Yacht is prepped, we leave for Bequia soon.  Sailing in the morning light is cooler, it’s easier to see the reef to the west of the Cays, and the sun isn’t as strong on the skin.  Speaking of skin, my arms are approaching the colour they held when I lived in this part of the world, and nary a ‘real’ sunburn in sight.

Departed the Cays at 08:15 via the Jamesby/Petit Bateau cut, with myself at the helm and Dad spotting the channel.  Nice reach up to Bequia, roughly 6.5 knots under one reef.  Around 10:30, we saw a large gathering of seabirds in our lee (upwards of 100 birds), about 10 nautical miles south of Bequia.  Must have been good fishing.Arrived Bequia around 13:15 and found the wind out of the south, and all the boats oriented to match; very unusual wind.  Breeze much less than last week, to the state of non-existent.  Breeze might even be too strong a word… light air perhaps?

Cooled out until 16:00, had chili, cheese and bread for lunch, and cooled off in the sea.  Went ashore and headed for the internet cafe to post yet more updates to the blog and acquired more of Maranne’s home-made icecream.  Lazed around for the rest of the evening, dinner consisting of curried beef with vegetable rice.

There’s a large dog on a yacht called ‘Reverie’, doing an excellent job of guarding the boat and all water within 50 metres.  Watched a cruise ship slide past Bequia and over the western horizon – could see the glow for a long time after she slipped below the horizon.

Plan for tomorrow is up early, maybe get croissants from Gingerbread and post a few more entries.

The ‘Allo Allo’ channel came in crystal clear for about 10 seconds this morning, courtesy of the German-crewed charter catamaran on our starboard quarter.  A pleasant way to start the day.

Watched the dinghy from the American-crewed catamaran ahead of us head for the dinghy dock, and then start paddling half-way across.  The ladies hopped off and went for a walk, while the guy paddled the dinghy back to the catamaran.  Suspect dirty plugs or water in the fuel.

Ladies are back on the dock, and no sign of their engine working.  Mum and I took our dinghy upwind to the catamaran to see if they’d like us to collect their crew/passengers.  Received an affirmative, and zipped across to the dock, collected the two ladies and delivered them back to the catamaran.  As we got to the cat, they got their engine working – water in the fuel.

Spent 10 minutes with Dad, looking at the charts and plotting the course we’d need to:

• get out of the anchorage,
• past the sandbanks,
• into open water,
• across to the Clifton harbor entrance (avoiding the Grand de Coi reef),
• tack up between Union and Palm,
• run behind Mayreau avoiding Grand Col
• get above Mayreau
• and enter the Cays through the northern approach.

There is a southern approach to the Cays, but in a foreign yacht, and with the sun in the wrong place, it’s not one we wanted to try.

Came up around Grand de Coi reef without incident, and noticed another yacht going between Palm and the reef – the channel is marked as ‘difficult’, and is quite shallow in places. On the ‘Sailing’ channel, we saw a wonderful example of a 5-mast tall ship, under full sail, heading in from the east (she might be the Royal Clipper, but I couldn’t see her lifeboats).  Last seen all sails down bar the ones between the masts, heading behind Union.

That yacht that crossed high on Grand de Coi?  We chased her up past the lee of Mayreau, and watched the skipper blithely ignore the marker for Grand Col reef, splitting it and Mayreau.  Well, almost ignore.  She couldn’t have been more than 100 feet off of the reef (ie, 3 boat lengths) when someone threw the helm hard down.  Crisis averted, possibly time for new underwear.

Picked up my second wound today; kicked the centre table leaf with my heel attempting to get outboard to drop the mainsail.  Not a good sailing trip unless you get a few wounds and bruises.

Came into the Cays easily, though the channel markers were a bit hard to see (they really need to be painted in fluorescent orange).  Dropped anchor in about 9 feet of water and as is normal in the Cays, the anchor pretty much vanished under the sand.  Bought 3 t-shirts from the same vendor as last year; the shirts say “Sail More, Work Less” and “Sail Faster, Live Slower”.

