Monday morning we woke up and shared anniversary gifts. We each bought a book and something else for the other. Michael bought me “The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America”, and I bought him DeLoach and Humann’s “Reef Fish Behavior, Florida, Caribbean, Bahamas”. (How nerdy are we!) The “something else” I got was a white gold with yellow gold wraps version of the infinity bracelet that has become sort of our family (Peter, Michael, Terry) trademark over the years, and Michael’s “something else” was a dive knife, which I only brought a picture of, knowing that they would not let us take it in our carry-on luggage, but apparently, the picture was enough to cause alarm in that “nice lady” in Antigua.

Fortunately, marine toilets work without fresh water, because, even though we had filled up before leaving St. Vincent yesterday, we were plum out of fresh water! Our crew however, had back-up jugs for just such occasions. But it’s not to be wasted on showers. Just to brush teeth and wash faces, make coffee, do dishes and other necessary things like that. The educated guess as to why we were out of water, was that the dinghy’s painter (the rope that attaches it to the ship) had gotten caught in the nozzle of the rinse-off hose, which is at the back of the port side of the boat, where we climb in after snorkeling or swimming, keeping it running all night. And no one heard the water pump because the generator was running all night, too!

That changed our itinerary slightly for the day, and after a lovely breakfast of French toast (and bacon for the carnis), we headed for Canouan to stop there for water before moving on to the Tobago Cays. The sailing was once again, perfect and the people who felt funky the day before went up to the flying bridge where they felt more secure. I prefer being close to the water, and hung out on the trampolines up front, getting splashed occasionally, but it wasn’t cold, so I didn’t mind. At Charlestown Bay, there is the Tamarind Beach Hotel (sounds homey), with thatched roof pavillions and blue-roofed rooms tucked behind a line of palm trees on the beach. We didn’t see a Tamarind tree, but we don’t see them at Tamarind Reef, here on STX, either. In any case, it looks like Canouan may become another exclusive island in the future, but the place we stopped at was cute.

While we played in the water, having noodle races to the beach, a “water skiff” loaded with two water buffaloes (tanks) came out to fill Caroline up. Then it was time for lunch (and beers!  Mt. Gay rum and Coke for Michael). The first thing he did when we hit the beach here, though was head to the bar to see if they had any Cruzan rum! The others had cold cut sandwiches with salad and I had tuna salad.

Then off to the marine park at the Tobago Cays. Absolutely breathtaking! We picked up a mooring ball very closed to a cordoned off section by a little cay called Baradal, where boats aren’t allowed because of the number of turtles. Tara saw a couple of them as we approached, but we didn’t see any until we got into the water. And we saw three or four little green turtles, about a foot or a foot and a half long. They’d come up for air, then go down to the grass and graze. They were beautiful and so peaceful. We swam around there for about an hour before heading back to Caroline. At  one point, we spotted a couple of larger turtles and they let us follow them around. One had a big gash in his/her carapace (shell), possibly from a shark bite, but s/he was otherwise intact. An even bigger one (maybe 3 feet long) swam around with us and let me touch her. That was as cool as it gets.

Dinner after the most magnificent sunset, was fresh tuna steaks grilled and served with cous cous and veggies, after which, we continued drinking beer etc. and telling lies. Grant talked about how cool it would be to have a pet monkey to help him around the boat, and we picked up on that, volunteering to be his monkey, or asking him to have his monkey get us another drink and so on….

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Terry Talk, Vacations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.