We went to the fancy shmancy Young Island Resort for dinner.  It was a quiet place with buildings carefully engineered and concreted in to make Young Island, a scraggy little thing, appear much bigger than it is. Dinner was pleasant, American style with four courses and included rather rubbery chicken dumplings for Bob and mini coconut dumplings in pigeon pea soup for me that were so small that I couldn’t find them.  Bob’s lamb main course was tasty but definitely not from a local sheep.  Pudding was a weird nut tart with a bit of sickly sweet chocolate for Bob and a piece of cake with extraordinarily green sprinkles for me.  We preferred lunch.

We arose to a bright morning, most exciting, and set off at a reasonable hour taking the long way round Young Island as we are far too risk averse (cowardly or sensible?) to attempt the channel between the reefs.  We soon settled into a steady rhythm, rocking along with a broadside sea rolling through but a straightforward wind not bothering to change much from 16 knots.  A very nice soothing ride and we dreamily watched the windward side of Beuqia slip by.  As we came close to Canouan, the black clouds hovered and spat messily at us but held fire with any wind.  I was once again very glad of the “Darth Invader” cape left behind by Fran (although, don’t tell her, but it is gradually getting shredded by all the flapping in the wind).  We sedately made our way into the vast Charlestown Bay and tucked ourselves away in the sheltered left hand corner on a buoy provided by Marcus.  The sun came out as a side dish to lunch but then a showery cloud went through just as we were contemplating taking a run ashore.  We didn’t have to wait long for it to clear but we made sure that we had packed our waterproofs before venturing out.  Bob did a bit of kung fu (well that is what it looked like) with the oars to fit get them to fit into the dinghy and shouted a war cry (well that is what it sounded like) as he pinged one of the padlocks into the depths of the deep blue sea.  He thought I might want to try and retrieve and I don’t think he was joking.

Everyone is so very friendly in Canouan and it seems to be absolutely genuine not just after a bit of cash.  We felt like Crocodile Dundee in New York as we “good afternoon”ed our way through town.  We went for a lovely circular walk up the hill from town, over to the other side of the island, back along the windward side and back into town.  I was super excited to meet just so many wild tortoises pottering about minding their own business.  They were all different sizes but their markings very much the same so Bob couldn’t understand why I just had to keep photographing every single one of them.  We were accompanied on our travels by a charming schoolboy in his pristine white shirt and socks (how do they do that?) and a pair of equally charming, nicely groomed dogs, definitely not the usual local fleabags, who ran home looking very worried when we got into local fleabag dog territory.  Bob was super excited to discover the ATM which he attended to while I stood and gawped, with every other townsperson, at a fracas between a shouty older man and a young whippersnapper with a gun shaped gold earring involving throwing punches and rocks.  The whippersnapper escaped into a nearby home without his flip flops, his hat or his dignity.  Shopping was a more calm affair although I am guessing, by their reaction, that I upset the vendors by squeezing their avocados and pineapples.  We returned to Windy the long way round as our original exit gate was solidly padlocked, at least they still had theirs.

We are now settled on board and planning an evening in.  The final lines of the blog are accompanied by the hummings of a happy Gerry, hammerings of the adjustable spanner and the welcome clink as the ice joins the gin and tonic in the glasses.  Cheers!