2nd Bloomfield Crew

On Monday, after Leon and Ricky left, Shirley, Brock and Cathy
helped us provision. Union is kind of a tough island to
provision at despite a plethora of fruit stalls and small and
medium size food stores. It involves going from store to store,
figuring what they have, and then figuring out the best plan to
gather all the stuff and get it back out to the dinghy and the
boat before the frozen foods defrost or the fruit gets mashed
around too much. Some of the stores even have their own dinghy
dock so you can pull up and put the heavy cans and bottles in,
but they are not that easy to tie up to. We ended up buying
fruit from three different fruit vendors in the market –
skipping Jenny- our favorite from last time because we were a
little miffed at her having charged Brock about 3 times the
going price for a pineapple that was the size of an orange.
Between the fancy French boat provisioner, the big “Lambi”
supermarket, and a couple of smaller stores we were able to get
a nice selection of cheese, chicken, fruits, vegies, and drinks.
We ended up walking up and down the streets, from store to
store for quite a while, and mom was getting heat stroke so she
went back to the hotel to wait while we finished up. It’s not
quite the same type of shopping as driving over to Lunds in St.
Paul for a 10 minute shop.

They got a water taxi driver – who Mom nicknamed Chicago for his
shirt – to drive them and their luggage over to the boat while
Mark and I brought the groceries back to the boat in our dinghy.
It was pretty hot – so we were all glad to weigh anchor about
3:30 and start sailing over to Tobago Cays. It is so much more
pleasant out on the open water. It is a short hop from Union to
Tobago so we only had the sails up for a half an hour and then
had to motor the final half hour through the openings in the
reefs to beautiful Tobago Cays. We picked an anchoring spot
very close to where we were just a few days earlier with Leon
and Ricky. Still gorgeaus. Lots and lots of boats in the
harbour. We had a quick swim around the boat, before starting
dinner..and then sat on deck to watch the moon and stars.

Next day, Tuesday was spent doing lots of water activities.
Started out dinghying over to one of the tiny islands behind the
Cays where we could go for a short walk. There is a path that
goes to the other side of the island – which is facing leeward-
and is very quiet and calm. Lots of other people were there –
mostly day-trippers on charter boats. It was a great place for
an introductory snorkel with Mom. She put on the snorkel mask
and hopped right in – very fun to find such a nice beach. Not
too many fish, but the water was great. After that we dropped
Mom back at the boat while the rest of us went out to the big
reef for another snorkel. The current was very strong and it
was pretty hard to swim towards the reef – but quite a thrill to
turn around and go the other way where the water was pushing us
quickly along. Getting back onto the dinghy from the water is
tricky and we had some good laughs as we all pulled ourselves up
via the dinghy strap – each of us doing a great impersonation of
a beached whale, or more like a hippo.

We had a rest on the boat for a while and then headed out to yet
another small island – in search of a good snorkel and possibly
some turtle sightings. The beach ended up to be “the place” to
be- as it had at least a dozen people on it, several of whom
were doing kite surfing. It was really beautiful to watch these
incredibly strong young people flying back and forth through the
water and then gently landing back at the beach..
Just as we were dinghying back to the boat, someone snorkeling
in the water called out to us that there were at least 10
turtles right near us in the water. We rushed back to shore to
dock the dinghy – knocking Mom off the dinghy, and creaming
Brock with the bow of the boat as we reached shore. We jumped
back in with our snorkel gear and headed out again over some
disgustingly gooshy looking green grass in search of turtles.
Apparently the turtles like that green grass and tend to hang
out there. Although we saw only one turtle and one huge
starfish it was a great swim.

Sun was setting as we dinghied back to the boat for dinner.
Next day, Wednesday, the crew was anxious to go see some other
islands, so we set sail for wherever the winds would take us.
Gorgeaus sail – past Mayreau and Canouan. The winds were quite
high and we decided that we would try out Canouan as an
anchorage. It doesn’t have much of a reputation as a “gorgeaus”
island, but it does have restaurants and a protected anchorage,
so it seemed worth trying. When we pulled into the harbour it
was suddenly amazingly calm. We decided to go to shore to have
lunch at the Tamarind Beach Hotel and were immediately charmed.
It is a lovely hotel with a gorgeaus white sand beach, palm
trees and comfy beach chairs. We had a delicious lunch and then
spent the rest of the afternoon just lazing around on the beach
– swimming, snorkeling and napping. Great Pina Coladas at
sunset topped off the day. We met a couple of great women on
the beach – Cheryl and Petra – and ended up inviting them to the
boat for a little visit. It was fun – we showed them the boat
and sat on deck for a while chatting under the full moon.

After dinghying them back to shore, we all decided to have
dinner on shore again – and returned to the Tamarind Beach Hotel
Restaurant for dinner. We had a very charming waiter, great
service, and a totally enjoyable meal. Very nice day in
Canouan. Back to the boat for a final “full moon watch” before
crashing.