TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums Southern Caribbean Grenadines Sailing Trip Report - Part Two

After Brent & Virgil left for town, we had a bit of lunch and decided since our anchor had dragged a bit from being rafted to the other boat, that we’d pull up and head around to Petit Nevis for the night. We hugged the coast on our way around, getting a good view of Moonhole, and then hit a few squalls before things cleared and we anchored just off the old dock on the west side of Petit Nevis. We were all alone there, until a Captained Moorings monohull with partiers came along, but they were behind us, so the noise didn’t bother us too much. We had a lazy late afternoon, watching some fishermen come out from Friendship Bay to Petit Nevis, I am not sure what they were snorkelling for. They had several boats towed along, and only one or two divers, and the rest sat around waiting – maybe for conch?

We watched the moon come up, but unfortunately it was too bright for much star gazing, so off to bed...

Tuesday, June 5th
We woke up early (the sun started coming up about 5ish), had a quiet early morning coffee and then pulled up anchor towards our next stop, the Tobago Cays. We had a great sail, beam reach all the way, and the boat handled beautifully.

We wanted to grab a ball at the Cays so we could just relax and enjoy, but there was only one left right near Jamesby Island. The winds were pretty stiff, and Jim had some trouble grabbing the ball and getting the lines through – I think the mooring lines they gave us were for a different boat, and the length to waterline was too tall for the lines. Romeo, one of the boat vendors, came by to assist, and we asked him to drop by later once we got settled. He said he’d be back later, and true to his word, once we were settled, he came by to ask us about the beach BBQ. $100EC, bring your own drinks, utensils & plates. We asked for tomorrow night, since most of my food was spoiling, and no worries – they’d even pick us up so we didn’t have to drop the engine on the dinghy!

We spent a lazy rest of the afternoon, talking with, ordering & buying from the boat vendors, and watching kite surfers, turtles and clouds and storms pass by.

When I went to have a shower, the tank ran out of water part way through?! After two days, doing no dishes, and only two of us on board, and a 250L tank was empty? Now I was upset. I know all about water conservation, and I know that neither of us used hardly any water at all! I had asked Brent several times if the tanks were full, since we were on a mooring at the base and there was no way to fill them from there...We also never left the pump on unless we were using the water, so we were pretty sure there was no leak from that...

Jim switched to the 2nd of 3 tanks, and it too, appeared to be empty – the water pump just ran and ran – I was afraid of burning it out. WTF?! So, we switched to the 3rd and reserve tank, and looked around at all the tanks, but there was no way to undo the caps and no way to see if they were empty or not – they were all built-in in such a way that you couldn’t see the sides of the tanks without dismantling everything.

I called Barefoot – again – to see if they actually did fill the tanks, or do we have a problem? Mary called back, and yes, she said they did fill the tanks, so we’d have to go to Union to get it looked at. I wasn’t moving, as we’d already paid for our mooring & park fees ($65EC), so I told her it would be day after tomorrow, and we’d call to let them know when we were leaving so that they could make the arrangements. If we ran out of water before that, we’d have to head over sooner... Grrrr.

On a good note, I cooked up hamburgers for lunch and steak for supper, and no meat spoilage so far! The other meats were in vacuum packages, so as long as we kept them cold, I figured we were okay for meats for a few more days...

We again had an early night – sailing makes you sleepy!

Wednesday, June 6th

It rained on and off most of the night, so we stopped bothering with the hatch drills and just left the fans on all night. It wasn’t the nicest day, a lot of people headed out, and the winds and rain and waves picked up most of the day. We stuck it out, and were all by ourselves by Jamesby by the end of the afternoon, and it cleared up late morning and turned into a beautiful, but windy & cloudy, day.

