Capt.Mike and I celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary by splurging on a week at beautiful Sandy Lane Yacht Club on the island of Canouan.

Back when we first started cruising, I made Capt. Mike promise that we’d keep enough money in the budget to stay in a marina once a month to preserve my mental health. But since those long ago and far away days, either I’ve toughened up, or we’ve made life on Sanitas much more comfortable. Now that we have a better mattress, a cockpit shower, and plenty of solar power, we live for free on the hook most of the time. However, in these Covid times, there are still so few tourists in the Eastern Caribbean that many resorts and marinas are offering stellar deals!

Sandy Lane is a new marina and absolutely gorgeous – I feel as though a bit of Miami Beach or San Tropez has been magically transported to the Grenadines. I’m pretty sure it’s designed for the sensibilities (and pocketbooks) of wealthy mega yacht owners. But all of the employees and staff were so welcoming, and treated us so well, you’d think we were spending thousands of dollars a night instead of the $55.50 we actually spent for our dock fees. 😉 That’s roughly what you’d spend for a KOA campsite in the US, or for a Boaty Ball mooring in the BVIs. But here at Sandy Lane, we spent a week living like royalty while having the whole place almost to ourselves (and with our friends Chuck and Lilli on Virtual Reality)

The marina facilities are built along a mile-long fairway, open on both ends, providing great clean water flow. There are fish and turtles living happily in the water. It’s so clean, we could probably make water right in the marina. At one end, there’s a plaza of pastel shops, restaurants, and condos with wrought iron balconies à la New Orleans. At the other end (remember the fairway is a mile long) there’s adorable Scruffy’s Beach Bar and salt water pool. And TWO MILES from the plaza and office, on the opposite side of the marina entry channel, is Shenanigans restaurant and pool club. We pretty much spent every afternoon at that pool- they even provide clean beach towels!

Now, did I mention the bath house? From the outside, it looks like a Greek temple, or maybe a bank. Inside, it’s delightfully air-conditioned, decorated with stylish and comfy seating, and has clean and spacious showers with unlimited hot water. It’s a cruiser’s dream!

Since it’s a long way from the boat to the pool, we inflated our SUP and paddled or way around the marina. The water was so calm, it was delightful, and great exercise.

Of course, we’re still actually on a cruisers’ budget, so we mostly avoided the pricy marina restaurant. (As Chuck on VR says, “the prices in the restaurant don’t look too bad… Until you realize they are in US dollars instead of eastern Caribbean dollars”😲 That means everything cost about the times what we’d expect) But we treated ourselves for our anniversary and had a lovely meal: watermelon feta salad, ceviche, loaded cheeseburger, and lobster wrap. The food, drinks, and service at Shenanigans are all first rate!