Heading North

On the 27th we started heading North.  Hurricane season has just about ended and luckily it was a very quiet one in the Caribbean this year.  Before we left St. Vincent I wanted to visit a couple of spots that we hadn't been to yet.  We stopped in Wallilabou which has a fairly deep bay so we had to get a mooring ball and then one of the boat boys came out and tied the stern to the pylons on the dock.  Wallilabou became a popular spot because in 2003 they filmed part of Pirates of the Caribbean here and there are still quite a few props that were left from the shooting.  The restaurant was there prior to filming and they built around it the building where Elizabeth's father worked.  They built the dock where the ships would leave from and the courtyard still had the hanging rope where they tried to hang Jack Sparrow.  There were a lot of the wooden caskets all over the place which were the ones that they would throw overboard.
Then we headed up to Chateaubelair for one night and on the 29th we sailed up to St. Lucia.  We checked into Soufriere which is on the SW end of the island.  We already had the pet permit approved from the vet there so we thought it would be fairly easy to get the dogs checked in.  But the vet couldn't come out to check them until the next morning so the poor dogs were quarantined to the boat again for 24 hours.  They seem to be getting use to it though.  Soufriere is right at the base of the Pitons which are two fairly steep hills.  After we took the dogs in for a walk we decided to head up to Rodney Bay which is on the north end of the island.  They have a very nice marina there and its pretty reasonable so we decided to stay there a few days.  It's nice because you can dinghy to a huge shopping area with tons of restaurants, grocery stores and a casino.
It feels good to start heading north and getting out of the Grenadines.  Don't get me wrong, the Grenadines are beautiful but after three months you pretty much have seen everything and then some.

St Vincent:

Lexie was looking in the crab holes again-can you tell?

 

 

The Pitons on St. Lucia

Our Grenada Excersion

Today we are back in Bequia after a couple of crazy weeks.  On the 10th we found out that my sister in law was in the hospital and she wasn't doing too well.   She had been fighting COPD for the past 3-4 years and her lungs were finally giving out.  She passed away on Sunday and Wes said that I needed to go home.  There was no way that we could both go home with the dogs.  So Wes said that he would stay on the boat and I should fly home  We got my airline ticket leaving out of Grenada on Wednesday.  So the plan was for us to sail over to Carriacou (which is part of Grenada) then I would take the ferry over to Grenada spend the night in a luxurious hotel (haha) and catch my flight in the morning.  But customs/immigration had a different idea.   So we forgot to check out at Union Island before we headed over to Carriacou, just a little oversight.  We thought if he was just dropping me off that we didn't need to check in and out.  But the officer proceeded to explain to me that there is a $10,000 fine for not checking out of the country when we leave.  I asked him if we could just sail on back to Union Island, which was only about 5 miles across the bay and he adamantly said no because we had already set foot in Grenada.  He just started yelling at me and said I should know better and I just lost it. I started crying and said that I was just trying to get back for my sister in laws funeral.  I think he actually felt sorry for me.  He never said sorry but he let me go and I was able to catch a cab to the hotel and relax.
I made it home, and the service was very nice.  It was good to see everyone but I am really tired of going home for funerals.  It would be nice to go home for a wedding or a baby or something happy-No more funerals.
Wes rented a car so he could pick me up at the airport, which was really nice since my flight didn't get in until 10:30pm.  We had the car for the next day so we decided to tour the island.  We were going to hike the volcano on St. Vincent and we headed on up. But when we were about 1/3 of the way up we ran into a group of locals with machete's.  We got little nervous so we decided to head back down and ran into a big group of locals with several machete's.  We made it down to the base and asked the guide what the machete's were all about and he said that they grow marijuana on the North side of the volcano and they were just going up to cut some.  OK we felt pretty silly but he said they were harmless and we were completely safe.   
Now we are waiting to hear from the vet in St. Lucia that it is ok to bring the dogs into their country,  We have been trying to get an export certificate from St Vincent but that is not an easy task.