The blue dive yacht from Bequia is here, compressor running.

The “Nature” channel is well tuned, with a small turtle spending some time around our stern, and a mid-size ray going past somewhere around 14:15.  Reception on the “Allo Allo” channel is up to the normal standards – dons and madonnas, in a variety of shapes.  I’m quite preferential to the madonna on the 42′ to power, nary a tan line.  Quite a bit of activity on the ‘Sailing’ channel too.  Cays have held steady around 23 – 25 yachts, with a steady exchange of yachts.

Some lovely 2-mast/2-jib yachts; a 61 foot catamaran with flying bridge; a 40′ monohull that took 3 tries to pick up a mooring, losing their boathook in the process and then tying up with a piece of rope that I wouldn’t trust to hold her weight; and a powered twin-hull tourist trap that showed passengers on the ‘Ocean Village’ what the Cays look like.

Went snorkelling at 15:30, over in the turtle sanctuary off of Baradal.  Visibility wasn’t too good compared to the vacation in 2008, but the turtles there, grazing away with their attendant wrasse (mostly Slippery Dicks).

As I sit on deck, watching the sun go do, I can see (starting in the East, going clockwise):

• Sail Rock
• Petit Tabac (where Pirates of the Caribbean filmed)
• Petit Martinique (where we re-provisioned)
• Petit St. Vincent (where we anchored)
• Petit Tobago
• Carriacou (couldn’t go there, that’s part of Grenada)
• Palm Island (expensive resort)
• Union (Chatham Bay is hidden by the island)
• Jamesby
• Mayreau (we anchored in Saline Bay)
• Petit Bateau
• Petit Rameau
• Canouan (turning into a resort island, lots of construction)
• Baradal
• and Mustique

Quite impressive view, maybe 50 miles.

Time for the nightly engine run to keep the batteries topped up; they’re showing 11.5 volts at the moment.  Whipped another rope by deck light (a car headlamp bulb).

Small show of lightning in the north; dinner was pork chops in barbeque sauce, rice, carrots, christophene and green beans.

We decreed today to be a day of rest; we’ll go up to the Cays tomorrow.  Nipped across to Petit Martinique (part of Grenada’s territory, so the yacht would have to clear customs to go there) in the dinghy around 08:30 with Dad for more ice (at ~ 1/3 the cost in Bequia), cheese and fresh bread.  Committed to staying in the shade until 15:00, at which point I may go back to Petit Martinique to use the internet cafe.  No TV channels of interest in PSV right now; only company is an expensive looking catamaran, crewed if you please.

Around 15:30, the ‘Nature’ channel tuned in, with some wind gusts and a solitary brown booby.  We were all standing on the fore deck observing the coming squalls when the booby decided to have a short bath in the sea alongside ‘Lady Di’, and then procedded to cruise, with barely a flap of his wings (it was rather windy), on to the pulpit not more than 5 feet away from us.  He (she?) had a bit of an issue gripping the stainless steel, but seemed quite content otherwise; going as far as to fold his wings in, and then extend one to keep his balance.  There was a red tag on his right leg, making us wonder if he ‘belonged’ to PSV’s hotel – no other booby we’ve seen up close has been tagged.

Whipped a few more ropes.  Just the jib sheets left, where they meet the jib.  Leaving those until we’re on a good reach up to the Cays or Bequia.

A few more yachts showed up through the afternoon, with another Bbarefoot charter anchoring a little too close for comfort.  Anchors hold fairly well in PSV (they actually bury), but if the wind drops, the ocean current (which flows in reverse to the wind) can cause a lot of grief.  Put some fenders over just in case of trouble in the night.

Dinner was chicken breast coated in garlic butter, breadcrumbs and grated cheddar.  Put the windscoop up to ensure a cool night.

