After spending almost 2 weeks in Tyrell Bay, we were getting eager to leave. Weather reports showed a slight change in the weather switching to an easterly which should make for a much more pleasant passage to Union Island.
We did the whole "clearing out" process and it was quite chatty and friendly. We then took off from Tyrell Bay and as we did so, created a little video of us upping anchor and getting the boat sailing.
What can we say about the passage. The wind was good. We motored up Carriacou lee shore quite a way and laid the mark for Union Island (Clifton Harbour) effortlessly.
It was probably our best passage to date!
Union Island is lovely. The anchorage is terrible though. In the middle of the bay is a large reef and surrounding the reef are charterers. Dreaded creatures charterers!
The bay is fully exposed to the wind and so as soon as you drop your anchor, the bow gets blown off and in a crowded anchorage that means coming uncomfortably close to other boats. When we first dropped anchor, the anchor chain got stuck (due to our sail) and only 20ft came out. when we blew off, Dylan could not come forward and yank the chain out as he had to man the helm, so there we were dragging our anchor while being blown onto other boats to the side of us and the reef behind us.
We recovered from it quite fine and did another spin around the bay before relaying the anchor properly!
We went ashore to clear in and were blown away by how pretty all the stalls, stores and the general main street is. Vibrant colours are used to make it all look somewhat surreal like Noddy's toy village.
Customs and immigration was a breeze. Although the customs officials were not the smiliest people in the world, we were not kept waiting and the process was painless. Immigration was easy and the woman was very pleasant. Dylan even cleared in on his "Green Mamba" (AKA the South African Passport) as he is saving the pages in his other passport for less friendly places.
There is a lovely story in Clifton Harbour of a man who was tired of looking at this mound of conch shells that littered the beach left by the fisherman, so in true entrepreneurial fashion, moved them all to the end of the reef protecting the bay and created his own little island and named it...Happy Island. It is a lovely little bar that has a dinghy dock where you can have a sun downer while looking towards Tobago Cays or behind you to the anchorage and watch your boat.
PS: Clifton was one of the least rolly anchorages we have had so far. What a pleasure!
We decided we did not want to stay long in Clifton as we would try make the most of it on the way back down the chain so we set off the next day. As it was a lovely day and we were in no hurry, we decided to sail around Mayreau en route to Tobago Cays (this is also the easier path as the other more direct approach has a few reefs to navigate). We had a good sail up utilising the good easterly winds.
Tobago Cays! What can we say, other than WOW. It was picture book perfect. We moored in 10ft of gin clear water and could see the bottom. Not only that, large stingrays and turtles regularly made an appearance below us as they journeyed around the islands.
We moored between the outer reef and Turtle Bay (a cordoned off section of water off an island for turtles to feed, unmolested by yachts and anchors)
The turtles were very sweet. Not too friendly or inquisitive having probably been harassed by many a charterer in their day, tended to clear off if you got too close. We found an old (5 year old) under water camera on board, so have been snapping away at the various sea creatures.
Video of Tobago Cays does not do it justice, however you may be able to get a feel for what it is like.
That night, we met up with our new friends who had sailed against the wind from Oz to the Caribbean en route to Cork (Ireland).
With the remaining half a Kingfish, we proceeded to have a lovely fish braai (BBQ) using our gas BBQ on the stern of our boat. Kingfish is great eating. And fresh fish has such a different taste to fish that has taken a few days to get to your plate.
The bay clears out in the morning as all the charter boats head off to their next destination and in the afternoon the next batch arrives. Most of the time charterers are fine, however there are always a few who ruin it for the rest. A bit of a generalisation, however most of these inconsiderate fools are French, who do nothing to endear themselves to the rest of the sailing community.
A large 54ft French catamaran moored on top of our anchor and only feet from our bow. This, coupled with the fact that they only had about 20 metres of chain out (of which 10 was from bow to seabed) had Dylan very anxious. He swam over and spoke to the skipper and said that we were leaving at 7am the next day and that they were over our chain. They assured us that they were leaving that afternoon. They did not and we spent a very anxious night in 29 knot gusts wondering if we would receive guests in the form of a family of perplexed looking frogs and an embarrassed skipper. Needless to say they did not drag, however they were still well and truly slap bang on top of our anchor come 6:30 when it was time to up sticks.
Dylan resorted to diving on the anchor and moving it aft of the cat. I had to do quite a lot to temper his enthusiasm to wrap a mooring line around their prop!
Unfortunately, we had to leave Tobago Cays after only 2 days there as we had some pressing matters to take care of that required a bit of infrastructure and telecoms.
We set off for Bequia in a gusty east north easterly. It was a 30 mile passage and a beat the whole way. I was feeling a bit ill and Dylan helmed for most of the 7 hour passage. We were going to get the wind vane set up and had the rudder in the water and everything, however we thought we would wait for another voyage when we were both up to tweaking things.
As it was quite windy we decided to just use the jib and we were still peaking 7.5knots beating into a 22knot apparent headwind at 30 degrees off our bow. Centreboard was down and we flew along averaging 6 knots. What makes it even more impressive is that it is only a 115% jib! She can sail! Boy can she!
We arrived into Admiralty Bay in the early afternoon. Both quite chuffed at having completed well over 100 miles of sailing together as a team now. The next big one is our 1000 mile mark and our first night passage we plan on doing from Barbuda to St Barts (84 miles)!
Admiralty Bay is large and protected. We have a range of vessels moored around us. Every thing from large coastal freighters and fishing trawlers to small yachts. Most impressive is the square rigger that arrived after us. Will need to take some pics of it as it resembles a pirate ship.
After a good night's sleep we are now off to explore the island and hunt down the bar with furniture made from whale bones!
No comments:
Post a Comment