Union Island, The Grenadines

Anchorage at Union Island. We are the farthest black boat

anchored in front of the tiny Happy Island

Downtown Clifton

Fruit and vegetable market in Clifton

Carol on a beach on the north side of the island. The papaya was given to us by a local named Billy Ray who we met on our way to the beach

Nearby Palm Island at sunset

We were excited to get to Clifton at Union Island because we did not visit this part of the island last year on our way south. We left Carriacou and sailed over on a Saturday afternoon and arrived with a bunch of other boats hurrying to anchor. We took the last spot at the end of the reef after several boat boys wanted to know if we needed anything; help anchoring, a mooring ball, ice, water, fish........

Once we were anchored and settled in we took a good look around and saw that we were right in front of Janti's Happy Island. Janti is a local man who worked trying to clean up the island of conch shells discarded by fisherman. His solution was to use them to build an island. We visited Janti on his Happy Island and he showed us pictures of the building process. He used conch shells, sand, and soil, and layered them "just like in the earth". He now has his house there and a bar, where people can visit in their dinghies to enjoy a drink and some great Reggae music played on his stereo system that you can hear around the anchorage. We, of course, just hadto have "several" of his specialty rum punches! Yummmmmm.........

We really enjoyed Union Island. We liked being able to walk all around the island to the different beaches, up to Old Fort, and to the only other little town of Ashton. While we walked we met local people who always said hello, and came across goats and sheep tied up here and their with their newborn babies - it's Spring!! Jon untangled several of the mamma goats so they could get better access to their babies and edible grass - too cute. One day as we headed up the hill to Old Fort we met one local named Billy Ray. Billy Ray had a house that he kept impeccably tidy and added natural artistic features all around the outside. He was very proud of his house. He wanted us to come into his yard to see his newest project which was a huge paintbrush and paint can that he made and was hanging outside his front gate. Very clever! Jon commented on all his papaya trees and the next hing you know we are leaving with one he picked off his tree for us. We became great friends and he would call out to us to say hello every time we saw him after that.

One of the other great things about our visit to Union Island was where we were anchored. The water was clean and clear and so inviting! We would swim off the boat in the hot afternoons and hang out watching fish swim by and laughing gulls fly around catching them. The laughing gulls crack us up. Their call is "ha ha ha" and sound just like they are laughing, so you just can't help yourself but laugh along. Around the full moon they showed up in huge numbers and were hanging around on the reef near us and laughed all day and all night. It was one big party!

Anchoring at the reef was great because the reef buffered us from the ocean waves, but we had the full force of the ocean winds. We had a full charge on our batteries the whole time we were there because of the non-stop wind turning our wind generator and sun shining down on our solar panels. It was so great to never run the engine to charge the batteries!

We stayed almost two weeks at Union Island and we could have stayed longer, but it was time to meander north to some other islands in the Grenadines while we had good wind direction. Mayreau is our next stop.......

Carriacou

Our first night in Carriacou

Paradise Beach

Nickernuts found on Paradise Beach

The weather report FINALLY shows a NNE wind and seas under 20+ knots and we decide it is time to sail north to Carriacou! We filled our fruit and vegetable hammocks, topped up with water, and headed north up the island. Early morning in the lee of the island of Grenada things looked new and fresh, the fisherman were already out in their boats, and a stream of sailboats were going north with us.

We realized that we would be sailing very close to the wind so we took a tack into Sauteurs on the very north of the island to help put us at a better point of sail. In the open water the winds were still 20+ knots but we were reefed and ready to go! Then we saw the biggest squall that stretched as far as we could see and we knew that it would not miss us...oh well. We got drenched (well, Carol did anyway) as the wind and rain slammed into us. We just hung on as Aldebaran stayed on course, put her port rail into the water, and flew along. As most squalls do, it passed in about 15 minutes. We patted Aldebaran and praise her for taking such good care of us :-) Then the sky cleared up, the winds calmed to 18 knots and the dolphins came out to play!! All around us the dolphins swam, crossing back and forth in the wake near the bow of our boat. We always get excited when we see those beautiful creatures as they come up to say hello!

We reached Carriacou in the afternoon along with all the other boats that left when we did. We all packed into Tyrell bay. Boats were everywhere, anchored as far out in the bay as they could go and still be protected! We relaxed for a few days in the bay, took some walks in the tiny village, bought some grapefruit from the lady at the fruit stand on the road, walked the beach. We knew we needed to make a decision soon about what we wanted to do next. Carnival would be coming that weekend - crazy time - our visas were running out - renew them or leave...such BIG decisions!! We decided to check out and move on. To check out of Carriacou we had to take a bus to the main town of Hillsborough. Not a big deal here....we love to ride these buses. They just drive along slowly (unlike Grenada) through the countryside, honking at everyone they know along the way. They dropped us in Hillsborough and we began the long process of checking out. Everyone is at lunch - wait.......Go to Immigration first - wait in a packed office until it is your turn, and then go across the street to Customs - wait (good thing Jon is the Captain).....in the meantime I take off to the beach to hunt for sea glass :-)

After we checked out we got a sandwich at a tiny deli and took a bus back. We asked to be dropped off at Paradise Beach so we could rest in the shade, eat our sandwich, and stroll along the beach - tough day. We didn't find any sea glass on the beach, but we did discover some seeds in spiny pods hanging on bushes on the beach. We recognized the seeds because people use them in jewelry, so we started collecting as many as we could. Last year we bought a book in Martinique about grains and seeds found in the Antilles. The book is written in French , but the pictures are great for identifying seeds. I looked up the seeds we found on Paradise Beach and discovered that the common name is Nickernut, and at one time children played a game similar to Mancala with these seeds. They are a beautiful green or gray color as you can see in the picture above. We are excited about finding more of these seeds on the other islands we visit.

Note** Sorry about the formatting - this program has a mind of it's own and will not break correctly for paragraphs!