Saturday 24th March

Admiralty Bay, Port Elizabeth
Bequia

13 00.635 N
61 14.405 W

Gerry and I had a slow start to the day, he went out to the dink and discovered a black mark on it, on further examination he discovered a squid had lept into the dink, squirted ink on it and then died - it was Gerry's second catch of the trip! We were relaxing in the salon when we were hailed from a dink outside, Mike, Terri, Dale and Lorie had tried to call us on the radio but we had our Generator running to charge the house batteries and had turned our radio off as you can’t hear it above the noise of the generator. They were going into town to catch the dollar bus and tour the island on it and wanted to know if we wanted to go along. We had plans to go into town and see if we could buy a clutch for our jib furling line, some fresh fruit and vegetables and we wanted to check out the scrimshaw shop so we declined, but arranged to meet up later for lunch. We weren’t far behind them in dinking into the town and after a brief verbal exchange with some young boys at the dock who wanted to “look after our dinghy” we walked to every marine supply store in the place. It wasn’t to be our day – we found no clutches in any of them. We then headed to the grocery store for some eggs and then as we made our way to the Rasta market for the vegetables we saw Mike and Terri buying bread. They had enjoyed the round island trip and were lucky enough (?) to see a recently caught whale – it is legal to catch 4 whales a year here, they were full of the tales about how the meat is harvested and cooked and how the fishermen were very knowledgeable about the whaling industry. Lorie was also close by and we walked to the Rasta market with her where we found Dale bartering; Mike and Terri went in the opposite direction as they wanted to find out about a jazz pianist who was playing at a local restaurant in the evening. We bought our fruit and vegetables and then decided that it was beer o’clock so we found a bistro and had lunch. After lunch it was time to return to our boats, we dropped Dale and Lorie off and made our way over to our boat to find that the boat boy who wanted to buy our old dink was waiting for us so that he could complete the transaction. The exchange of cash and dinghy went without a hitch and soon the boat boy was heading off with his newly acquired dinghy – he got a bargain but we were happy to off load the extra weight. Terri and Mike stopped by on the way to their boat to let us know that the pianist was indeed playing that night and that they had booked us all in for dinner at 19.00hrs – if that was OK with us (when is eating out ever a problem?) We arranged to meet up just before 19.00hrs so they could direct us to the dock for the restaurant. We turned the TV on to see if we could get any channels and low and behold we got the cricket broadcast live from St. Kitts. Australia playing South Africa no less! Gerry and I sat glued to the TV for the entire match, proud of the job that our fellow Aussies did in winning the game. We had just enough time to shower and change before it was time to meet up with the rest of the gang and make our way to the Gingerbread Restaurant. We were amongst the first to arrive but the place gradually filled. The pianist – Uncle Louis (a Scotsman) was in full swing when we arrived and was being accompanied by a dinner guest playing the violin, it was a pleasant start to our evening. We ate and drank our way through the entrée and the main course by this time the man playing the violin had left for the evening. Mike, a musician by trade had bought his saxophone along with him and made his way to the stage to perform as a guest artist alongside the pianist, he had played with the pianist in the past at another venue so knew he would be welcome. Mike even got to play the piano for a couple of pieces which he enjoyed as he misses not having a piano on his boat. One of the waitresses then had a turn and sang for us. We were royally entertained and all had a good time. Our evening ended with us all dinking back out to the boats after making arrangements for leaving in the morning.

Photo of Mike (saxaphone) & Uncle Louis (piano) from camera of Gypsy Palace.

