SOUTHERN END OF THE GRENADINES ..........

SALTWHISTLE BAY on the island of MAYREAU is just toooooo beautiful ......... Little point in pulling up the anchor ............ Actually, big point in pulling up the anchor, for it has become more and more difficult to do that of late ...... Over time the chain has become twisted and here is the perfect place to try to solve that problem ..........
So the first step is to drive ARITA towards the beach until she runs aground, always fun, ..... Then put out a secondary anchor and a stern anchor to hold her in place .........



I'm telling you, what a place to do it in ........................



Forced to appoint a 'supervisor with camera' whose job it is to keep the 'bigger picture' in perspective ...........



Mark, from the buddy boat "LIAHONA", who is anchored nearby has come to assist by walking the primary chain out to the beach and unravelling it at the same time ........At least until it gets too heavy to move it any further, then it becomes a matter of keeping the twists out while winding it back in with the windlass ......




Mark and Willie, that's Willie on the right, have the only fibreglass yacht we've ever truly admired ....... Spacious, comfortable, strong, with great attributes like water maker, generator, storage space to die for, fridge and freezer and A/C to boot .... Oh, and they have a dance floor in the saloon ............ And an aft cabin with space for a double and a single ............ Never mind, back to our chain problem ........... O.K....... We fixed that, and cleaned the hull at the same time and then sailed off to explore PALM ISLAND and UNION ISLAND towards the southern end of the GRENADINES .........



Just look at the colour of these iguanas on PALM ISLAND ......... And there were so many of them ......... Well, when you can't get off the island, I guess you might as well have some fun with friends ...... Friends with benefits .....




PALM ISLAND especially has a very colourful history ....... Go to www.gotopalm.com to see it for yourself, but basically one young man, John Caldwell having married an Australian nurse during the last World War, had no way of getting back to Australia and to his wife, so he bought a small boat in Panama and decided to sail there by basically heading west ......... John had never sailed on a boat before and it showed that, in his book "Desperate Voyage" .......... O.K. the boat gets wrecked in Fiji, but he does find his wife, they have several children and buy a better boat with which they cruise the World .......... John obviously has learned a thing or two by then......... That yacht is wrecked in the Caribbean during a hurricane ..... The family ends up leasing PALM ISLAND for a dollar a year and planting loads of coconuts .......... The 50-year saga is now beautifully compiled in a book by 'Doc' Chevailler, who now owns and manages the resort on the island ...... Fascinating photos and fascinating people, 'Doc' included, who is an exceptional artist as well as a medical doctor ..............



We walked the shoreline of PALM ISLAND and came across a game of crab football (soccer) in progress ............... The big guy is the referee ..... It is played slightly differently because they have more legs .......... They give penalties for passing the ball back and forth between your own legs ....... The crab hanging over the edge has gone to retrieve the ball ...... Note that the field has a slight slope to it ....... A funding request has been submitted to the EU .....



PALM ISLAND is small and vulnerable to waves during hurricanes and even the palm trees have to hang on as best they can ............. The anchorage at PALM ISLAND was rolly and so we moved behind the reef at UNION ISLAND ......... A distance of less than a mile ....... You can see we really get about .........



All sorts of vessels seem to anchor behind the reef at UNION ISLAND, like this one above (left) called " LEENAN HEAD " with its gaff main, an enormous bowsprit and a young 106 years-old hull...... The Captain told me it is a ZULU design, because when the young men in one of the Scottish regiments returned from the 'Boer War' in southern Africa, they started buiding a fleet of entirely new designed herring fishing boats and called them ZULUS, fierce, strong and indestructable ...... And then there's this square sail gaff-schooner " SATORI " built in ferro-cement on the right ...... Great for running down the trade winds with that big square sail on the horizontal yard arm ............



One enterprising local, Janti, has built a beach bar out on the reef with lots of concrete to keep the water out ...... His motto is ' Every hour is happy hour' ..... He and his family actually live out there ..... You can see Palm island just behind Janti's island ...............



And downtown in CLIFTON on UNION ISLAND it is just as colourful ............. Everything has been painted to make it look attractive .... Even the stem of some trees ............. Tourism is a big revenue earner, must be, because one of the largest buildings in town is the revenue office and there is not a lot else going on in UNION as far as we could see .....



We came back on board ARITA after a few pink rum drinks at Janti's reef bar and brought other sailors home with us for some macaroni and cheese ...... Two of them are from Brazil, one is from France and the English couple brought some tasty yellow-fin Tuna that was instantly put on the grill ............. Cruising is such a hard life ..... Go ahead, ask any cruiser ...........


Now this delightful dish we polished off ourselves last night ......... A first for ARITA, with the culinary chef on board producing the first ever home-made ice cream ....... Producing anything in this equitorial climate with the hatches shut as it rains is a feat in itself ...... Frozen ice-cream together with some fresh mango slices and a decent dash of Bahamian mango rum poured over the top ..... Managed to savour it till not a drop was left .......... And on the right is some yellow SARGASSO WEED floating in the ocean that has absolutely nothing to do with the magnificent home-made ice cream, whatsoever ............. Except, perhaps the colour .......