Back to More of Union Island

Before we left Carriacou, which is part of Grenada, we had to clear out to leave before we headed to the Grenadines. I dinghied Joe to the beach and he caught the public bus to customs and immigration. He cleared out easily (which is not always the case) and on his return, he picked up some homemade bread from a woman selling it at Gallery Bistro, Ann and John’s great restaurant.

In case you’re wondering what I did while Joe was gone for 90 minutes, I organized our Nav station, vacuumed, dusted, did some yoga and listened to French music, then hung out on the dingy near the beach, while Joe was doing the administrative work of a Captain. 😎

We left Sandy Island and had a lovely 2-hour sail to Clifton, Union Island, our first island in the Grenadines. When Joe blogs about a crossing, he always gives the specifics of wind speed, direction, boat speed, etc. I can only tell you that it was just lovely.

As Joe mentioned in the last blog, we enjoy going back to places we’ve been, so we knew the scoop on how to get a mooring ball and pay for it in Clifton. Buddah met us and helped us tie up to the ball. He also sold us homemade banana bread from Van, who makes the best banana bread on Union Island. The mooring ball fee collectors came by and we paid them $60EC for one night.

Once we were secure and had the engines off, we looked out over the reef and there were 5 kite boarders providing a wonderful “show” for us. They weave in and out of the boats and around the reef like it’s nothing. We also saw wing-foilers - more to come on that later.

We cleared-in easily to the Grenadines and relatively quickly, in only 45 minutes. We then headed back toward our mooring to Happy Island bar which is this little bar built right out on the reef. We thought that if we moored far away from shore that we wouldn’t get all of the bar music until the wee hours of the morning. Instead, we had the bar music from Happy Island until 2am. Luckily their music was good.

In my daily journal, I called this the day of 1000 pictures because I took so many of Sandy Island before we left and so many of Clifton's reef and the kite surfers.

While Clifton is gorgeous, it’s also very busy, so the next day we moved to the other side of Union Island to Chatham Bay, a place that some other cruisers told us to go and we know why. It’s quiet, calm, and has a long beach with tiny restaurants and at the end is the Tenuta Resort. A place that has only 4 villas and a nice restaurant and pool area. We anchored on the north side not far from a wall with excellent snorkeling.

We met a couple from Boston who were staying at Tenuta for the week and they joined us for our first lobster meal of this chapter at Sunset Cove, one of the little restaurants on the beach. If you’ve never eaten lobster with someone from Boston, it was a kick. Former school teacher Stan, would not let me miss one ounce of the lobster meat by saying, “now go into this leg and break it – and there’s more meat.” I was full and bored and it hurt my hands, so he did it for me. They were very fun and funny.

The next day we hiked over to Ashton from Chatham. The first part was like hiking in Colorado, sans the elevation. Along the way we met a young woman walking to work. Ellie. It’s a very quiet little village and Elle told us how she went to high school and some college in New Jersey then moved back to Ashton and the culture shock she had in each place. She pointed out her brother’s tombstone in the cemetery that she worked near. She was gracious and kind and happy to tell us about life on Union.

From her store, we could see more kite surfers and wing foilers over by Frigate Bay. We had visited Frigate back in July with our friends Chip and Sue. We highly recommend going over there. Here’s the Ashton Lagoon story.

People often ask what we do all day, so when we’re not exploring, we are cleaning or fixing something. Our last day in Chatham Bay was just that. I usually take on the bathrooms because they’re small, and I fit easier in them. I vacuumed the entire inside of the boat with a little Black and Decker handheld vacuum. Joe took on cleaning and polishing the dinghy and cleaning and oiling all the teak.

Most importantly, we spent over an hour fixing one of our speakers that wasn’t working. I can guarantee that would NEVER have happened in Colorado. First of all, we would have thrown it away and purchased a new one. We felt very proud of our work together.

Our final night was dinner at Vanessa and Seckies on the beach and they paired us with some other cruisers. Hugh, the husband recommended Troissant Bay on Mayreau which we had not considered and we were heading to Mayreau the next day. Going to Troissant ended up being one of the highlights of this chapter so far.

We’ll tell you more about Mayreau in our next blog.

We pulled up our anchor in Chatham to head to Mayreau on Saturday, January 21st. I believe I've written about my fear of falling into the anchor locker. There are lots of sharp edges, it's deep and the hatch/door covering it is very heavy, so I always watch my toes. As we were going around the corner to leave, I slowly lowered the hatch, and the gas strut that holds it up, sheared off the edge and the door came slamming down. Less than 30 seconds prior to that, I had my arm in there to put away the windlass remote control that brings the anchor up.

I spent the next half hour of our sail to Mayreau thinking about all of the "what-ifs" had any of my body parts still be in there, including my head. We know things can go wrong anywhere, but out here hospitals and any medical facilities are tricky to get to. I'm just grateful it happened when it did and not on me.

We have two other hatches that are the same and in studying them, the rust has eaten away at the brackets. Of course we can't get them in the Caribbean, but we ordered them from West Marine for $7US per bracket. Yes, only a $7 part that we should probably replace every year. Who knew?

We devised a very creative way to raise the hatch when I'm out there and Joe is at the helm. We used a spare line to hoist it up, like we would one of us if we had to climb the mast. Then we have two safety lines on it for winds coming in either direction. Very creative, I might say. We'll get the brackets upon our return to Colorado in March and bring them back down.

Whew!