Around 09:00, Mum and I took the dinghy over to where the birds were fishing, dropped anchor and fit our snorkeling gear.  Dropped into the sea, and not a fish in sight, just sand, rock and weed.  Headed inshore, and suddenly we were surrounded by thousands of fish, all about 2 inches long.  Then came across a moray eel, and backpedaled (well, I did) – I don’t like morays.  Given enough room, they’re as safe as any other wild animal (aka, you really don’t know what they’ll do).  In truth, they look more menacing than they are due to the fact they breath with their mouth open, fangs out.

We proceeded to swim west along the shore, heading for Rapid Point and open sea; the school of fish showed no sign of diminishing, with the count now into the hundreds of thousands (and I may exaggerate, but there were fish everywhere.  A few more morays showed up from their bolt holes, and a booby apparently missed my head by 6 inches.

The scenery below us changed very rapidly.  From weedy rocks to masssive coral-covered boulders (at a guess, 5+ tons); fan coral, brain coral, finger coral, elkhorn coral, basket sponges and more.  Gone was the green murk, replaced by clear water and brilliant hues of red, yellow and blue – and that’s just the coral.

Snorkled around the point, and noticed a rock with about 15 boobies on it, all preening themselves.

Tallied up the denizens of the sea that we saw, and the list is decent:

• Cobblers (black and red) and urchins
• Wrasse – Clown, Bluehead, Yellowhead and Slippery Dick
• Trumpetfish, Sanddiver, Squirrelfish, Blackbar Soldierfish
• Flamefish, Fairy Basslet, Grunts, Yellow Goatfish
• Cherub fish, Stoplight Parrotfish, Hamlets, Sergeant Major

A few more that I couldn’t identify – not parrotfish, but not sure what they were.

Swam back to the dinghy, taking time out to see how close a pelican would let me get (about 8 feet), clambered back aboard and picked up Dad to show him the coral growth and fish.  Avoided the morays.

Back to the yacht, and we decided to head for Petit St. Vincent (PSV).  So, the outboard engine had to be lifted off of the dinghy, and on to the stern of ‘Lady Di’.  I’ve done this kind of thing many, many times in my life, without (many) incidents (though Mum tells the tale of a friend dropping an outboard from 6 feet up on top of me, and that she didn’t know I knew that many swear words).  This time around, however, the handle grip that I was using on the top-rear of the engine decided to part ways with the outboard and ~30 pounds of metal accelerated towards my leg and foot.  Somehow managed to dodge the worst of it, coming away with a bruise on my knee and a scrape/gouge on my leg.  A quick pause to go ‘owww’ and the outboard was clamped on its perch.

We motored across to PSV, observing ‘Isle de Ronde’ in the far south.  No sail this time, as we were dead into the wind.  Gave a wide berth to ‘Mopion’ and ‘Pinese’, and dropped anchor off of PSV in about 10 feet of water; much easier to do when the windlass works.

With nothing to be fixed, Dad and I turned our attention to whipping some rope ends – it’s quite relaxing.

Went to bed early; didn’t feel right, suspect lack of water intake combined with lots of activity and sun.

Dinner was a strange take on carbonara made with bacon, honey cure ham, pasta and Philadelphia cream cheese.

Up around 06:30, with a breakfast of Tea Times, tea and oats.

On the ‘Sailing’ channel, we noticed that the gent sailing the board with anchor trouble had his head in the anchor locker again, so Dad and I loaded the toolbox into the dinghy and rowed across to see if we could lend assistance.  Alas, we could not; the windlass had cheared the bold that is used to mesh the clutch.  Result?  No windlass and 150 feet of chain to haul by hand.  Nick, the charterer, said he’d been in contact with the charter company.

Repaired the dinghy today.  The plastic engine mount on the transom had sheared two bolt heads, so we cleaned off some paint and bonded the plastic to the metal with some epoxy.  1 hour later, perfectly set.

Around 11:30, tired of the construction noise, we headed for Chatham Bay (lee side of Union Island).  A slight hash with the windlass, as I didn’t notice the chain building up as it went into the anchor locker, and jammed the windlass.  Easily sorted.

