It was another short hop from Mayreau to the Tabago Cays (pronounced keys), about five miles. The scenery was spectacular and the crystal clear turquoise water was mesmerizing! This part of the Grenadines reminds me a lot of the British Virgin Island, except it is much less developed and there are relatively less crowds this time of year.

We pulled into the mooring field off of Baradal Cay just before lunch and were met by several different boat boys. The first picked up the line off the mooring ball and handed it to me to pass our mooring lines through. A nice service, but not worth the tip we had to pay him, but I guess a guy's got to make a living. Barry and I are exceptionally good at picking up a mooring ball by ourselves, must have been all those years of practice in the BVIs. I should add, we were quite relieved to see the mooring balls. The constant worry about whether the windless would work each time has had our nerves strung tight!

I had barely gotten off the deck and into the cockpit when the parade of boat boys began. The next two boat boys wanted to make reservations for us for a dinner with barbequed lobster on the beach. The next guy wanted to sell us t-shirts and the final one wanted to sell us bread and croissants. I bought a t-shirt, we said no to the barbeque and said yes to the bread and croissants to be delivered in the morning. Unfortunately, the croissants and bread never showed up - we were really disappointed.

So what are the Tabago Cays? Well, the Tobago Cays, located in the Southern Grenadines, are an archipelago comprised of five small uninhabited islands - Petit Rameau, Petit Bateau, Baradol, Petit Tobac and Jamesby. The Tobago Cays are the cornerstone of the Tobago Cays Marine Park, a national park and wildlife preserve run by the St.Vincent and the Grenadines government. The Tobago Cays Marine Park consists of a 1,400-acre sand-bottom lagoon which encompasses the four uninhabited cays and the extensive Horseshoe Reef to the east.

We were delighted to discover the Cays had an extensive turtle population and even had a roped off protected area off of Baradal Cay - literally right in front of our boat. After all of the boat boys finally departed this fella came over to welcome us!



It didn't take long to convince Barry we needed to pull out the snorkel gear and go check things out! All in all, around Baradal Cay there isn't much to see when snorkeling - sea grass, a few star fish and sea urchins, an occasional box fish, and turtles. Boy were there turtles! Big turtles, little turtles, and everything in between! Unfortunately, when I got the GoPro camera out to take with me I discovered the battery was dead - so I missed a lot of really cool 'Kodak Moments'. At one point I was just hanging out in about six to eight feet of water as THREE big (four feet across) turtles where munching down on the sea grass just below me! We even saw a turtle with only three flippers, he didn't mention how he lost it and we were too polite to ask. What awesome creatures! The next morning, when the GoPro was fully charged, I was excited to go back and see the turtles. Alas, all I could find was this one, lonely one ... I think turtles must sleep late!



Later in the day we took the dinghy out and zipped around the Cays and went out to Horseshoe Reef. I really wanted to snorkel out on the reef and take pictures but there was really no good way to secure the dinghy while we were in the water. So we decided to just cruise around and take pictures instead.









The Tabago Cays are a truly beautiful place, one of those places I will always return too every time we are in the area. Sure, there can be a lot of people - cruisers, charter boats, cruise ships, and day charters, but that really doesn't detract from the awesomeness of this place. On a side note, one of the highlights for us was that it was the first absolutely calm anchorage that we had been in since before arriving in Grenada at the end of August! If we were not meeting up with friends in Bequia, we might have spent a week there just savoring the calmness! As it was, we only spent two glorious days there before releasing our mooring lines and heading for Canouan ... sigh.