|
Home Port Our Logs The Crew Calendar Favorite Links The Boat Photo Album Route and Charts Miscellaneous Stuff |
Larry's LogMonday morning, after almost 3 months, we finally bid Martinique au revoir. We left Ste. Anne around 9:30 and got to Rodney Bay at about 1:30, motorsailing all the way since we needed to charge the batteries. The anchored close in by the beach where the older hotels are and just relaxed a bit. It was surprisingly empty of boats, only about 6-8 on that side of the bay and maybe another handful near the Hyatt. I guess it was too early in the season for it to be too crowded. Joe and Ruth came in around 3 and they took Diane in to do MORE shopping (need that cream cheese) ! I had already launched the dinghy, but since we planned to just go to the Pitons tomorrow, we could just tow it there. That evening, we just relaxed. We planned to go to the Pitons, pick up a mooring for the night and then continue on to Bequia the next morning. Well, after a very nice sail down the coast, we got tot the Pitons only to see the last moorings taken about 10 minutes before we got there. We could have anchored and had a boat boy take a line to shore but that would mean relying on him to release us in the morning and we still wanted to leave early. Bequia was still 50 miles away. After discussing it, and since Diane didn't feel comfortable mooring in front of the town of Soufriere, we decided to just continue to Bequia that day. It was about 2pm when we started and we knew it would take a while to get there but at least it started off well, with light seas and about 15 knots. Of course, it didn't last. Although it was a beam reach, we got large quartering seas and about 15 to 20 knots that caused some rolling. I hand steered across the St. Vincent channel until we got into the lee when Diane took over. I didn't think the autopilot could have handled it very well. Through the lee of St. Vincent, we had an easy trip and then from abeam of Kingstown down to Admiralty Bay, we again had about 15-20 knots although the seas weren't as bad. We got to Bequia around 10:30 that night and had the anchor down at 11 in the Lower Bay since we couldn't see too well. We had our large spotlight out but we couldn't be sure we saw all the boats. It's surprising how many boats don't use any sort of anchor light. I also had a light that goes around your head so I could see while handling the anchor and that worked well. It was a bit rolly but I slept well. Wednesday morning we moved the boat closer to Princess Margaret Beach and relaxed. Diane made a comment that she half expected to see Great White Wonder here since we had seen them here before the last time we came in from the north. I guess stranger things have happened but not 5 minutes after she said that I was sitting in the cockpit and looking seaward, I saw Great White Wonder at anchor. We went over around 3:30 when we saw their dinghy. We weren't going to stay but they invited us aboard and we wound up being there for 2 hours. It was really nice to see them again. They were still trying to sell the boat and not having much luck so we spoke about yacht brokers for a bit. They were supposed to meet their current broker in Trinidad at the end of the month (going down to see other boats) and were trying to decide whether to see them or not. The boat had been for sale for a year with no real prospects. Great White Wonder was an ex-IOR racer but Ken had converted it very nicely and the boat was in good shape. It was a tough decision. Thursday morning we went into town and brought our awning and bimini in to get repaired. Avell, at Grenadine Sails, had made the awning for us when we were here last and said he could have the bimini ready by about 4. We said thanks since it got very hot in the cockpit without the bimini up. We then went to check in, do a little shopping, ate at Mac's Pizza and then on the way back to the dinghy, we stopped at the canvas shop to drop off some fittings I bought to replace the Sunbrella "udders" I had asked Avell to make when we had the awning built. They just didn't work too well and I thought they might pull out from the rest of the awning. So I asked him to replace them with the plastic hose fittings he had originally recommended. Oh well, it was worth trying. When we got to his shop though at around 1:30, the bimini was already done. He had restitched much of it and put some webbing on the front where the awning had chafed the fabric. Great, we wouldn't have to come back in later. We asked how much it was but he said he would figure it out after he finished the awning. So we took the bimini, went back to the boat and relaxed the rest of the day. Avell was really a pleasure to work with. Ken and Vesta came over a little later and we just visited for a few hours, catching up some more from the day before. We always enjoyed their company. We were trying to