We’re headed to Clifton Harbor on Union Island this morning to fill our water tanks and get some necessities. Booze that is. Turns out the islands make beer drinking a mandatory post-sail event – I haven’t seen Christy drink this much beer in years. The local brand Hairoun is a nice lager, very refreshing when cold on a hot day. We buy a case, I buy a bottle of rum (I never drink rum but when in Rome as Colby says), some fruit juice and a local SIM card. Turns out I can get 10 GB a week for $35 and the cell reception is excellent.

On the way into Clifton I lose my Tilley hat to the wind – Ian says later we could have gone back for it but oh well. So far we have lost a pair of sunglasses, my Swiss Army knife, my hat and a paddle.

Clifton Harbor is cute, seems more like a long lost Pacific island than the Caribbean but it is pretty out of the way. We buy some more fruit, eggs and banana bread (a popular staple down here) at the market but don’t stay long and soon motor around the back of the island to Chatham Bay.

Colby and I spy the 1000 foot peak of Mt Taboi and find there is a trail to get there. We’re committed and after anchoring in the (surprisingly windy) Chatham Bay Christy gives us a dinghy ride in and Colby and I find the trail to the top. Christy joins us for the first leg straight up the hill but we’re going fast to get up and down quicker so we soon leave her behind.

The trail goes straight up, then east and gradually up then straight up, then west and gradually up, then straight up to the top. We run anything that is not straight up. Halfway there is an amazing lookout that is also an old (?) goat pen. Colby sees what looks like decent surf breaking to the east of the boat (more on that later).

The last gradual part actually descends slightly and we’re thinking we may have missed the cutoff to the peak. We can see the ridge though and it doesn’t look too bad so we decide to bushwhack up to it. It’s thorny, cactussy, scratchy and nasty but we get there and we see the peak is still ahead of us on the route we were on. Thorny, cactussy, scratchy and nasty back down to the trail and within a few minutes we’re on the top. (3 days later I will contract poison ivy-like blisters that are probably tangling with the “Brazil bush” we didn’t know about.)

Spectacular 360 degree views – this is the highest peak between St. Vincent and Grenada. Exposed on 3 sides which gives me the heebie jeebies especially since Colby is posing on the edge of a 200 foot drop. I’m afraid my age has affected my balance and vertigo which was never that good anyway.

Time to go. I’m slow on the steep descents as my knees and balance don’t allow me to go fast so Colby takes off. I catch him on the flats tho where I’m booking it. Though it’s very hot, we’re in the trees and there is good wind so except for the first part of the climb which is exposed to the sun and no wind it is not a problem. Still, we’re glad to be down and eager for a cooling swim which we do once we find Christy and get back to the boat. The beach we landed on is actually rocky and corally so not great for a swim.

Back on the boat Colby watches a dinghy which seems to be inspecting the surf he spied from the first lookout. He borrows our binoculars – “They’re looking at that surf! They’re thinking of surfing it!”. The dinghy goes back to their boat and soon “They’re waxing their boards! They’re waxing their boards!”. I give him a ride over on our dinghy and he surfs it with 3 kite surfers from France for a half hour or so.

We head in to Sunset Cove restaurant for dinner which is slow in coming, pretty average as usual but the rum punch is always good. We head back to the boat.

Then the fun begins.

The chicken here is good but seems to initiate, uh, biological needs in me quickly. As we land on the boat I have a rather urgent need to visit the head. I don’t want to be too scatological but the situation calls for some detail to give the scale of what happens next. I deposit a manly specimen then go to flush.

Il ne marche pas.

This is bad – someone ahead of me has blocked the tiny, 2″ exit pipe and my contribution is stubbornly refusing to leave the bowl. I try the bowl brush which is soon covered in you-know-what. No good. Christy and Stephen are asking if everything is OK in there and I give them a synopsis and say “whatever you do, don’t come in here”. The odor is horrific and things are getting messy. Christy passes me a clothes hanger. No good. I look under the sink to see if there is some kind of cleanout. No, but there is a pretty sorry looking plunger. Ok this might help. What the plunger does effectively is create an explosion of sh*t that goes everywhere – I mean everywhere – yet fails to clear the bowl. I try a few times and now the whole room and me are covered in feces.

Christy and Stephen are outside joking and laughing which actually helps as the situation is dire and would be almost unbearable without that levity. I learned the next day that Colby heard what was going on but wisely declined to investigate.

I plunge, I wear sh*t, I plunge, I wear sh*t. Nothing. I think the only thing I can do is find the drain hose, disconnect it somehow and clear the pipe. I look under the sink, find a place where it joins the pipe to the holding tank and ask for some tools. This is going to get uglier. In desperation before I dissemble that I try to flush one more time.

OMG the bowl clears. I flush another gallon of water to be sure. Now the cleanup. I don’t think I can adequately describe the state of the room at that point but I think I can say that there was just as much sh*t out of the bowl as in it at the end. I ask for a roll of paper towels, a garbage bag, some disinfectant and “don’t come in here”. I spend at least a half hour with paper towels, hosing down the room with the shower handle, then spraying it down with disinfectant, then rinsing it again. I’m done. Only one thing left to clean and that’s me. I strip down to nothing get some soap and shampoo and jump in the ocean.

I give a cursory clean to the clothes but put them into a sealed laundry bag not to be touched until laundry day on the mainland. I toss the clothes hanger into the ocean.

Christy goes in after me and inspects my work, does a little more cleaning to be safe. We head to bed.

We can hear Stephen in there for another 45 minutes cleaning and spraying. He’s a bit of a germophobe.