Motor-sailed over to Union, with just the jib up; ~40 minutes at 7 knots.  Dodged Grand Col reef and furled the jib off of the bay, motored in to anchor.

And so problem number 3 arrived; our windlass stopped working.  Dead.  No time to worry about it, so I started paying out chain the old way – bare-handed, hand over hand, length by length.  Paid out much more than we needed, so much so that a later inspection showed that the anchor hadn’t buried, and we were held in place by sheer weight of chain.

Dad and I (Dad mostly) traced the windlass problem to the bulkhead behind the for’ad head.  Whipped it off (well, not quite, we would have had to remove the entire head to do that, just bent it out of the way) to hear a relay clicking, but no action from the windlass.  Dad narrowed it down to one lump of wire and tape.  Disengaged the batteries, shut off the engine and stripped the tape off of the lump to find that the nuts holding the wires together were far too loose to permit current to pass properly.

Fixed the bolts using wrenches of the wrong size (we had 12 and 14mm, needed a 13mm) and re-wrapped the cabling and nuts in new electrical tape.  Presto, working windlass.  We might have to charge Barefoot for that one.

With the windlass fixed, we tuned in the ‘Nature’ channel; pelicans and brown boobies fishing in the northern part of the bay.  They’re only ~200 ft away, so the splash is quite audible.  A turtle or two show their heads, but not much more.

Mid-afternoon, we went ashore to ‘Sun, Beach and Eat’ for drinks and a light meal.  Three red snapper stuffed with seasoning and cooked on an open grill.  Excellent taste, though the fish were a little lean.  Pleasant environment, good reggae and an excellent view; 150 EC for three (40 for each fish).  Had to run back to the boat for the money, got the dinghy up on a plane, and a big grin on my face.

Motored the dinghy over to the north of the bay on the way back from the beach-bar, and then paddled along the shoreline watching the pelicans and boobies dive for fish.  They have completely different styles, with the booby doing a vertical dive, tucking in the wings, lancing the surface and bobbing up a few seconds later.  The pelican, in contrast, wheels in at an angle, tucks in its wings, and as it hits the water, appears to extend the wings and do a pivot around them so that when it comes back up, it’s facing the way it came.

Windscoops are up, and the A70 appears to have fried the CCD.  Dinner was last nights’ curried chicken served in submarine rolls with melted cheese.

Winds: Probably katabatic.

Went ashore just after 08:00 to get some more EC, fresh bread and sunblock (a dirty suspicion that the stuff we have is too old).  Then across to the Internet cafe/Digicel store to post yesterday’s account, and down to Marianne’s to get some homemade icecream.  Back to the boat at full speed, trying to get the icecream to Dad before it melted in the morning sun.

As we got back, Daffodil’s showed up bringing all the block ice they had (all of 2 blocks).  So, back to shore to get more ice; ended up with 4 bags of cube ice from Frangipani.

With everything stowed, we set sail at 11:30 for Mayreau.  We made a bit of a hash of the departure, getting the sails and course a bit wrong initially, but we soon settled down.  Around the headland and a southward course to Mayreau.

Fired a snooze for about an hour, and then took over the helm for the last few miles; trip speed record of 8.6 knots (we think the hull can do maybe 9.5 maximum).

Around 15:30, we arrived in Saline Bay; Saltwhistle had 13 yachts in, the majority being catamarans, and we have a rule about not going in to Saltwhistle if there are more than 3 – 4 yachts in there already.  Dropped anchor and rode back, with Mum doing the usual ‘dive the anchor’ to make sure that it was bedded in properly.

Unfortunately, our first drop had us too close to another yacht for comfort, so we upped anchor and tried again.  A much better position, stop engines, peace and quiet apart from the construction noise on shore.

Around 17:30, the ‘Sailing’ channel turned on, as the yacht to starboard suddenly wasn’t where she had been for the past 2 hours.  She had been on one of the moorings that the locals will rent to you, and was going west with the buoy in tow, bearing down on the catamaran behind her.  Much to-ing and fro-ing, revving of engines and gesticulations as they avoided the catamaran and went around to anchor.