We spent most of the day doing diddly and then we did nothing – gosh I love vacations! We then decided to get some exercise and snorkelled over to Jamesby and hiked to the top for some great shots. By this time, the day was almost done (where does the time go?!), and we were eyeing the beach BBQ area over on Petit Rameau and thinking that they must have cancelled it due to the weather. Just when we gave up hope, Romeo’s boat appeared from the other side of Petit Rameau with Jason onboard to pick us up, and were we glad that he was driving – it was a bit rough out there, and I can’t imagine the 5 HP on the dinghy making the trip well! Turns out the BBQ was on the OTHER side of Petit Rameau, to keep out of the wind, and there were 3 or 4 boats anchored off, and 4 other tables of 6 or more ready to eat! Imagine our surprise, we thought there were only two other boats in all of the Cays!

Romeo puts on an awesome BBQ. Since lobster was out of season (darn!) we had order Tuna & Snapper for dinner. Platters upon platters of food showed up – lambi (conch) creole, tuna steaks, baked stuffed potato halves, rice, plantain, provisions (vegetables)...it was too much food! They forgot my snapper, and offered to make some – I only wanted to try it, but they brought me two huge fillets – I ended up sharing with the other tables around – it was the best tuna & snapper I’ve had in a long while!

We had a great conversation with the people at the next table to us, and as we were finishing up and clearing up, it started to rain a bit. We all hung out with the bbq guys under their tents and waited for it to stop. Much laughing and chatting going on – it was fun!

Afterwards, Romeo & Jason brought us back to the boat – it was a great deal, and we gave them a little extra for their trouble and for the snapper they cooked extra for us.

Highly recommend Romeo if you want a great beach bbq experience in the Cays! He was very friendly, not pushy, and served a great meal!

Thursday, June 7th

After a hardy breakfast, we dropped the ball and headed to Union. We had a great sail heading around Mayreau, and then towards Union. We dropped anchor out in front of Happy Island and called Barefoot to let them know we were there – they were sending out Erin from Unitech to look at our tanks. Union by far had the most “aggressive” boat vendors, they all wanted you to follow them to a mooring or give them your garbage, or how about some food or drink? I had read in the chart book not to use the moorings here and for good reason – they didn’t look like much was holding them to the bottom, and the boat vendors often get in fights with boats that are anchored near their moorings – not a
pleasant experience, I am sure!

Erin showed up after we had been there for an hour or so, and proceeded to tear apart all of the sections that had water tanks in them. He didn’t have a way to loosen the caps on the tanks either, so he just tapped on them a lot to judge how full they were. He said that one tank was empty, one ¾ full and the other appeared full. He also told us that the hot water tank and reservoir was quite large, so running the pump for a long time wouldn’t be unusual to fill it again after running out. He also thought there was air in the lines, so he messed around for awhile and said we should be good to go – no leaks, so that’s a good thing.

Still can’t explain what happened to all the water in the first tank – I don’t think it was filled at all to begin with.

We decided to keep the reserve tank on, since we didn’t know how much we had used out of it, and keep the other 250L tank as our reserve. Hopefully that would get us through for awhile.

Erin gave us a ride to shore, and introduced us to Rodderick at the Anchorage Yacht club – to give us a ride back, and any other help we may need. We walked around town for a bit, bought some vegetables and bread, and then decided to head back to the boat.

Rodderick got us some ice, and tried to tell Jim it was $40US (not EC) for the ice and the taxi (10EC for both, normally!) – I’m not so sure he was joking! so we struck a deal – we’d give him $40US if he would come get us again tomorrow to go into town and then deliver us back again to the boat. We made arrangements for 10AM, and he took us back.

I made pork tenderloin with wine & onions in the oven and a tomato & cucumber salad, all served over mashed provisions. We ended up early to bed as the anchorage was a bit rolly, and we couldn’t see many stars...

Friday, June 8th

Now that we knew we had (lots of) water, we both took long hot showers – the hot water lasted all day on this boat without running the engines – I was impressed! Roderick showed up as promised with a buddy named Charles at 10.

