June-St. Vincent & Grenadines

St. Vincent & the Grenadines: June 12-21, 2007

Click on the above thumbnail for a map during this time period

Bequia

We arrive in Admiralty Bay, in Bequia, (pronounced "Beck-way"), the Grenadines, at about 2:30 PM, having cruised right by the west side of St. Vincent. (All of the passages are short in this part of the Caribbean.) There are many things to see and do at St. Vincent, not the least of which is a visit to the Soufriere volcano, but we are running out of time to be in Grenada, where we intend to hunker down until such time as a named storm chases us below the latitude of 10 degrees 50 minutes.

As we pass along the west side of St. Vincent, I scribble the following notes: "11:40 AM, 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the pilothouse. After a squall, we are under sunny skies w/ puffy clouds. Life is good. The wife is sunbathing on the foredeck. I have two fishing lines trailing behind, hoping for a mahi hit. We are in the lee of the island, so the winds are under 10 knots and the seas are almost flat. ... 12:37 PM, Moving past the south end of St. Vincent into the Bequia Channel. Making headway only 5.5 knots against the current and 25 knot winds. Wind waves only 2-3 feet but w/ white caps. Earlier, in calm, I had a big fish on one of the lines, but too aggressively set the brake and the line broke. Should have waited longer to light the charcoal. :-) ... Later, in the middle of the channel the waves are so high and close together that even w/ stabilizers we are being tossed about. I resort to tacking to avoid the broadsides, and comfort is restored."

We spend five days in Bequia, doing lots of running (Chuck) and walking (Barb and both) and poking about. We have Mexican one night and pizza for lunch on another and a fancy dinner at Devil's End, where the entertainment at 9 PM was supposed to be reggae but instead consisted of several fellows singing to Karaoke records of Jimmy Buffet, etc.. Excellent voices, but definitely not reggae. Yet another night at a buffet at Frangipani with steel band entertainment. Four fellows providing vigorous and rhythmic percussion -- some of them bounced about as much as the beat -- on variously-voiced steel drum heads, and one lone female stiffly and unmovingly providing melody. Strange, peculiar, and just another thing to smile about while enjoying a before-dinner rum punch with friends Steve and Linda of Seaman's Elixir.

One of our walks, and subsequently the remaining of Chuck's runs, takes us out to the Old Hegg Turtle Sanctuary. There, without the benefits of electricity, Brother King has been attempting to save the endangered Hawksbill and Green turtles by gathering them up as they hatch on the various islands in the vicinity, raising them until they are about five year's old, and then releasing them from the beach on which they were found. They were granted the rights to use the federal land by previous administrations, and have been struggling in a labor of love for years, changing the water in their many tanks daily by using gasoline pumps, since they have no circulation system. Now, they are in crisis mode, since the current Prime Minister is selling the vast federally-held lands off as fast as he can, and has in fact sold the land hosting the sanctuary. So far, pleas to the government and public demonstrations have proven ineffective. When we return, the area may well be a private ritzy resort.

We keep hearing about various incidents of minor crime, but have not experienced any ourselves, until one day after an early morning walk -- while Chuck is off running to the Turtle sanctuary -- Barb returns to the dinghy dock to discover that a young man is in our dinghy and has been stirring through the storage compartment at the front of the dinghy. By the time she gets to the dinghy, he has jumped back onto the dock. She confronts him, and he denies having been in the dinghy, despite the fact that she saw him there and there is no one else on the dock. He disappears just as Chuck appears, and in the process of unlocking the dinghy from the dock, Barb discovers that he had stashed our portable VHF in a ledge under the dock. Barb marches to the Police station to report the incident, but they seem rather uninterested -- writing the bare minimum of details on a piece of scratch paper instead of an official form, and not requesting a description of the perpetrator. Chuck has long been uneasy about the lack of a mechanism to be able to lock the storage compartment. Necessity is the mother of invention, yes? Suddenly it becomes perfectly obvious to him that he can attach an additional hasp to the lid of the compartment -- a hasp through which a padlock can be affixed and thereby secure the contents of the compartment. A trip to the nearest chandlery to secure a stainless steel hasp, four holes drilled into the fiberglass, and viola, the compartment can now be secured! Note to cruisers heading through the Caribbean: no need to wait until an incident to provide a manner of securing the compartment in your dinghy, if said dinghy has said compartment. The slogan the cruisers use is: "Lock it or lose it".

Bequia has free wi-fi, we were told by another cruiser, but they had crowded up much closer to the inner harbor than we could find room or comfort, and so we are reduced to paying for our less-than-satisfactory connection. And so on 6/15 we move over to the north side of the harbor in order to be closer to the commercial antenna. As a bonus, we find the anchorage less roiled by the winds sweeping down through the saddle above the village. However, one afternoon a sailboat flying a Norwegian flag comes sailing in and anchors directly in front of us. They drop their anchor in grass -- not a good idea -- and put out a sizable amount of chain but do not back off to see if it holds. Nor do they dive the anchor, or in any other way attempt to ascertain whether it is well-set. Instead, they all pile into their dinghy and disappear. Also not a good idea. Very shortly thereafter it becomes apparent that their boat is dragging directly into ours. What to do? First, we let out 75 more feet of anchor chain, in order to buy ourselves more time. Then, we jump into our dinghy and go out to their anchor, which Chuck checks with snorkel and discovers that it is lying on its side and is fouled with coral debris. Down he goes, clearing the debris and attempting to right the anchor. The sand cover seems thin at this location, and the anchor now sits upright but does not dig in very far at all. Meanwhile, new acquaintances on Temptation have noticed our problem, and arrive by dinghy to offer help. They have a large aluminum Fortress anchor, and we decide to set that anchor and attach it to the bow of the Norwegian vessel. Just as Temptation returns from their nearby vessel with the anchor, we see a dinghy, with a single occupant, approaching rapidly from the nearest dock. Full of apologies, anxious to learn where is safe holding, speaking flawless English, as do most Norwegians, he jumps aboard the Norwegian vessel and pulls up his anchor. We offer minimal advice and do NOT discuss our admiration for all things Norwegian, our opinion of his anchoring practices, or our opinions concerning how to set an anchor in the Caribbean. We are not too sorry to say that we do not know where he eventually re-anchored; indeed, we are glad that it is not anywhere near us.

We leave Admiralty Bay on the 17th of June, and shortly after leaving, we pass the Moonhole community. Founded by the late American architect Tom Johnson, the dwellings are highly unusual. They are made of stone, and appear to just grow out of the rocks of the cliffs on which they perch. They have no electricity. The original dwelling was built under a large arch -- hence the name "Moonhole". That dwelling is now abandoned, and has been ever since a large boulder fell from the arch and burst through the roof and landed on an unoccupied bed. Several days before our departure, we had tried to organize a tour on the one day of the week that such is possible, but we were unable to recruit a sufficient count. Yet another item for the "To Do Upon Returning" list.

St. Vincent & the Grenadines: June 12-21, 2007

Bequia

Tobago Cays