16 June 2011 Saline Bay to Tobago Cays
I checked out the weather and the Tropical Wave has now definitely gone past us. It’s Thursday today and there’s another Tropical Wave forecast to come through on Sunday, which should give us three days before we need to be somewhere protected. These Tropical Waves are troughs of low pressure that are generated in Africa and travel across the Atlantic Ocean. Some of them will form into cyclonic (rotating) systems and become Tropical Storms and then Hurricanes, so we need to keep an eye on them.
We motored around to Clifton in Union Island to check if the exhaust manifold has arrived – not yet. We bought a load of groceries and then sailed around to the Tobago Cays. The wind speed was only 15-20 knots but there were a lot of waves due to the swell from yesterday’s squalls. I went and chatted to “Notre Vie” - John said that they recorded over 50 knots of wind yesterday afternoon.
We snorkelled with the turtles and I took a good photograph of a smooth trunkfish – for some reason they seemed to be territorial and coming very close which is unusual.
A few squalls went past us in the afternoon which increased the wind to 25 knots but nothing drastic. The sky looked clear when we went to bed.
17 June 2011 Tobago Cays to Chatham Bay, Union Island
It was a very restless night - we rocked and rolled all night. Big squalls kept coming through, which increased the wind to over 25 knots and brought heavy rain showers. I had to get up three times to close the hatch because the strong driving rain was getting past the Ober-windscoop. Most of the time it’s nice living on a yacht in paradise, but I don’t think that I’ve had an unbroken night’s sleep since we moved on board.
We decided to go back to Saline Bay to get Internet access and then onto Clifton, Union Island. In Saline Bay, I picked up our email, looked at the weather forecast and checked out the delivery schedule for the exhaust manifold which said it was expected to be delivered two days ago. I rang Erika’s Yacht Services and found out that it has arrived. We were only in Saline Bay for 20 minutes.
The anchorage in Clifton was pretty crowded and we had trouble anchoring on our first attempt, probably because it was broken coral on the sea bed. After motoring around for a while, we eventually anchored in 8 metres of water in the main fairway around the central reef – not a very nice place.
We went in to town and found that our package was at customs in the airport, so we walked over there and were told that the person responsible for packages had gone to lunch. I went back an hour later and he still wasn’t there, so I just had to sit around and wait some more. It took 30 minutes for him to sort out the paperwork – half of which was spent trying to work out the product classification code for an exhaust manifold. The duty was only £10 – it didn’t seem to be worth the effort.
I was back on the boat at three o’clock and we decided to go around to Chatham Bay, which was about an hour of nice down-wind sailing. Chatham Bay is lovely. There are only four boats in the huge bay and they are all spread out so everyone has their own space – fantastic.
We seem to have spent the whole day running about, so we collapsed and chilled out for the rest of the day.
18 June 2011 Chatham Bay, Union Island
I had a much better night’s sleep – no rocking and rolling, just a few katabatic gusts. I only had to get up once when I thought that it was raining.
I mooched about in the morning while Glenys took down bimini and sewed some new zips onto the sides to fit some side flaps to keep the sun and rain out of the cockpit. We went for a dive around Rapid Point which was good with nice coral.
After lunch, the Tropical Wave arrived, bringing rain and strong winds all afternoon. As usual in this anchorage, the wind comes down from the hills in shrieking gusts and we were getting gusts of 30+ knots. As darkness fell, all of the boats in the anchorage were veering about in the gusts. We had dinner below and it was still howling and raining when we went to bed.
It’s funny how much we now trust the anchor. We knew that it was well dug in and even though it was pitch black and howling, I soon fell asleep. I guess its fatalism. We’ve done all that we can, so there’s no point in worrying about what may happen – we’ll just sort it out when it does happen.
19 June 2011 Chatham Bay, Union Island
The Tropical Wave passed us during the night and the morning was bright and sunny. We went for a walk over to Ashton, which took an hour – it’s a pleasant little town. I took my phone with me and managed to get a NOAA weather forecast which says that the next Tropical Wave will be here on the 23rd.
Our main objective was to walk up Mount Taboi, which at 1000 feet is the highest point on the island. After a little wandering about, we were shown the start of the trail up the mountain by a local lady – it was not very obvious and looked like a path to someone’s house. It took us an hour and a half to get to the top – the path petered out about two thirds of the way up and I took a couple of wrong routes. At one point, we ended up in the middle of huge patch of cacti getting scratched and pricked by huge thorns – Glenys was not amused. However, the view from the top is spectacular and it only took us 30 minutes to get back down to Ashton.
There were no restaurants open because it is a Sunday, so we walked back to Chatham Bay and had a pork & rice in a beach bar. We were walking for over four hours, so the coca colas went down well.