They ran us into the Anchorage Yacht Club, and I hooked up to the net and made some Skype calls while Jim talked to Charles. He had lived in Toronto and was very friendly. I think he decided to be our guide, and wanted to show us around his town. We wandered around a bit, they have a great fruit/vegetable market area, we got some nice greens and starfruit – Jim’s new favourite – although he paid $3.00/pc when he got back to Canada, and only 30EC for a bunch at Union Island! Charles took us to Clifton Harbour for lunch, on the water, near the ferry dock. The bartender had also lived in Toronto for awhile, so we chatted a bit, bought some drinks for them both, and had lunch of southern fried & bbq’d chicken. We were planning on clearing out and heading to Carriacou, so we wandered over to the airport to clear out. The gentleman there was very friendly, and told us we didn’t have the proper paperwork, even though I had brought everything that was in the owner’s binder on our boat.

Turns out we were missing the clearing in papers from when the boat arrived in St. Vincent, so I called Barefoot, they called me back, and of course, there was nowhere to send a fax for the paperwork – nowhere was working at the Airport...we tried to get them to send it to Unitech, which was right down the road, but their fax wasn’t working. So they sent it to Erika’s Marine services in town, and we’d have to go get it. We did find out, however, that there was customs & immigration right near the ferry dock, so we wouldn’t have to walk out to the airport again. I wish I had written down this gentleman’s name at the airport, he was by far the friendliest customs official I had EVER met.
I also wish I had gone back to him instead of dealing with the ones in town!

Lesson learned – when you find a friendly government official, it is NEVER too far to walk to go back to them!

We finally got our paperwork, went to the offices to clear out, and bought some groceries & ice, and headed back with Rodderick to the boat to drop everything off – and then finally, to Happy Island! We were the only ones there for the first while, and we had a good chat with Angela & Janti. Rodderick & Charles and Jim and I hung around and had a few drinks and listened to the music. Janti really has something special going on on Happy Island, and we really enjoyed our time there – I never knew that he actually LIVED on the island!

We were a little too happy when we got back to the boat, so we ended up going for a nap and woke up the next morning! Ooops! Good thing I hadn’t taken anything out for dinner! ~grins~

To be continued....

Great report - You guys really know how to roll with the puches and get problems solved. Can't wait for next entry. Is Happy Island between Union and Palm?

Happy Island was built on the reef that surrounds Clifton Harbour on Union Island.

Happy Island from the Air

You can barely see the red buoy on the upper left of the photo that marks the entrance to Clifton Harbour.

At Anchor - near Happy Island

You can see the reef behind happy Island, and behind it, Palm Island.

A few hiccups along the way, aye! Sounds like you rolled with it nicely. My wife has mentioned that she would like to go to the southern caribbean, so many islands to see <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" /> Great reports! <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Cheers.gif" alt="" />

Great report!

Dawn, glad to see you stopped at Petit Nevis. Did you go ashore? I've mentioned that secluded beach on the windward side in my reports.

No, we never made it ashore, it was raining when we arrived, and it was dark when it stopped. We headed out early the next morning to make the run to the Cays.

We had planned to stop there on the way back, but of course, we never got there - spent an extra night here and there instead <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" /> you know how that goes!

But it was a beautiful anchorage, I will definitely stop there again and spend more time exploring.

Sounds just like your typical bareboat charter vacation in the Grenadines. Despite the 'usual' boat problems you do end up having a wonderful time. I do hope you managed to use the dingy?

Definitely. It's all good, and about what I expected.

Yes, we used the dinghy. But we never did get the BBQ out - first time EVER when chartering that I didn't do all or most of my cooking on the barbie...

Part 3 ????????????????????

Working on it! Working lots of hours (who said accountants don't work in the summertime!) plus trying to get some other stuff done around the house - it's coming!

Of course, I'm only waiting to see how many people clamour... <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Grin.gif" alt="" />

Enjoying the reports Dawn.
It's always something with boats... sounds like you made the best of it.