Tobago to Union Island, SVG

Ron was in his glory sailing from Tobago to Union Island. We left Charlotteville, Tobago at 20:15 with very light winds. For the first time we put both the main sail and head sail up without a reef as the winds were about 15 knots from the northeast. Our speed sailing was at about 6.5 knots on a close reach. During the night the winds picked up 20 to 25 so Ron dropped the head sail. We then sailed with just the main until the winds gusted up to 30 when we then put the second reef in the main. It was a great sail with us cruising between 7 to 9 knots with amazing bursts taking us over 12 knots. We arrived in Union Island at 9:15 doing 95 miles in 13 hours at an average speed of 7.2 knots. So as I said Ron was a happy camper doing what he likes to do. Gramma stayed up again to keep him company while the kids mostly slept and I dozed with one ear always open to assist when needed.

Just after dawn Jenessa asked if she was allowed to fish. She wanted to get out her Christmas fishing rod but Ron convinced her to use heavier line and just stick a pink squid on the end. With about 60 feet of line out, you could see the lure bouncing behind us in the wake of the boat. She was quite content to sit there and play with the line. After about an hour Ron suggested she might consider pulling in the line as we were sailing at about 10 knots and he thought that was too fast to catch a fish. It couldn’t of been 5 more minutes when were heard a very excited little voice saying, “I caught something, I caught something!!” Without a reel and without gloves, it took both Ron and Jenessa to pull the line in and sure enough she had caught a fish. We estimate it was between 5 & 7 pounds. We had bought the same kind of fish off a fisherman the day before, and he called it a king fish. Just after anchoring, low and behold a couple that we had met from Grenada pulled in behind us, so we celebrated by having Judy & Ed over for barbecue fish for dinner.

Alex had her hair braided on Christmas Eve in Tobago and while we were exploring Clifton, we found a 14 year old girl named Patrice who was willing to braid Jenessa’s hair for 30 EC which is about $12.00. She did a great job and was lovely to talk to about her school, community and family.