We stopped off and said hello to Steve and Lynn on “Celebration”. They said they were going to happy hour in a beach bar, so we joined them and met Chris and Anne from “Mr Mac”, and Rod and Mary from “Sheer Tenacity”. Potent rum punches were the only drinks available and I’m afraid that I had four of them. I was apparently very loud by the end of the session. We poured ourselves back onto the boat at eight o’clock and Glenys made her signature “quick” meal of “Huevos Rancheros” before we crashed out.
20 June 2011 Chatham Bay, Union Island
I had a bit of a hangover this morning (seems to be a Monday thing), but I forced myself to do my exercises for 30 minutes. Glenys got on with making some side flaps for the bimini then we went for a dive at the same place as Saturday – nice dive site.
There’s a shoal of Bonito (small tuna) which have been active in the bay since we got here. The Bonito are chasing shoals of small bait fish and attacking them from below. This causes the bait fish to flee for the surface and the Bonito make spectacular leaps out of the water sometimes travelling 10 metres before crashing back into the water. In addition, the Sea-gulls, Boobies and Frigate Birds are all flying around attacking the bait fish from above.
While Glenys was making lunch, I saw a shoal of bait fish jump out of the water close by our boat. This was shortly followed by chaos as the sea birds arrived and bonito started to splash around us. I rigged up a small lure on my casting rod and after only a couple of casts, hooked a Bonito. It’s only a light rod and reel, so the line whizzed out and it took me five minutes to land a nice four pound Bonito - great fun and dinner for two days.
21 June 2011 Chatham Bay to Tyrell Bay, Carriacou
We decided to move on today, so we first went back to Saline Bay to get an Internet connection to check the weather. It was a long hour motoring straight upwind into lumpy seas – we’ve decided that Alba sails better than she motors. The weather forecast says that the next Tropical Wave will arrive tomorrow night.
We decided to go to Carriacou and possibly spend the night at Sandy Island which is a lovely little deserted island. We sailed across to Clifton in Union Island to check out of St Vincent & The Grenadines. It was blowing 25 knots and Glenys didn’t seem too happy. I went ashore and left Glenys on the boat.
Forty minutes later, we pulled up the anchor heading for Carriacou. We motored out of the shelter of the reef into steep, five foot seas and turned into wind to put up the main sail. We hadn’t agreed a plan, so I ended up shouting at Glenys to do things, while struggling in the strong winds and seas. Glenys was trying not to motor into the reef and it was chaos. We eventually got the sail up and turned downwind.
I then started shouting instructions to get the jib out. The seas were 6-8 feet by now with strong gusts of wind and the final straw was when I told Glenys off for letting the boat veer upwind in a strong gust - she shouted “Well do it yourself “ and I had to jump onto the steering wheel. She wasn’t happy – our first row…
About fifteen minutes later, she had calmed down and we had a cracking, if boisterous sail down to Carriacou (with me steering.) We hit 7.9 knots while surfing down one wave. Half way across, the fishing reel screamed out and I hove-to before grabbing the rod. I didn’t “set” the hook and when I got the fish close to the surface, it jumped clear of the water and the hook came out of its mouth. A Barracuda – I think. It was difficult to manoeuvre with the big seas and strong winds, so Glenys vetoed me putting out another lure.
We anchored in Hillsborough, had lunch and went ashore to clear into Carriacou. An hour later we had done the administration, bought some food and a case of beer. We pulled up the anchor and motored past Sandy Island – it was still blowing 20-25 knots and it’s a bit exposed, so we carried on to Tyrell Bay.
There were lots of boats anchored so we chose a spot and dropped the anchor in a nice big patch of sand. I snorkelled down and the anchor was well dug in, but we were a little close to “Foggy Mountain” and another boat. I was too tired to bother to move, so we stayed there – done too much anchoring and moving about today.
22 June 2011 Tyrell Bay, Carriacou
We woke at half past six with strong 25-30 knot gusts and driving rain. I got out of bed, put the Ober-windscoop away and put up the spray hood. I went back to bed for an hour.
The day was a series of squalls going through with rain and gusts of wind. All the boats were veering about which made us go closer to the other two boats. There was a bit of a lull at eleven o’clock, so we decided to re-anchor. We tried to anchor a couple of times in one spot, but both times we were dragging in loose sand and coral. After a parade around the anchorage for ten minutes in the 25-30 knot gusts, we finally managed to anchor in a sandy patch, next to “Sheer Tenacity”. We ended up a little bit close to “Mr Mac”, but after 40 minutes of messing about, I couldn’t be bothered to try again.
We spend the rest of the day chilling out. I’ve started to teach myself the clarinet again, which is difficult because my lips are exhausted after five minutes. We went for a quick wander about on shore. It has changed a lot from fifteen years ago, but it is still very relaxed ashore.