Clifton Harbour, Union Island

After a bad night’s sleep we decided to head straight to Union Island and treat ourselves to a night in a marina to catch up on our rest and give my a arm a chance to recover before going to Tobago Cays. We had another pleasant sail past Mayreau and into Union Island. We docked at the Anchorage Yacht Club stern to, with our anchor holding us off forward. It is just one simple floating jetty with one hosepipe and two double UK style sockets for power in the little watch house at the end of the pier, so not exactly plush, but we could walk ashore and we did as soon as we were moored up. The dock belongs to a small hotel which has a lobster and conch pool for diners at the edge of the bar and a shark pool between the path and the restaurant presumably for non-payers. It had a number of fair sized nurse sharks in, though it was pretty shallow and presumably quite hot for them as they were trying to hide in the large concrete inlet pipe. We had a cool beer / G&T to celebrate our arrival to a new island then went back to the boat to clean up before a wander round Clifton.

Clifton is fairly small but full of colour and character with brightly coloured vegetable stalls round the central grass square. Everyone is very friendly but not over pushy and we had a pleasant browse round the shops. We visited Erica’s a really good yacht facility with internet stations, book swap, cycle hire, dvd hire, charts, property and souvenir sales infact just about anything you can think of. We decided to hire an old war film for the evening and headed back to the YC for a sundowner cocktail (Pina Colada and Margarita respectively) before retiring to the boat for fresh tuna steaks and the rare treat of shore power and a film.