And now, the penultimate part of my tale – crackers, another dragging anchor and 20 foot seas.

Sailing North

We managed to raise the charter company on Friday morning (using the cellular phone), and they confirmed that we could indeed use the ‘emerg parallel’ switch at any point.  At that point, we cemented our decision to head back to Bequia, since the engines would at least start (though not properly) and run.  Mid-morning, after changing out the anchor (and this is when we found that the emergency anchor was the same size and weight as the primary anchor), we cast off from the mooring, and under the power of two props, did a 180 pretty much in place, and headed out between Petit Bateau and Petit Rameau, and up the channel in the lee of Petit Bateau.  We followed a reverse track out of the Cays, below the 1-Fathom Bank and then turned to head north towards Bequia.  Not more than an hour into the journey, we passed what had to be one of the biggest turtles I’ve ever seen – it was big enough that when I spotted it ahead of us, I called out to Mum to “g’down fast”, thinking it was something other than a turtle.

One of the items of food packed on the boat.

I’ve not been seasick very often in my life, twice to be precise.  The first was sailing with Grandpa in his 22 foot yacht; we were somewhere off Plymouth (I think, this was years ago), and I was trying to nap in the bow cabin in (to me at least) heavy seas.  The second was when we were coming out of the Bequia Channel in Desirade (a 40 foot monohull), having had conch pizza earlier in the day, and the sea was kicking up.  I was almost seasick a third time on this leg back up to Bequia, as I made the mistake of sitting on the lee side of the cat, watching the ocean behind us.  Since my brain had no visual cues as to what was coming, the slight corkscrew motion started to play hell on my inner ear.  Luckily, I indicated this, and took up the steering while munching on dry crackers; with the horizon and waves visible, my inner ear calmed down nicely.

West Cay in the afternoon light

The remaining hours passed smoothly, with constant course corrections the point us higher up Bequia – like the Channel, the sea between Bequia and the Cays travels east to west at a few knots, and not accounting for this will put you several miles west of Bequia by the time you reach the southernmost tip.  Mum and I tried for some shots of the coastline, and the Moon Hole houses – balancing tropical afternoon light against a dark blue ocean is not the easiest thing to do unfortunately (though it does make for some interesting shots).

Bequia

The bay could be summed up in two words – “pack out!”  We went looking for an anchor spot on the south-eastern side of the bay (where we had been at the beginning of the week), but couldn’t find a shallow enough spot that we were comfortable in – the first drop showed us tailing back far too close to other yachts.  On a whim, we headed across the mouth of the bay to the Hamilton side, hoping to find a good spot; alas this was not to be, and again I had a chance to demonstrate that I could make Tight Five spin inside her own length, avoiding various mooring buoys, other yachts and a passing dinghy.  Two independent props are about the only redeeming factor on that cat, though the large cabins come a close second.  So, thwarted by a lack of good anchorage on the Hamilton side, we motored back over to the Princess Margaret side, and hunted for somewhere to drop anchor.

The Bequia Express ferry

In the end, we anchored in about 15 feet of water, right up in the stern of another pair of yachts, and then tailed back on probably a good 150 feet of scope.  One bowline on a bight later, and we had the bridle in place, calming down the swing that the cat was prone to.  We proceeded to clean up a bit, and then sat back and watched life go by (we did a lot of this, it’s quite relaxing).  The monohull to port had two small dogs on board, complete with harnesses, as well as one of the niftier approaches to a dinghy that I’ve ever seen – the dinghy sat on a platform that winched down to float the dinghy off, and then winched back up out of the way.

Night fell, and we took readings on where we were with the directional compass, and sat down to dinner.  Post dinner, we started discussing how one would keep a pair of dogs on an ocean-going yacht, especially the aspect of how to ensure the dogs didn’t use the boat as a toilet.  Between bouts of laughter, we came up with attaching the dogs to skis, and using the harness to tow them, just hanging the dog over the side from the harness, lowering the dinghy platform, and just chucking the dog in the water and hauling it back out later.  I haven’t laughed so hard in ages – a good belly laugh.

