Tag Archives: bequia

Texas invades Bequia

We had a gorgeous sail (motor/sail) to Bequia! We were entertained with some dolphins playing at our bow for a good 10 minutes–they were so beautiful and majestic! They showed off their underwater dancing techniques and then would surprise us with a twirl or out of water twist. It is always a site to see! Our arrival into Bequia was uneventful, yeah! We pulled in between many other boats and tried out our new wireless remote for the anchor that Matt had installed earlier in the day. Worked like a charm. With little less than 4 meters of water, we did not have to let out much rode, did the typical 7:1, hooked the bridle and relaxation begins (as if 8+ hours on the way over here wasn’t relaxing enough). As Matt cleared customs, Wayne and I made more jello (as we had managed to extinguish our first batch of 50) and then I baked some fresh chocolate chip cookies (who doesn’t love that smell!). We lounged, read, and chatted until I was able to coax the boys into taking showers. We were scheduled to meet our friends at a place that they called “Frommagi” (yes, that is cheese in french) which we had never heard of and could not find in the guide book. But it was an adventure we were willing to take. We loaded into the dingy and headed to the main boat dock, tied up, locked the dingy (as you know it is an island past time to steal dingies–like it is to tip cows in Texas). We walked around and chatted with a rasta man who told us we were at the wrong boat dock and needed to cross the bay. So we loaded back up, headed to the other side, stopped to ask a friendly boat of men (who had no idea what we were talking about), found a new boat dock, unloaded, locked up, and ended up at a lobster place we had eaten at with Shawn and Sharon during a previous trip. I went in to ask the owner if he had heard of our restaraunt, showed him the email and he simply stated there is nothing on Bequia like that. We chatted for awhile and finally came to the conclusion that it might be a place back across the bay, called Framangipani. So we headed over there, looked around, and did not see our friends so we bellied up to the bar. After enjoying our beverage, I looked back at the large group of 6 and thought, that sort of looks like the back of my friend Heather, but without my glasses I could not be sure. We decided it was a lost cause and we were not going to meet up with them so we went to sit down to eat–and what to our marvelous surprise did we see–our friends! We enjoyed a marvelous Mahi Mahi blackened island style and topped with island fruit and a pasta dish. Very good in deed! Trying to “load” the boys into the dingy and get back to the boat was challenging, interesting, and very funny. We were so loud that Heather and Michael came over to see if they could assist, luckily we had it under control, all body parts in the dingy and were on our way. Always an adventure.

Liquor count – day 3: Down 1 bottle of rum, 1 bottle of vodka, 1/2 bottle of Malibu, 3 cases of beer.

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Great sail down island

From the Pitons in St Lucia to Bequia just south of St Vincent in about 7 hours, we sailed most all the way. Pretty much a nice beam reach between the islands and about 1/2 way down the lee (or backside) of St Vincent before we had to start up the engines to keep us moving. The wind had died down and was right on the nose of the boat, till we cleared the bottom of St Vincent. At the bottom of St Vincent, the weather had decided to turn wet, so took the opportunity to give the boat a quick bath and wash away some of our drink spillage and dirty feet marks that seem to gather dust no matter how many times you wash them.

Since we did run the engines for a bit today, we also took the opportunity to fill our water tanks with some freshly made water, topped off the starboard tank completely and 3/4 on the port tank – so another night with showers.

Rolled in to Admiralty bay with intentions of just clearing customs and getting out of here, as with all plans this was the 14th one of the day, it changed to going ashore to check out the markets/and little boutique shops. I cleared customs, by leeching some internet on the way into the bay, and submitted the form online, to eseaclear.com expecting that it would speed up the process. Not so much, but at least I didn’t have to fill the forms out in triplicate. While I was ashore, Jamie gave Christine a quick lesson in Yoga on the moving bouncing boat, and Wayne kept a diligent eye on them, er the boat since we didn’t set the anchor with the normal scope as we weren’t planning on staying. So before heading ashore, we had to let out more chain and test to make sure the hook was set, and then we all went ashore. Not 2 minutes after we stepped ashore another torrential downpour came down and we were soaked. A quick snack after not having much success in provisioning market, we were a little late, and even missed out on the 1/2 priced appetizers by 2 minutes at Tommy’s – we had nachos anyway.

Back to the boat for some chicken and pasta with veggies and capers for a light dinner. Started raining again and everything outside was wet so had dinner inside tonight. I was having some trouble getting the internet connection to stabilize and was getting some weird failure emails in my inbox, seems the temporary drive on this hosted server ran out of disk space. Logged in remotely from boat, and free up the ‘error’ log that was eating the drive space. Seems something always happens when I’m no where near reliable internet. All is good now and we can again post entrys from the ipad.

Its a very nice and cool night, no rolling in the bay, just a little swinging on anchor, boarder line cold if you are directly in the wind.