Canouan – one of the Grenadines

The country of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (or “SVG”) is pretty small, but spread out across a number of small islands.  The largest population centers are in St. Vincent, the largest island.  When we entered SVG we went straight to Bequia and bypassed St. Vincent.  From Bequia we decided to sail to Canuoan, passing several islands such as Mustique for which we’d have to sail upwind.  Also for various reasons some had less appeal, Mustique for instance is a playground for the very rich, which isn’t inherently bad.  However beautiful it is, you can not anchor there and there is a pretty steep charge to pick up a mooring for a single night.

Canouan

Canouan is interesting – almost two different islands in one.  The North end of the island is almost completely dedicated to a large resort.  The middle and South ends of the island are still sorting themselves out from the economic changes.  We anchored in Grand Bay, near the town of Charlestown.

Grand Bay is a little odd from a wind and current perspective.  Sailing up to Canouan we had strong breezes which almost died as they started to shift and veer in the harbor approach so we motored in.  With the prevailing winds from the East in the Caribbean we were surprised to see all the boats anchored near shore facing out to us, to the West.  But we came in and anchored in reasonably shallow water.  There was little wind in the harbor so Will broke out the kayak and headed out to explore as we settled in at anchor.

Thanks for the picture, Wikipedia!

At the North end of the harbor is an interesting island that looked like good snorkeling so the rest of us headed over in the dinghy.  As we swam towards the reef we spotted a huge spotted eagle ray swimming off into the distance.  He seemed to do laps around us, or maybe the little island, as he came back into view a few more times as we were swimming around.  Not bad snorkeling, but the eagle ray made it a lot more spectacular!

As we sat in the anchorage we figured out that the light and variable winds were from the island blocking the trades, and the odd directions the boats faced were from current.  The net result of this is that some of the rolls coming in from the open water were hitting us oddly…not the most pleasant motion, but certainly not the most roll-y conditions we’ve slept in.

Green parts sand, dark parts coral

After a restive night we decided to check out the island a bit before moving on.  On the far side, the windward side, is a huge reef enclosing a shallow bay that looked like some spectacular snorkeling.   We were thinking of maybe moving Evenstar to a nearby harbor and taking the dinghy to the reef, or perhaps walking there with our gear in hand.  One side of the debate held that the walk over would be wretched and it would be easier to dinghy.  The other held that it would be a tricky approach through a reef and it would probably be a rough anchorage with the wind conditions.

Lovely flowers I don’t want to trip over on the way down a cliff.

It turns out of course that we were both somewhat  right.  The windward side of the island is stunningly beautiful, but it is nigh impossible to get down to the water.  The road is under construction, and it runs along the top of a tall hill which is covered with cacti, scrubby bushes and looks painful and uninviting to scramble down.  A mile or so down the road from where we walked it had gone downhill enough to get near the water, but there was still no guarantee of a clear path to the beach.  From the high points you could clearly see a lot of reef.  And a lot of wind and waves – getting through those reefs looked only marginally less fun than rolling around at anchor once we got there.

Used a high shutter speed to avoid motion blur…

As we walked around we came across several red footed tortoises.  They seem quite common, and approximately 67% of the tortoises we encountered needed rescuing from some sort of navigational mishap.  Given that we were the sort of people that would stop the car back in the states to move a tortoise out of the middle of the road you can imagine that we would not leave these little guys stranded, be it in a road or a drainage ditch.  I can only wonder what the locals thought as they watched us carrying these things around.  Based on conversations we’ve had with some local people about things like the spotted eagle ray and iguanas we’ve seen, I think the thought might have been “soup”.

Poor navigation left this guy in the middle of the road.

Can you see the similarities?

These tortoises were interesting to watch, because they move differently than the box turtles (technically, “box tortoises”) we were used to seeing at home.  Those tortoises moved quite slowly, as they drag their shells across the ground which of course creates a lot of friction.  These guys extend their legs fully, and lift themselves and their shells right off the ground like little Imperial Walkers from Star Wars.  They can move at a pretty good clip!  Well, for tortoises they moved a lot faster than I expected, climbing right over those sticks prickly cacti just like they weren’t there (armor plating!)

Charlestown, like most of the towns on these islands, is fairly small.  City planning doesn’t ever seem to be a high priority, with vegetable stands, bar/restaurants houses and “supermarkets” (and they use this term loosely) all sort of sprinkled together with government buildings.  And goats…lots of goats.

Part of Charlestown, the careful observer might count the goats

We almost always try to stop in a market, usually because we are out of stuff but sometimes because you can never know what you will find.  We’ve seen odd things, like frozen White Castle hamburgers in places you wouldn’t expect had even heard of White Castle.  Sometimes you catch good prices on things you didn’t expect, and sometimes the prices leave a lasting impression on you (like the $16.00 gallon of whole milk we found in Virgin Gorda).  And sometimes odd things are missing, we scoured a warehouse store style place in St. Lucia for bacon and couldn’t find a single slice.

But what did we find here, on Canouan, in a tiny hole in the wall supermarket we visited to take a break for cold drinks?  BACON!  Something we ran out of a while back and have avoided buying much of since, as we’d have to sell one of the children to pay for it.  Not only did they have bacon, they had two different brands and both were reasonably priced!  We grabbed a few packages and headed pack to the boat.

Although Canouan held some appeal, we decided to move on because we were anxious to get to the Tobago Keys and we didn’t relish another night with weird rolls in the anchorage.