Caribbean Musings
03 January 2011 | Clifton Harbor, Union Island
The New Year for us was filled with rain and squalls the entire day. Hopefully that is not an indicator of how the rest of the year will go!! But after it rained through New Year's Eve, in the morning I got up and unscrewed the filler cap to the aft water tank. I figured the boat was clean and washed after the constant drenching through the night. So if a few gallons wanted to run down the deck and into the water tank, all the better. As it was, I think we were able to collect 5-10 gal. (but I am not entirely sure of that cuz the gauge was a little suspect at the time). I plan to install a rain catcher on the bimini to help collect more water from squalls in the future.
Anyhow, we left Mayreau Island on Monday and made for this anchorage. Cruising the Caribbean is going to take a mental adjustment for me/us after two years in the Med. We plan to spend around six months cruising an island chain that extends a whopping 400 nm. This, after putting in 3,500 nm last summer alone! So things are going to get much slower, I think. We will have time to spend a few days in one anchorage without always having to weigh anchor and put on more miles. And when it is time to go, the next anchorage is only 5-10 nm away - not the 30-60 nm marathons we were doing in the Med.
And that is probably just as well for navigation purposes. Charts are helpful. But around here it is mostly visual navigation. Visual as in "Oh look at those beautiful monster waves breaking in a line right out in the middle of nowhere!" Visual as in "REEF!!!!!!" When navigating in and around reefs, it is important to have the sun high in the sky so you can get a better view of the color of the water. Stay in the dark blue area and away from the aquamarine and you are probably gonna do OK.
This particular harbor is tucked behind a nice, long reef. So we get the 15-20k breeze for cooling, but no chop or roll for the boat and the water is flat enough for swimming. It is quite scenic with a restaurant built right out on the reef on a pile of - are you ready for this - conch shells! I guess some fisherman piled all these shells up in one place and someone came along and built a restaurant on top of them!! I wonder what the EPA would say about that nowadays?!!!
But the Caribbean is expensive. Everything is brought in to the islands from the United States, so all the transportation costs are added on to the American prices. Plus you have a bunch of the charter boats that are on holiday and are there to spend money and don't really care what stuff costs. That helps to drive the price up as well. Shirish was approached today by a fisherman with a small grouper who wanted 80 EC (more on that later). Shirish said "no way" and walked away. Eventually he paid 20 EC for the fish, and even that might have been too high!
The islands down here all share one currency even though they are different nations. The Eastern Caribbean dollar is pegged to the American dollar at a fixed 2.67:1. But you just can't believe the prices they get for some basics. $4 USD for a bag of ice. $8 USD for a teeny-weeny sized bottle of honey. The list goes on. A few items - very few - are cheap. Rum, fish and coconuts so far are all we have found.
That's about it for now. More later.