, say, $20 million for the yacht if you go secondhand. Then come the five-bed, five-bathroom “lawn houses” — set in swaths of manicured lawn, separated from the marine houses by a wide boardwalk and a 200-yard string of inter-linked swimming pools, including an Olympic-length one.

These houses, at 4,000 sq ft, are big and exquisite in detail. They have ship’s masts, huge shaded glass fronts that roll open, white limestone and glass floors and double-height living spaces. They come with carbon-fibre spiral staircases and a handy guest lift to the barbecue on the roof. The words gorgeous and modern do not often share a sentence, but they have to here. Prices are from $2.75 million.

Facing the sea at the rear of the site are elegant, high-spec one to three-bedroom apartments with large balconies, and several with their own plunge pools. Prices are from $485,000 to $1.44 million.

All the properties borrow heavily from nautical styles, and make use of advanced marine materials and technology, including carbon fibre, Kevlar and composites. Panels, cladding and balconies are being shipped to Grenada from CML, the specialist mouldings company run by the naval architect Warwick Buckley at Southampton Water.

Reid Steel, of Christchurch, Dorset, was brought in to design and supply steel frames for all the buildings. The company specialises in hurricane and quake-resistant structures around the world. Acres of glass throughout the development utilise the high-tech Schüco system from Germany. The large panels of 18.8mm-thick, triple-laminated glass exceed American standards and will resist hurricanes.

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A new marina is being developed, along with a 20-room hotel with restaurant and gym. The hotel will offer all its concierge and catering services to homeowners. It will also serve as the management centre for owners wanting to let their properties, with a guaranteed 6 per cent rental return for 18 months.

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