American Football

I'm the only person on this island who gives a crap about it! This is how I'm reduced to watching the playoffs:

Oh, the hardships of life in paradise ;-)

 

 

Mopion Island

  I really just couldn't resist visiting the quintessential sandy tropical island, complete with umbrella.  I have a few of my Swedish friends on board (the ones who aren't hung over), and we all bring our kiting gear.  It turns out that just landing a dinghy here is exciting, at least at what is apparently high tide.  The tide here is only about a foot, but that is also about the total elevation of the island ;-)  So, the waves are washing over the island from all directions, but there is still just barely room to lay out kite lines. The Swedes are able to kiteboard, and we are all incredibly happy that we are able to visit such a crazy place!

Always an Adventure

I signed up for a SCUBA dive the other day with (who else) the Swedes. We were scheduled for two dives in the afternoon. Our first dive is at Petite Tabac, which, as intrepid readers will recall, is the island where Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth were stranded. The seas are running at eight feet, and I'm not sure why they take us to this site, because the waves are breaking directly above the reef where we will be diving. We get in and assemble on the bottom at a depth of ten feet, and the visibility is very disappointing - only about fifteen feet. I'm hoping that it will improve once we get to a depth of fifty feet, but we have no such luck, and its truly one of the worst dives I've ever been on. Not only that, but our dive master is consistently stepping on the coral - he's the one who is supposed to be keeping us from doing that. (Although I'm not really sure how much it matters at this point, because, as far as I can see, the shallow coral in the southern Caribbean in now almost completely dead - well, the hard coral that is.) That's OK, though, because surely the second dive will be better. We surface and get back on board the dive boat, and when the Captain tries to start the engine, nothing happens. After trying for a few minutes, he takes the cover off the engine, and our hopes for a second dive fade when we see smoke coming from a wire bundle. He and the dive master work on the engine for an hour or so, as we watch the sun getting lower. The boat has no radio, and we are beginning to think that we will be spending the night on the island, eating coconuts and trying to find Jack Sparrow's rum cache. Then we remember that Elizabeth burned all the rum. "But, why is the rum gone?"

 

Eventually, they call another boat on a cell phone, and this fourteen foot open boat with a forty horsepower outboard starts towing our twenty foot dive boat in eight foot seas. What could possibly go wrong? We move along at less than two knots, sort of towards Union Island, but after the tow rope breaks twice, a larger boat shows up. They manage to hook onto us, but the rope breaks again, and the boss decides that there is too much weight in our boat, so he comes along side (in eight foot seas) and we scramble into the "rescue" boat. During the entire process, no one apologizes to us or bothers to explain what is going on. We finally get back to Union just before dark. Then I see that, despite the operator's assurances that my dinghy would be fine at his dock, someone has used it and stolen some bungie straps out of it. The owner offers us a discount, but we have agreed that there should be no charge for this fiasco. I'm the appointed negotiator, since English is my first (only) language. At some point in this process, the owner completely blows a gasket, gives me all the money back, and threatens to beat me up if I ever say another bad word about him. So, I haven't mentioned the name of the dive shop - but, by the way, it's the only one on Union Island. Really, you can't make this stuff up...

 

Thanks to my Finnish Friend Mike for these Photos

 

Fourteen Folks Aboard Alannastar!

 

We headed out to the Cays yet again the other day, this time to Petite Tabac, the island where Jonny Depp was abandoned after the mutiny in Pirates of the Caribbean. The Swedes were expecting their friends to arrive the same day on a sail boat, having sailed all the way from Sweden. I saw their boat on my AIS and radioed to them that they were only three miles away, so they changed coarse and joined us at the island. It was really cool when they came up and anchored - the guys on my boat jumped in and swam over to them, then the guys on the other boat jumped in and they exchanged hugs in the water.

 

Petite Tabac

 

 

The Reunion

 

Vikings of the Caribbean

I've been hanging out with a really fun bunch of Swedes who are staying here on Union Island. Unlike in the good old USA, they get six weeks of vacation a year, so most of them are here for a month or more. One of the nice things about spending time with them is that they are so polite that they almost always speak English when I'm around (however, some things are funny in any language!) Some of them are expert kite surfers and some are just here to relax. A couple of them are learning and on my level, and I've been working with one of them, Oskar, taking turns using my dinghy to pick up the other one when we (inevitably) end up down wind. It's a time consuming process, though, since we have to deflate and pack the kite in order to bring it back to the beach.

I took them out to the Tobago Cays on Alannastar, and everyone had a great time. Then, on New Year's Eve day, they treated me to a day trip to three islands on the Scaramouche, a really cool wooden schooner which was built just across the channel in Carriacou. Built in the late sixties, she is one of the last of the sailing cargo ships. http://scaramouchegrenadines.com/ We spent New Year's Eve enjoying a lobster dinner and dancing in the streets of Clifton. Gott Nytt Ar!

Swedes in the Cays

Scaramouche

Palm Island