We checked out of Grenada and set sail for Union Island with an overnight stop at Petit St Vincent and Petit Martinique.
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| His job was to sweep the beach |
We anchored near Petite St Vincent, which is a private resort, so we didn’t even attempt to go ashore. I need to state here that Andrew and Ian checked the anchor, and it was well set, bedded deeply into the sand.
After we left, we discovered that there is a charge of $100 US to set foot on the island, before even entering a bar or restaurant. The new owner clearly does not want the rabble cruisers to sully their island. We did wonder why the security guard was racing along the shoreline on his bicycle, keeping a beady eye on us while we tootled along the shore in our dinghy!
We went across the bay to a tiny island in the middle of the sea. It was very rough and we didn’t stay long.
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| Mopion Island |
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During the night the wind came up and it rained quite heavily. At midnight Andrew and I were woken by a big bang. Andrew looked out the window and saw Bully going past us. He dashed up and yelled for me, we were dragging anchor badly. We radioed Bully and they were awake having heard a big bang as well. There had been a huge gust of wind of 37 knots.
We discovered that we had dragged, not Bully and we were passing them. Jim said our anchor was up their anchor rode (chain) and their anchor was holding both our boats. Ian heard the commotion on the radio and came over on his dinghy to help. We spent the next 2 plus hours trying to free our anchor. It was quite a nightmare. The wind was howling and every now and then a squall would come through with driving rain. We had to make sure that we wouldn’t bump into Bully as they tried to lift our anchor chain. Andrew and I felt quite helpless as all the action was on Bully and we were unable to help.
Ian and Jim tried to put a line around our rode to lift it so that they could see where the anchor was, but it seemed like the rode was too heavy. We had our snubber on the chain, which was in the water as I had to let out more chain for them to be able to work.
Eventually Ian jumped in the water to see where the anchor was and found that it had come loose from Bully’s chain and was on the ocean floor. We decided not to re-anchor in the dark. Andrew spent the rest of the night dozing in the cockpit, making sure we didn’t hit Bully. Jim and Claire didn't sleep much either.
There were two things that we did wrong that night. Firstly, there wasn’t enough scope out. This means that we didn’t have enough anchor chain out to prevent a big gust of wind ripping the anchor out of the seabed. And the second was, although we had an anchor alarm on, Andrew’s phone was on silent, so we didn’t hear it! Rookie mistakes!
We woke to heavy dark grey skies, upped our anchor and followed Bully and Gumbar to Union Island where we needed to check in to St Vincent & the Grenadines. We were nearly at Clifton Harbour when we could see another squall heading our way. Claire radioed to say they were going to wait for it to pass before heading in. There is a reef close to the entrance to Clifton Harbour, making it quite small and tricky to navigate. We agreed and turned our boat away from the island.
The squall was one of the worst we have been in. The waves picked up and we were rocking from side to side, with gusts of wind which were apparently up to 40 knots and very poor visibility. Our wind instruments have stopped working so we had no idea how strong the wind was. The rain lashed our boat for 45 minutes or more while we trundled up and down trying to avoid hitting Bully and Gumbar. Eventually the squall let up and Gumbar took the gap and went into the harbour. We waited for a while watching another squall pass by us.
While you are in the midst of a squall, it is quite terrifying. With no visibility and other boats around, you wonder how on earth you will survive, and when it will stop. And of course, it eventually does pass by and the sun comes out again. And all is well with the world... until the next one!
We decided it was safe to go in and went to find a spot in the small harbour. Bully dropped anchor quite close to us and there were big catamarans on either side, so Andrew and Jim stayed on board and Ian, Claire and I went ashore to check in.
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| We survived! |
I don’t think I have been to Clifton Harbour when it hasn’t been raining and wet. Andrew wanted me to take his empty crate of Stag beer bottles and buy some Hairoun, which is the local beer. Well, the lady in the shop wouldn’t give me a deposit for the bottles, even though she did on a previous occasion. She said they don’t recycle those bottles. I eventually just left the crate with her and bought a crate of Hairoun.
We managed to get into the Customs office before they closed for lunch at 12 and the lady at Immigration worked into her lunch hour to get us checked in, even though the other two ladies in Customs said she would charge us overtime!! She had the cheek to say we should have come in earlier. I said “Did you see the weather!! We tried!” I think she heard the stress in my voice because she didn’t say another word. She did however get a bit faster with my paperwork!
I just don’t like Clifton Harbour. I don’t know what it is about it but it just has not good vibes (not good juju as Roisin would say). Claire also said she didn’t like it and didn’t feel safe. She would not have walked there on her own.
We went to the veg stall and looked at the overpriced veg and bought a few things. Jim was on the radio frantically calling us to come back to the boats, another squall was about to hit. We quickly made our way back to the dinghy as the rain started to fall.
While we had been ashore, two catamarans had anchored really close behind us. One had picked up a mooring ball directly behind us and probably thought it was okay but they had left very little space for us to manoeuvre when we needed to leave.
With the swell bucking the little dinghy against our boat I scrambled aboard, only to look up and see Bully about to hit our bow. Jim was on the helm, with wide eyes trying to steer her off. Claire scrambled aboard Bully and instantly went into action, pulling up the anchor, with the driving rain pelting down in hard icy bullets. They managed to pull up anchor and avoid hitting any other boats and headed out to sea. We pulled up our anchor in a hurry and followed them. A side note: Bully has a manual windlass, which means Claire had to pull up the anchor by hand! I was super impressed at the speed in which she got that heavy anchor up!