Some pictures of our tour of St. Vincent:

Our Visit to Petit St. Vincent

On Wednesday we decided to head over to Petit St. Vincent and anchor for the night then head over to Petit Martinique.  We found a nice place to anchor and there was no one else around.  The island is private and has a very nice resort with 22 cottages that can be rented out for around $1,500-$2,500 per night (we of course stayed on the boat).  The place was pretty much closed for the slow season and not many people were around other than workers getting things ready for the busy season.  So we took the dogs into the beach and enjoyed the beautiful island for a while.
When we headed back to the boat we saw a storm was coming in but we had no idea that it was going to bring 45 mph winds and a downpour.  We sure were't expecting it to be this wicked and none of the weather apps that we have said anything about it.  But we made it through without our anchor even slipping and Thursday morning we headed over to Petit Martinique for gas and water.  When we asked the lady at the marina about the storm she said those come up all the time.  Wow, I don't care to experience that again.  I'm just glad we were anchored and not out in the open water when it came up.

 

One of the cottages 

The dogs doing what they do best-chasing crabs

 The storm:

The beautiful sky after the storm

The great crab hunters

When we first got to the Caribbean we would take the dogs for walks along the beach. They would sniff around and walk with us. If a crab ran across the beach they would chase it. I remember the first time they encountered a crab (September 2014, in the Bahamas) They had it surrounded for about 15 minutes but couldn't decided what to do with it. They would get it in their mouth but then the crab must have pinched them so they would let it go. The crab eventually ran to the water and the chase was over.

Fast forward to today. Now the dogs get on the beach and they do there business. Then it's all crab hunting. For a while they didn't even care where I was, they would run off chasing crabs. ( I did fix that). Lexie sniffs every whole on the beach and checks it for crabs. Max checks out all the rocky places on the beach for crabs. They now spend 99% of their time on the beach hunting for crabs.

I'm not sure what they would do now on shore if they didn't have crabs to chase.

                                                           Lexie looking for some crabs

                                                       Max and Lexie looking for crabs

                                                     Lexie sniffing some holes for crabs

A View from the top of Union Island

Tuesday we hiked to the top of Union Island and WOW what a view.  You could see several of the Grenadine Islands and also Carricou which is an island of Grenada.

Mayeau is the island in front and Canouan is behind it

Tobago Cays

That is our boat right in the middle and Happy Island directly in front of it

Palm Island

Petite St. Vincent is the small island on the left and Petite Martinique is on the right

Frigate Island

This is where we have been hanging out the last few days. It's called Frigate Island or the "Rock" as the locals call it.  It's just off of Union Island and  close to Ashton which is a small town on Union Island.  It's really calm in the bay and you can sit on the back of the boat and watch the turtles poke their heads up for air.  

Still in the Grenadines

Well, we are still hanging out in the Grenadines waiting out hurricane season. It's been pretty quiet so far thank goodness but we probably have about five more weeks to go.  I guess Domanica got hit pretty bad with flooding from Erika and it just keeps raining there. It will be interesting to see the damage when we stop there on the way back up.

We've stayed occupied by island hopping to the different islands here in the Grenadines and it's nice because there are so many of them. We've sailed back to St Vincent a few times which is the main island furthest north and about 30 miles from Union Island where we have been spending the majority of our time. St Vincent has some nice grocery stores so we would go up there to shop but we found out that we could order food on line and they will send it down on the Ferry the same day for $8. We've tried it once so far and it worked out pretty good. You don't always get exactly what you order and they seem to forget some things but it's still a good way to provision since the "markets" on the smaller islands don't have much of a selection. 

Quite a few people we met that went to Grenada have actually come back to the Grenadines because I guess it is really crowded in Grenada, so I'm kind of glad we stayed around the Grenadines. Wednesday we sailed up to Canoun and spent the night then headed to Bequai on Thursday, stayed in Tobago Cays last night and today we are back at Union Island so you could say we are getting around a bit. 

We were actually able to watch the Broncos game Thursday night on the boat using the sling player back home at Amanda's through the iPad and it worked pretty good.   Wow what a game!!!  One of the promises Wes made to get me to agree to this boating thing was I had to be able to watch the Broncos and so far he's done a pretty good job at coming through on his promise.

The end of the beach in Bequai

Petite Martinique where they build beautiful wooden boats and paint them really bright colors

We met a huge pod of dolphins just outsid Union Island

A small reef off the beach on Union Island      

One of the beaches on Union where we hiked up the hill with the dogs