Later that evening, I woke from a good sleep upon hearing a loud thump.  Thumps are not a good noise on a boat, as they tend to indicate that something has collided with you, or that you collided with something else.  Out on deck, and sure enough, we were a good 100 feet further out to sea than where we had been when we went to bed.  Where we had been, there was now another yacht – a monohull.  Thus began another night of anchor watch – music in my ears, avoiding the temptation to sit down, slowly walking around the deck, taking directional readings to make sure we weren’t tripping any more.  Dad came up around midnight, and off to bed I went.

A local boy chats up a visitor

Morning came around, and we decided that for our safety, and the safety of the cat, we would head up to St. Vincent that afternoon and spend the last night in Blue Lagoon.  Mum and I went ashore to explore a bit while Dad stayed on board in case of problems.  It’d been years since we’d been on Bequia, and we wanted to stop in at the Gingerbread to pick up some fresh pastries.  First though, a morning walk around the bay, looking around at what businesses had closed, which ones had opened, which ones had moved, and just observing life in general.  Then we stopped at the Gingerbread, had a hot drink and watched the dive boats prepare for a morning dive.

Two local youngsters were moving a cart loaded with dive tanks, and you could hear the smaller one (who was at the front) ‘busing the larger one to control the cart properly and not go so fast.  Quite hilarious.  We also noticed that the practice of local boys hovering around the dinghy docks, asking if you wanted your dinghy watched for a few dollars hadn’t died out – though the one who was trying at the dock in front of us wasn’t having much luck.

Once we’d munched on our pastries, and had our drinks, we caught a water taxi back out to the boat, and prepared to run up the north-west coast of Bequia and then across the channel.  We went out under engine, passing one of the inbound ferries, and turned into the wind and seas.  While a little rough, it certainly wasn’t bad, though there appeared to be two seas running.  As we got further out into the channel, the swells started to make their presence known, with a cross wind generating smaller chop that went cross-ways on the swells.

Mum and Dad decided to pull the fuel can out of the dinghy, and secure it to the deck instead.  As they were finishing this work, we found the middle of the channel, and the wave pattern changed – I was staring up the face of 20 foot waves, waves that were breaking every now and then, and without a harness (though, there were no hardpoints in cockpit area, so a harness wouldn’t have helped much).  Mum gave the order of ‘no one outside of the cockpit’, and we held on tight.

Morning light in Admiralty Bay

For a large part of those 30 minutes, I was constantly adjusting the engines, playing their revs with one hand, holding the wheel steady with my foot, and grasping the nearest solid object with my other hand.  At several points I had the starboard engine in neutral, and the port engine pushed all the way to the limits, just to keep us on the right line to cross the waves.  Quite exhilarating.

It didn’t take long to clear the roughest part of the channel, and soon we were holding station outside of Blue Lagoon, watching other yachts head out into the channel – some of them looked to be novices at sailing, so we wished them luck, because going down-swell would make for an unpleasant trip.  The dock crew came over shortly afterwards, and took us through the cut into the bay, and moored us.  And thus we passed the last sailing day of our vacation, tied to a mooring in Blue Lagoon, packing and cleaning the catamaran.  We handed the boat back over on Sunday morning, and filled in the charter company’s feedback form (and boy did we have some feedback – the three of us had a combined 140+ years of sailing experience, and some things just weren’t right).

Dad called the airline company, and got us slots on an earlier plane, so off to the airport we went with Phyllis.  One change-of-ticket fee later, and we were booked on the earlier plane.  Upstairs to the restaurant to kill time – some rotis, a side of chips and something to drink.  Very good roti, almost worth going to an airport for!  A bit more milling around, through passport control, a bit of waiting around in the lounge (which was no bigger than the inbound area), and then we were off on the Dash-8, 30 minutes to Barbados.

Oh, that pack of biscuits at the top?  “Caution, may cause laxative effects.” :)