The mooring?  The last I saw, it was heading for Nicaragua.

The yacht?  Well, they made a go-round and dropped anchor.  Shortly thereafter, there was the sound of a whole heap of chain departing the chain locker at high speed.  The gent on board has had his head in the locker since then.

Dinner was BBQ’d T-bone steak and baked potato.  Also cooked some dry-curried chicken and some breadfruit.

We have a JPEG from Kenmore Henville of the three of us crossing the Bequia channel; going ashore later today to e-mail it to various people.

Wandered around Bequia looking for a small reel of whipping twine, and a windscoop, but no luck.  Ended up with a small bit of waxed twine for free from a sailmaker, and two cheap bits of rectangular awning canvas (2′ x 2.5′, 22 EC).  Dad also bought some heavy cord to attach the cloth to the boat, and hopefully stitch the cloth.

Spent lunch outside the Gingerbread, watching life go by.  Observed what we assumed to be a garbage barge going sideways in the wind, despite the best efforts of the accompanying tug; a brown booby dive-bombing the same shoal of fish over and over (he caught a few); the Bequia to St. Vincent ferries going back and forth, and several boats coming in to the bay, with some tying up to moorings deep inside the bay (and based on a set of gesticulations, being sold a mooring belonging to someone else).

Lunch itself was fresh-caught kingfish at the Gingerbread.  Unfortunately, both Mum and Dad had to send theirs back; the fish was undercooked.  As Dad (rightly) remarked, the Gingerbread have been preparing fish for donkey’s years, there was no reason to serve partially raw fish.

Since I had received the only properly cooked piece of fish, I wandered down to an Internet Cafe to post the account of the first two days of the holiday, delete some e-mail and send the JPEG off to a few people we know.  From there to the supermarket to get 4 gallons of water (we kill a 1.5 L bottle in a few hours), some Shirley biscuits and some more tea.

Back to the boat, and we contemplated the design of our windscoops.  Our initial design called for a bent length of plastic pipe, so we fired up the gas stove, and I set to work bending the pipe into the curve that we wanted.  Once bent, it was time to stitch the canvas to hold the pipe at the top, and two corner pieces to tie the scoop to the hatch.

And thus the first problem; the cord Dad bought to tie the scoop is too large in diameter to sew with.  ‘Back to shore!’ we cry, and Mum and I set off at a rate of knots (even got the dinghy up on a plane) to get to Wallace’s before they shut at 4 PM.  Found some nice waxed twine (great for whipping, not so great for stitching, but it was the right diameter), and then meandered back to the boat.

30 minutes later, with the cloth stitched, problem number two arrived; how to keep the bent pipe in the right orientation when hanging the scoop?  In the end, we reverted to the straight pipe, and a guy ‘wire’ to keep the scoop aligned properly.  With the mechanics solved, the second scoop was built and rigged in the fading light of the day.

Around this time, we watched some excellent seamanship on the ‘Sailing’ channel.  A French-registered metal hull came into the bay under full sail, furled his jib, backed his main and dropped anchor (no sign of engine exhaust at all).  He then dropped the main, and there was a slight zinging noise as the entire main dropped, pretty as you please, into the lazy jacks in about a second.

Dinner was ham and cheese sub rolls, washed down with orange juice.  The TV channel was set to ‘Discovery’ with some fantastic lightning playing in the distance (too far to hear the thunder unfortunately).  I have always thought that the shots shown on TV, where the lightning strikes repeatedly and dances across the sky, was done with editing ‘magic’ and speeding up the playback; not so, just nature at its best.

