MORE CHAIN!!!!

I just love charter boats. It always astounds me how some of these people even qualify to rent these boats. I'll get back to that in a minute. I'm in Clifton in Union Island at the moment. I had to run up here quickly because my friend Seckie managed to find me a really smoking deal on a good dinghy. The poor little red one is getting tired and I had to patch it up 3 times in the last month. I traded my bike recently for a little 7 foot inflatable dinghy as a temporary fix and I have been on the hunt for a good one with a fiberglass bottom. So Seckie found one in Union for me and I sent him money Western Union to lock it up for me. I left Grenada yesterday afternoon around 3 PM and anticipated arriving in Union around midnight. Well as usual the god of wind decided to F me up and the wind backed up to the North and was blowing hard all night, right where I needed to go. I was managing to make decent progress against the wind when I heard the first rip. The leading edge of my headsail blew some of the new reinforcement off. Then before I could get it furled up and put away there was a second rip just below the first. I just had the sail modified and evidently the stitching wasn't up to code. One more thing to take care of, yippee. So I was forced to revert to motor sailing. I was making decent progress this way until my starboard engine decided that he was too tired and was gonna call it a night early. It was a little bumpy last night and I got drilled with quite a few squalls so I didn't bother trying to fix the engine underway. I don't like taking too many chances when I'm sailing solo and climbing in and out of the engine room from the rear of the boat qualifies as hairy when the seas are up. So just the port engine, the mainsail and me stuck it out. The good news was that I was brutally low on diesel on the port side and spent a good 4 hours wondering if I was going to run out of fuel and be forced to sail the remainder of the way. In the end I chose to put into Tyrell Bay in Carriacou. I decided to wait the night out, let the seas lay down and in the morning set about fixing the motor and getting some fuel. I managed to get on the hook around 3 in the morning and got about 5 hours sleep. I dinghied into town and caught a taxi to the local Shell station and filled my 6 jerry jugs full of diesel. Diesel is going for 14 EC per gallon right now, a little over 5 U.S. a gallon, can't wait to fill up in Trinidad or Venezuela. Got back on the boat and got the motor going. Turned out the fuel was so low on that side that it was sucking up all the nasty sludge that has accumulated in the tank and completely clogged some of the fuel lines as well as the primary filter.




I made it to Clifton around 2 this afternoon and intended on getting my new dinghy and setting sail to get back South. Seckie and Vanessa towed the dinghy out to Rum Boogie for me so now I look ridiculous. One dude on a boat, three dinghies. I gotta sell the other two now. I digress. I meant to leave right away but the weather had other plans for me. Whenever I anchor up, I have gotten used to putting WAY more chain out than I need. Typically down here you want more than 5 to 1, sometimes up to 10 to 1. Meaning, if it's 20 feet deep, minimum is 100' of chain, I prefer all 200'. So I have gotten my balls busted here and there about too much chain and blah blah. Well today I got to sit back and enjoy some chips and salsa while a heavy squall ripped through the anchorage and caused a bunch of boats to drag their anchors and end up on reefs and sandbars. Don't get me wrong, I felt bad for the people but there was nothing I could do. Seckie had just brought me the new dinghy and I hadn't even put it together. The winds were probably gusting over 40 but sustained around 30 knots for a good hour and a half. It was wild cause the wind kept shifting and it seemed that the storm was doing circles around us. I pulled up the image on the radar and the storm cell was 12 miles wide. Even the big ferry ship that runs between St Vincent and here ended up getting blown up onto a sandbar. Rum Boogie didn't budge. What up. I'm glad the fireman part of me always says "dude, just put out a lot of chain, you never know when that big blow is gonna kick up". Clifton is full of reefs and even the 44' sportfisher that was anchored behind me ended up bouncing on one of them. So my original statement about charter guests pertains to this. I dive my anchor, almost always. The only exception is when the water is nasty and murky in the industrial ports. I have rarely, if ever, seen any charter guest dive the anchor. When I swim by their boats I usually find an anchor lying sideways, maybe halfway dug in and maybe 50 feet of chain total let out. I always shake my head and just make sure I am not near these boneheads. Most of the time it works but when that big squall comes through you better hope you didn't anchor behind one of them. I'm not trying to sound like an elitist or anything, I'm sure someday I will be faced with some screwed up situation like that and by no means do I think I know everything. I just wonder if it has to do with ego or just plain laziness. Anyway, looks like I'm bunked up here for tonight. Weather sucks right now and I'm not going out in these squalls with a torn headsail. I'm gonna head in later to join Seckie and Vanessa for some local BBQ and then stop by a local reggae party. See ya for now and remember as the lunatic boat vendor known here in Union Island as The Germon screams at you when you are trying to anchor...MORE CHAIN!!!! MORE CHAIN!!!! MORE CHAIN!!!!

Pic 1. is of a charter catamaran getting the anchor reset after being towed off the reef.

Pic 2 is sunset in Prickly Bay, Grenada.

Pic 3 is colors in the sky at sunset.

Pic 4 is of Barracuda, the ferry from St Vincent to Union. It's the big black boat trying to reverse off the sandbar