Our next stop was Saline Bay on Mayreau. Thank goodness it was a short hop across the water. It’s always interesting when either going into an anchorage or watching other people anchor. The ladies come out and stand with batwing arms, hands on their hips, checking that the anchoring boat is not going to come too close. The men tend to sit and watch the antics from the cockpit.
Well, we came into the bay, found a spot which we thought would be fine. It was between two cats but there was plenty of room. So we anchor and while we are waiting for the boat to settle we look behind us at the Frenchman on one of the catamarans. He clearly thought we were too close. Next thing he whips his rods off and stands waggling his nether region at us. It would have been okay if he was a young, virile Frenchman, but we weren’t interested in this loud, rude, overweight old man. Seeing that his antics weren’t going to phase us, he put his shorts back on and started waving his arms around, telling us to move, we have the whole bay. Andrew, non-too pleased, yelled something back at him. The old man shouldn’t have worried, we weren’t happy with the holding and so upped our anchor anyway and moved. I didn’t need to scar Laura any more than necessary with idiotic naked men. The funny thing was, a few more boats came in and anchored right near him and soon he was surrounded!
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| Photo credit: Claire |
We spent a few days in Mayreau, just loafing on the boat. Faye, Laura, Claire and I went ashore for a walk and a gander in the supermarket but we decided it was too hot to walk to the other side of the island. Claire and I walked there later.
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| The other side of the island |
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| Dennis' Hideaway |
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| Salt Pan on Mayreau |
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| Ferry Arriving |
There is a story behind the picture of the ferry. A boat had arrived in the anchorage and had dropped anchor practically on top of Ian's anchor and very close to them. Ian spoke to him and he upped anchor in a huff and went off to the other side of the bay and dropped anchor there - in the path of the ferry. We watched as the ferry came past him with an inch to spare, without so much as a hoot and he hurriedly upped anchor and moved again.
On Sunday, 6 November, we decided to head to The Tobago Cays. It is not far and took about an hour to get there. We spent a lovely day there, snorkelling and swimming. The wind was quite strong and it was rather bumpy. Faye and Ian decided that they didn’t want to spend the night rolling around and were going back to Mayreau. We upped anchor and followed them back watching the sun set as we went.
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The sun sets early here. It is setting at 5:35 PM and rising at 6 AM. And when the sun sets it gets dark quickly. There is no lingering sunset like we saw on the equator.
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On Monday, 7 November, Faye’s birthday, we did another short hop across the water to Canouan.
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Our water maker was giving us problems again. While we were crossing from Petite St Vincent, we were trying to make water and it just stopped. Because the weather was so bad, we just turned it off, thinking we would look at the issue later. When Andrew had a look he found the pressure pipe had come off its connection. He tried to fix it with lock-tight, then epoxy and neither of those held. Jim and Ian came across to us to see if they could help. They discovered that the nut was too short and the pressure was pushing it out. So they ground the hole to make it bigger so that the nut could fit in further. Holding thumbs, fingers, and toes, we turned the water maker on again, and it worked!! We were able to make water again.
Faye, Claire, and I went ashore to explore the little shops. I knew what to expect, but I think the other two were quite shocked at the state of the island. There just seems to be an air of despondency. There are a lot of people just hanging around, sitting outside the little market stalls and whiling away their time talking to their friends and drinking beer at all hours.
We went into the supermarket and tried to engage in conversation with the lady behind the counter. Either she didn’t understand us or she wasn’t interested in listening to our prattle but she didn't engage in conversation with us.
Faye had decided that she wanted to have a chicken potluck for her birthday dinner. We all made a dish and took it to Gumbar for dinner. Faye and Claire had made curries and I made my Chicken ala King.
We had such a lovely evening. The food was delicious. Claire had made some rotis and Faye had made rice to add to the meal. We played music and sang and played guess the band!
Lots of drinks later we dingied home.
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I love this lifestyle! You go out to dinner on a friend’s boat and you arrive in your cozzie, with a pair of shorts and a top over it, no shoes, drinks and food to share.
I had been nagging Andrew to cut my hair for ages, but he wasn't brave enough. Faye said she would do it. So off we went to Gumbar's Beauty Salon where Faye cut my hair and then Ian cut Faye’s hair.
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| Before |
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| Half way |
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| Short hair! |
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| Before |
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| Beautiful! |
Although I have tried fishing a number of times I have caught nothing. We watched the locals fishing with nets near us and I am sure they have taken all the fish. Once the bay filled up with lots more boats the fishing boats all came out, asking if we wanted to buy fish. Andrew went early in the morning with Wilbert to try and catch some snapper, but he couldn’t catch anything either. Later a local fisherman came past and asked if we wanted some fish. We agreed a price and off he went to catch it.
The fisherman came back with some grouper which we bought of him for 30EC. Fish for supper!
We have lost connection with our wind instruments which is very frustrating. Andrew had brainstormed every possible reason. He even went up the mast to check the connection at the top.
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| Not for the faint hearted |
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| Jim making sure Andrew won't fall |
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The view from the top was good apparently! Everything seemed to be working fine at the top of the mast, so we are still in the dark as to what could be wrong with it.
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