Ten-thirty rolls around, and Barefoot call on channel 68 – LIAT have found my luggage, and it’s waiting at the airport.  Mum and I go ashore, and rather than catch a taxi (30 EC), we catch a route taxi instead (1 EC/head).  It’s a bit of a tight squeeze, but it gets us there in the same amount of time, and we get some good music on the way.  A quick diversion to the supermarket for some proper ham (to replace the blech bologna), some cinnamon rolls (no longer made) and some fresh milk.  Over to the airport, and after 10 minutes in the wrong line, and 3 minutes in the right room, I have my baggage.  Back over the road, and wait for another route taxi back.

While waiting, we had a chance to watch a slice of island life go by:

• A route taxi with a 50 kg bag of rice, several other large bags and some rather large boxes of frozen meat,
• A dump truck with someone riding in the back – the truck was empty, the guy was standing up,
• A dump truck, fully laden, with someone firing a good sleep on the top of the load, face down.

The ride back was interesting, with a tale of 4 children gone missing in Dominica; all the churches apparently declared the Sunday to be a day of prayer for the children, and on Monday the man who did it turned himself in.  Somewhere in there was a bit about how children these days need to be closer to God, and how the man (or was it the children) had been skinned.  The conversation then moved on to how the woman (telling the tale of the 4 boys) had to pay $1.50 US for 3 green, rock-hard bananas.  Where that came from, I don’t know.

Once back at Barefoot, we had lunch on board – fresh bread, ham and cheese, with copious amounts of water on the side, and a discussion about kettles and V = IR.  A call to Barefoot to say we were ready to go out the cut, and away we went.

The channel over to Bequia wasn’t quite a millpond, but it’s was the flattest we’d ever seen.  Main and jib up, ~4 knots across the water, and barely a need to touch the helm.  A pleasant crossing indeed.  A touch of engine for the approach around the headland and into Admiralty Bay to anchor.  A word about our anchor; unlike the previous charter on ‘Tight Five’, where the anchor couldn’t even hold a single yacht properly, this one could hold a small flotilla of yachts.

A nice swim to check the anchor, and a casual afternoon flipping through our ‘TV’ channels.  So far, it has tuned to the Nature channel (frigate birds, brown boobies, turtles and fish), the Discovery channel (the French boat to port is a dive yacht, complete with compressor and solar panels) and the ‘Allo Allo’ channel (resplendent with the Fallen Madonna with the big boobies).

And now, dinner.  Curried mince and rice and veg.  I have it on good authority that the guave cheesecake is quite good (this time, the last time we threw it overboard).

The Discovery channel is back; fork lightning to the north and south putting on a good show.

Wind is much gentler than last time, a nice cooling breeze (that promptly died later in the night).

Good conversations last night at Alka-Hall, and plenty of shite talk.  Unfortunately, I was too tired to join in the D&D session – I hear it ran to 3 AM.  Now need to check Facebook to find a few people like Jason K and Chris C; it’s always good to keep in touch with people.  Amused that Jason works for Sunbeach, where I once worked.

Had a roti for lunch, contemplating getting some frozen skins and taking them home with me.  Have the curry powder already, and I could use the practice.

Tired fuh so; only got 7 hours sleep after 24 hours+ of travelling.  Should sleep well if I get to St. Vincent today.

So I arrive in St. Vincent with my carry-on luggage, but no checked luggage.  LIAT, short for Luggage In Another Terminal.  Ah well, not a great disaster, as I have some spare clothes in my carry-on.  A quick word with the LIAT desk to fill in the paperwork declaring my luggage lost, whereupon the guy behind the desk forgot to insert the carbon paper between the sheets; photocopy time.

Took a taxi over to Blue Lagoon and joined Mum and Dad on ‘Lady Di’.  Whiled away the (late) afternoon, and had sandwiches for dinner.

Talk about a hot night though.  Compared to our previous charter, the infamous ‘Tight Five’, the cabins on ‘Lady Di’ are not well ventilated, and when the wind drops in, you can tell she’s a boat built for the northern latitudes, not the Caribbean.  An uncomfortable night overall, with Dad waking me at one point to tell me that I’m snoring loud enough to wake the dead.

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.” :)