Dinghy Days...

At the moment I'm anchored up in Clifton, on Union Island. My buddy has been here since last week and we have been really enjoying island hopping around here in the Grenadines. We've had great weather, loads of turtles to swim with and we have had a couple of real nice beach bbq's with my friends Seckie and Vanessa. Last night we stayed in Chatham Bay and they brought out a bunch of local dishes, roasted breadfruit, creole chicken, fresh banana bread (banana bread is allowed on the boat), it was great. We stayed up late drinking rum and telling them some of our crazy stories from the fire deparment. We laughed all night and they stayed on the boat with us. This afternoon we came back to Clifton to clear out of customs. I'm planning on setting sail tonight around 2 AM to head to Grenada. There is a tropical depression about 800 miles East of the Windward Islands and I want to get south before it arrives. It's definitely interesting living your life being governed by weather. Carnival is in full swing in Grenada so we want to get back for that as well.

The other day when we arrived in Clifton, I met up with one of the local boat vendors who had a dinghy for sale. Without going into all the specifics, the current dinghy is not the greatest and I have been keeping my eye out for a better one. So the vendor takes me into Clifton on his water taxi and we walk up the hill towards the little airport. When we get to the spot, he shows me the dinghy and it's not what I want. It is too small, soft bottom, blah blah. I tell him no thanks but he won't quit. So we start bartering for a good half hour. As we do, we walk over to some little outdoor shed that is called the Anchor Bar. Basically it's a bunch of rasta dudes drinking what is literally called Strong Rum. NASA could probably use it for shuttle fuel. Since this guy wouldn't take no for an answer, I ended up working out a trade with him. I bought a bike a few months ago but it has proved to be more of a pain in my ass than it's worth. So I traded straight across for it and now I have a little 7 foot inflatable dinghy to run around in. It's actually cool cause it will work out for now and when I find a good solid hard bottom dinghy, I can deflate this one and keep it in reserve. So after we strike our bargain, we had to drink a shot of the Strong Rum as his way of closing the deal. We toss the boat on a cart and wheel it down the hill to the dock so we can drag it out to Rum Boogie with is water taxi. About this time, one of the local guys yells something I can't make out to the guy I made the trade with, by the way he calls himself Boutique but spells it Booteek. So Booteek looks at me and asks if I have a red dinghy. I say yes. He says his brother just saved it from landing on one of the many reefs surrounding Clifton. Ok. So we get back and Sawyer starts to tell me what happened. Right before I left I told him he needed to tie the dinghy up better or it would probably break loose. He said no worries and I was off. So while he was in the bathroom and his girl was sleeping, the little red dinghy made a break for it and drifted off. The local boat vendors wait at the mouth of the harbor like a bunch of freaking barracuda waiting to pounce on every boat making entry into Clifton and one of them, Skipper, shot over and tied up the dinghy and drug it back to Rum Boogie. He wanted to charge Sawyer 200 EC dollars and Sawyer told him just to wait for me. When I got back, sure enough Skipper comes over demanding 200 EC. Yeah, F you. I thanked him for saving the boat and we went round and round for a bit. I gave him 40 EC for his trouble and 1 gallon of gas but I made him take 4 bags of trash as well. Kind of a bizarre scene but this is the kind of shit that seems to happen daily. Sawyer and I got a good laugh out of the whole thing but I was wiped out from all the negotiating that day. The Tobago Cays were a welcome respite that evening. I will write more and post pictures probably sometime this weekend.