Explore 360! Explorations of the World and Mind

Mar 13th St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Part 2

An Approaching Storm off the Port Bow

It turns out that day 1 was the most exciting single day of the trip, though the adventure was far from over. The next day we started out intending to make the long passage to Canuoan Island but as we started motoring out of the bay the engine started banging as it had the day before. We made the decision to call for a repair rather than risk losing the engine completely. This gave us a day to hang out and relax and it wasn’t really a problem as Shelly had built in some spare days into our schedule.

We hung out and did some snorkeling and waited for a local boat repair guy to show up. At some point in early afternoon a long, flat and beat-up old workboat approached with tall, gray-haired guy and a pint-sized mutt laying on the bottom. It was Robin, an old English guy who looked like he had slept on the beach for the last 20 years. He barely said hello and got straight down to the engine. He thought the engine mountings were loose and had to return later with the tools to tighten them up. No problem, we were around for the day anyway. He did his work later that evening and we spent our second night in Admiralty Bay.

Got going early the next morning without incident. It was cloudy but the wind was steady. We motored out around the west point of Bequia where we saw this shipwreck on the left. It looked like a commercial boat had tried to cut between two cays, little islands off the west point where the water is quite shallow. The rust on the boat indicated the wreck had been there a while.

We navigated well clear of the point and headed south. This mean we pointed somewhat southeast as the current down here pushes you west and it’s fairly strong and steady. The wind was good and steady and the waves were only about 5 feet. Soon we were engulfed in a series of squalls. For those who haven’t experienced these, they basically look like approaching thunderstorms. On the ocean, however, these things come at you much faster than you think. They look relatively far away but then wham, they hit and throw you around if you are unprepared. The problem for a sailor is that, just as in a thunderstorm on land, the wind shifts wildly in speed and direction. It’s better to reef or take your sails in completely in these storms. These squalls only last a few minutes and dump a ton of rain on you, but then they’re gone.

The La Paloma was equipped with a radar and it turned out to be an excellent tool to determine when and where the storm would hit. We watched one approach us from behind, overtake us with rain and wind and then move off.

The passage to Canouan is about 20 miles and we sailed all the way. We anchored in Charleston bay and got some provisions in town.

The next day we had a short sail to the Tobago Cays, a protected marine park consisting of several small islands surrounded by coral reefs. We anchored in this very popular preserve for a couple of days. The first thing we did was to reserve our place for a lobster barbecue dinner on the beach. A guy will come out to pick you up and bring you back to your boat after dinner. They do not catch the lobster in the park but bring it in from the surrounding area. Good stuff and the dinner was so large no one could possibly eat it all.

The next day we motored our dinghy over to one of the little islands and hiked to the top for a great view (right). We then snorkeled around a bit just off shore. Here and over the whole trip we saw huge schools of psychedelic tropical fish, a three foot wide manta ray, lobster, turtles, sea snakes (!), sea urchins, fish that look like rocks, and lots of young, green coral. Every once in a while you would see this coral that is shaped like a planter, a little bowl that would have other things growing in it, very strange and beautiful. On shore we saw another strange site: the hindquarters of something trotting away that was about the size of a cat but white with black rings. Shelly overheard a local tour guide say it was a white Iguana. A big one.

Back at the La Paloma, I swam out to check our anchor (good) and investigate the sand bank that was about 100 yards off our starboard bow. I swam over to it and it and saw that it was a vast underwater sand plateau only about 4 feet deep. You could walk around on this thing that appeared to be in the middle of the ocean. A strange sight for a Colorado boy.

As I mentioned earlier, the anchorage was fairly crowded, we were on one edge near the sand bank. The cats (catamarans) could anchor in much shallower water than we could so they could creep closer to the sand bank as you can see in the sunset pic on the left. We ended the day with dinner and drinks on board. Can’t eat that lobster every day. Well, maybe you could but even though it was half to 2/3rds the price of lobster here, it was still expensive.

We watched another beautiful Carribean sunset out the back of our from the deck. Ok, let’s face it, every sunset was beautiful down there!

We left late the next morning on our way to Chatham Bay on Union Island. This would be a moderate sail, swinging around the north side of Mayreau Island and down around the south side of Union Island. This seemed to be a roundabout way to get to our destination but it was actually the shortest route possible. What appeared to be a direct route was blocked by underwater barrier reefs that we needed to avoid. On the way out we said goodbye to a little spit of sand off one of the islands (left) where dozens of sea turtles would swim with you as you snorkeled.

Our water tanks were running low so we decided to stop at Clifton Harbor on Union Island to refill. It was on the way to Chatham Bay, which has no services. You come into a dock where they run a hose out to you and fill up on water, we needed about 60 gallons at this point. Seemed easy enough. Shelly maneuvered perfectly into the dock and we tied on, they ran a hose out and we filled up. In the meantime some guys said they would run into town and buy us a few groceries and get some ice. Though you have a fridge on the boat it can only be turned on while the engine is running, and that isn’t very often. You need ice to help keep it cold the rest of the time.

We finished up with the water and were just waiting for the guys to return with our groceries when a boat came in wanting water. The dock was small so they asked to raft to our boat. That means they would tie to the outside of our boat instead of the dock, a common technique when there isn’t much space. We said OK.

Well they came in way too fast, like a scud missle. We told them to veer off and try again. They almost collided with us at relatively high speed. Um, ok, so change of plans. We’ll be nice and leave the dock and anchor to wait for our groceries which should be by soon. We left the dock and dropped an anchor. Bad idea. Because this is an old harbor, there apparently is a bunch of old junk on the bottom. So we found that our anchor got hooked on something and we were stuck. The guidebook shows this area as a valid anchorage, but trust me, it is not.

Anyway, we ended up paying a guy an exorbitant amount to dive down and unhook our anchor. It was stuck probably 30 feet down. In the meantime our groceries showed up. We finally got away, in fact ran away from that harbor, with two expensive sailing courses: Where Not To Anchor 101, and How To Unhook Your Anchor 101. But the day wasn’t over yet…

We got out and put up sails in a good, stiff wind. At some point we did a controlled jibe. Though not taught to beginners, is a perfectly valid maneuver as long as you control the boom of the mainsail. We did that OK but the jib (front sail) got pushed around the front of fore stay and wrapped a couple of times. This is not good. Our sail looked something like below. For non-sailors, trust me, it is not supposed to look like this:

At the time we could not unwrap it because it was too windy, so we motored closer to the island to figure it out. And we did get it fixed fairly quickly. Another course passed, How To Untangle A Jib Sail 101.

We finally made it to Chatham Bay, a very peaceful and beautiful anchorage, below.

The last part of the story to come next in part 3.

Posted in Sailing by Mark with comments disabled.