Friday 23rd March

Admiralty Bay, Port Elizabeth
Bequia

13 00.635 N
61 14.405 W

Gerry was up and about early whilst I played possum and enjoyed a lay in. Just before 07.30hrs a boat boy came around selling bread, we didn’t need any but it was my indication that the time to get up had arrived. Moments after I had dressed we were called out onto deck by Kenmore, sure enough he had found us and presented us with a package containing the proofs, one framed shot and his price list for purchasing the photos, he said he would be back at 08.30 hrs to collect either the money or the package back if we didn’t want any of the photos. We were very pleased with the photos as they show us moving along at speed under sail, we quickly agreed that we should buy the package which included a CD of the proofs, and got our money ready to give to Kenmore when he returned. Our next callers appeared just on 08.00hrs, Dale and Mike were on their way into customs and wanted to know if Gerry was going with them; he hastily threw on a tee shirt, gathered our documents and his wallet and took off with them to try and clear us in.
I made water whilst he was gone and then paid Kenmore for the photos when he returned. Gerry returned with the news that we were going in a taxi to the Turtle sanctuary at 10.00 hrs; he also informed me that we had to return to the immigration office as the officers were busy dealing with a cruise ship that had come into the bay during the early hours of the morning. We took our documents back with us and joined Dale, Lorie, Mike and Terri at the dinghy dock and then proceeded to climb in the back of a truck with a canopy roof and bench seats along each side – this was our Taxi! Our ride to the Turtle sanctuary was fairly short and we were soon viewing the turtles in pools and peppering the guide with questions about them. I learnt quite a bit about them during the tour. Most of the turtles in the sanctuary are Hawksbill turtles which are native to the area but there were a few greenback turtles there which apparently are native to the waters around Mexico – I’m not quite sure how they came to be there. There were also some land turtles which were natives of Brazil wandering around in a pen. The ages of the turtles varied from 1 week old to 12 years old (this one was a pet) and the age groups were kept separate from each other. They seem to be quite aggressive towards each other and many of them had gentian violet painted on various pats of their bodies, this was to help heal the spots where they had been bitten by their peers. Our guide said that the average clutch of eggs for a turtle is 250 and that of these only half survive to adulthood. They don’t mate until they are 25years old and the only time that the females come ashore is to lay their eggs, the males never come ashore. The sanctuary returns the turtles to the water when they are old enough to fend for themselves and for the life of us neither Gerry nor I could recall what age that is but Lorie said it was 1 year old and Dale said it was 5 years old (obviously none of us paid enough attention!). I felt a little sorry for the 12 year old turtle that was a pet as the pool it was in didn’t seem big enough for it. We ended the tour, climbed back in the taxi and returned to the dock stopping on the way at a pottery. I didn’t find anything that I couldn’t live without at the pottery so it was a cheap trip. Back at the dock we slip up and Dale returned to his boat as he didn’t have his documentation with him whilst Lorie went to the bank, Gerry and Mike went to clear in at immigration and Terri and I went across to peruse the street market and collect maps from the information bureau. We all met back up a short while later and then went to see 2 shops that make wooden model boats, they were wonderful replicas of the real thing, I’m sure if we had somewhere to put it Gerry would have liked to purchase one of them. The second shop had a TV with the cricket playing, we thought we had lost Gerry for the day until Dale had the bright idea of saying loudly that the bar probably had the cricket on a wide screen TV – shop with no beer and cricket or bar with beer and cricket what a hard choice! We found a restaurant with a bar and cricket and ordered lunch whilst watching the Windies Vs Ireland match Lunch was very good and we all decided that it was time to return to our boats and do our own thing for the afternoon. We had invited everyone tour boat for cocktails at 17.30hrs so Gerry and I had to clear the cockpit which was looking rather dirty following our sail down to here and I had to prepare something to eat with our drinks. I made vegetable samosas from scratch, which turned out really well. Gerry had a problem getting the ice machine to work so we radioed Dale to bring ice with them, of course as soon as we had called them the machine worked perfectly! We spent a very pleasant evening sitting in our cockpit filling up on the various items of food that we had all contributed and drinking whatever took our fancy. When everyone left Gerry did the dishes whilst I typed up blog notes and downloaded the pictures from the camera.

Taxi photo from camera of Gypsy Palace

Thursday 22nd March

Admiralty Bay, Port Elizabeth
Bequia

13 00.635 N
61 14.405 W

After our night out we were a little reluctant to get up in the morning but we managed somehow and had the boat all ready to leave by 06.50hrs. We notice that Gypsy Palace had their main sail up before leaving their mooring ball so Gerry began untying us from our mooring ball. We began motoring out of the bay, followed by Gypsy Palace and MT Nest, once clear of the bay we turned into wind and hoisted our main sail –reefed of course! That must have been the signal for the rain to start as it poured until we were clear of the peaks. We unfurled part of our jib and motor sailed for the first few miles as the wind was very light. It gradually picked up and we turned off the motor and began sailing. Our course for the day was to take us to the end of St. Lucia, across the St Vincent channel, down the coast of St. Vincent, across the Bequia channel and down part of the coast of Bequia to Admiralty bay where we were going to anchor for the next few days until the forecast high seas died back down. The trip was quite a mixed bag as far as sailing went; we had high (7-8 feet) waves for a while, wind gusts of up to 32 knots but sustained winds of 22 – 26 knots. We had 2 huge rain squalls which we could hardly see a thing through then we had incredibly hot sun which made everything humid and steamy. As soon as we got in the lee of St. Vincent Island the wind died to almost nothing the sea became flat, we didn’t have enough wind to even blow us along at 2 knots! We turned on the motor and furled away the jib, tightened the main up and motored for a while. We tried a couple of times to fly the jib before finally the wind came up again and then we had the jib out fully for a while, then reefed for a while, playing with it all the time to get the most speed out of the boat that we could. Once we reached the end of St. Vincent there were huge gusts of wind coming off the point and we were surfing down waves, reaching the dizzy speed of 10 knots at one point, but averaging 8 knots most of the time. Finally the wind clocked round to just off our nose but we still managed to do a respectable 7 knots heading into it. As we approached the entrance to Admiralty Bay we suddenly heard a strange noise – like an alarm going off, it had both of us looking for the source, we found it pretty quickly – a man in a dinghy was blowing a whistle to attract our attention. This man, Kenmore Henville, was harnessed in a standing position in his dinghy, bouncing through the 6 foot waves taking photos of yachts as they entered the area. He blew a whistle to let you know he was there so you could smile for the photos! After he had taken his shots of our boat he sped off towards the boat that was behind us. We furled our jib away, motored a bit further into the bay and then dropped our main sail. After a short motor we were getting close to the mooring field and decided to drop our anchor, after 2 attempts which we weren’t happy with (felt we would swing too close to the nearby boats if the winds got up) we gave up on the anchoring idea and asked one of the boat boys if there was a mooring ball available that we could take for 3 nights. Shortly after we were safely tied to a mooring ball, negotiating with the boat boy who wanted to buy our original dinghy from us – hopefully it is a done deal. We tidied up, put things away, took down our St. Lucia flag and raised the Q flag, watched Gypsy Palace come into the bay and anchor in very skinny water (they later moved), then it was time to dink over to MT Nest where we were invited to dinner. Terri and Mike had done a terrific job of making salad, lasagna and desert cake. We had a very pleasant evening chatting about our individual trips down to this point. Dale told us that Kenmore would find us in the morning and bring us the proofs of the photos he had taken and we could purchase them if we wanted to. We finally got back into our dink and returned to our boat for the night.

Photos of Orpailleur under sail by Kenmore Henville (Bequia)