decide whether to stay for the Bequia Easter Regatta the next morning. It was supposed to be nice but we still wanted to stop in the Tobago Cays for a while. We just went back and forth about it but finally decided we'd stay for at least some of it. We also wanted to see if we could go the the writer's brunch sponsored by the Caribbean Compass. Diane has a long letter published and was writing a book review so we would see. That morning we dropped off the empty propane tank at GYE, picked up the awning that Avell had fixed and went back to the boat. I went to the beach to take some pictures and saw Ken and Vesta there, just taking a swim. Diane stayed on the boat doing some cooking. Later that day, we went into town to see a presentation by a guy that had lived among the Amazon Indian tribes and was doing a talk about that and some related topics. He also brought some artifacts from the region. He had some interesting things to say but tended to ramble a but and we left just before he started his video. Saturday morning we went in to look for some Regatta t-shirts but nobody was selling them in town that morning. We then picked up the filled propane tank and went back to the boat. Not too much in one day. There was supposed to be a local boat warm up race Sunday morning that I wanted to see. We found the spot but there wasn't too much activity. Only one boat was getting ready. (Tough to have a race with just one boat.) We sat and waited and I took some pictures. It was actually pretty interesting to watch the rigging and such. They were much different from the Yoles we saw on Martinique but since they were also launched from the beach, they still didn't have a large keel. They had a trapeze arrangement rather than poles for the crew to counterbalance the force of the wind and used weights just placed in the bottom as ballast. After they left the beach to just practice we left also. Interestingly though, there was a boat there on the beach, I great shape, that said it was built in 1924! It obviously had new spars but the hull was evidently 78 years old. The guy taking out his boat said it wasn't being raced that day because the owner was sick. Back at Destiny, we just relaxed a bit until we went over to Catspaws, owned by Jeff and Phyllis. We had met them briefly in Martinique and then saw them again anchored next to us here. They had a cat on board and Diane "was going through cat withdrawal" so they invited us over to pet theirs. Our cat is home with Diane's parents, and we do miss him. Monday we decided to go for a walk to Spring, a small village on the eastern shore of Bequia. It turned out to be a long walk but a very nice one with some very nice views of the ocean and the shore. We also walked to the Hawksbill Turtle sanctuary where some locals are trying to build up the population of these endangered animals. They are raised in tanks and then released to hopefully breed in the wild again. On the way back, we stopped at the house of a local lady who we had met the day before on the beach while waiting for the local boats to race. She was the mother of the man who took out his boat to practice and Diane had talked with her for about 30-40 minutes that day. She had seen us walking and called down for us to stop on our way back. She was very nice and we stayed for about an hour just talking about Bequia and her life there. She had been born in Bequia and lived there all her life. She was so kind that she gave us 8 small grapefruit she had raised in her yard and also some slices of fried pumpkin, just made, that were really delicious. She and her husband were taking care of a little boy, eight years old of no relation that they had felt sorry for. He was the child of a couple on St. Vincent who were both drug addicts and he had been left to pretty much fend for himself. They were both in around 80 but had actually gotten formal papers signed to say that they were his legal guardians. After walking back to the dinghy and getting back to the boat, we were both too tired to do anything else. The next day Diane went into town while I stayed on the boat and did some odd chores and ran the engine to charge the batteries. It was also very overcast that day. This was the first time we had been to Bequia when the wind didn't blow. We had also moved the boat from near the beach to a little further out into the bay since we noticed that there was a little more breeze. There was more wind and there were also less flies, which had started to become very annoying. Someone told us that the flies were becoming a real problem because of the garbage dump on the island. We had walked past it on our way to Spring and saw that it needed to be attended to. A man we met walking on the road to Spring had also mentioned it but said that they were trying to rectify the situation. Hopefully they can get rid of that eyesore and fix the fly problem. |