Day 82, Year 1: Clifton, Union Island, The Grenadines
Date: Saturday, January 7, 2006
Weather: Still Beautiful
Latitude: N 12 degrees 36 minutes
Longitude: W 61 degrees 25 minutes
Location: Behind Newlands Reef, Union Island, The Grenadines
This is a very different place than all of the other anchorages where we have been. Clifton is a very quiet town, almost no cars or vans compared to other stops, and almost no boat boys. It is dryer here and you can tell that life is slow and easy. We could actually walk in town without fear of being run down by a speeding mini-van. As in most of the Windwards, stores close at 1500 on Saturday and do not open again until Monday morning. So by the time we arrived and got to town, most things were closed.
The sail here only took a couple of hours from Tobago Cays. You can easily see from one island to another, so nothing is very far away. We anchored next to a boat flying both an American and a Canadian flag, and on our way into town, we stopped to meet our neighbors. Jim and Jan Dumouchelle aboard Windigo. They have dual citizenship but live in Raleigh, North Carolina. They sailed south to Trinidad last season, went back to Raleigh for the summer, and are sailing back to St. Martin this season. There, Jim’s brother will help Jim take the boat back to North Carolina. Jan will fly back. They invited us to come back for a sundowner at 1700. They had also invited fellow cruisers Roger and Barbara who are sailing north in their Tayana 37. We enjoyed our evening with both couples.
The weather is supposed to get very windy here until at least Wednesday. We will have to delay our sail to Bonaire until after that and will decide tomorrow whether we will stay in this harbor, move to a different Union Island harbor, or move on to Grenada for the next couple of days. You’ll have to check in tomorrow to find out what we decide.
I keep trying to capture the unbelievably beautiful shades of green and blue water here, but I don’t think there is any way a camera can capture this with all kinds of special filters. I will keep posting my attempts, but you will just have to use your imagination to fill in the gaps.
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| 060107 Day 82 Caribbean, Union Island–Tobago Cays to Union Island |
