Bequia and St. Vincent

Bequia is the largest island in the SVG after St. Vincent and a big change from our previous destinations. There appears to be a lot of money here, big fancy homes and more sophisticated restaurants and shops. Admiralty Bay is huge and lined with restaurants, beaches and lovely pastel houses. There is even a good sized Book Shop, but still no real supermarkets.

The fresh veggie market is fun and there are some nice bakeries, but the general merchandise is scanty. It's also filled with big handsome boats (oh wait, that really nice one here is ours). We anchored off Princess Margaret Beach (she used to spend a lot of time here) and Scott went in to complete the easy check out. This is our third or fourth time here and we've always enjoyed it.

See our previous entry in April, 2007 describing a visit to the Moonhole Community designed and built by the late Tom Johnson, a well known American architect.
But until now we hadn't walked over to the Old Hegg Turtle Sanctuary out in Industry (that's the name of the community) so the next morning we headed off. This organization was founded by Orton "Brother" King, a retired native fisherman who has dedicated his life to saving the hawksbill turtles. His organization monitors beaches, checks nests, tries to protect mother turtles and eggs from poachers, collects hatchlings, and rears them until they are around 3 years old. Local youth education is part of their mission.

We should have started earlier because it was a hot trip over the hills and down to the waterfront sanctuary, but very pretty. We passed the bustling high school with hundreds of uniformed handsome teenagers. Away from the waterfront and the hill crests with views, this is a more rural peaceful place. We passed through Spring, the site of several beautiful plantations, now expensive hotels.
There are still some livestock roaming the manicured palm tree pastures lining the beach. We walked through one of them to the reef surrounded bay on the windward side. Several fishing boats testified to the local's ability to make their way through. That's a view of the bay from a bluff and one of the fishing boats with their nets neatly drying.

We had a tour of the facility and were able to get to know the turtles up close and personal. Scott petted several of the big ones and they obviously enjoyed it. These are permenant residents, many with lost flippers. The baby ones are really fun to watch - they really interact with each other.

There are no public buses or jitneys on the island and the taxis are expensive, so we decided to walk back. It was noon so as we walked up the hill, I believe I must have looked tired, as two women in a taxi picked us up for free!
One place we didn't get to visit is to the home of the late Athneal Ollivierre, the island's head whale harpooner, where there is a small

whaling museum. Bequia has an active whaling station and by IWC agreement can take up to 4 whales a year, although I believe they rarely get that many, sometimes none. It's done in an open sailing boat using hand thrown harpoons!

The next day after checking out with Customs & Immigration, we walked around Port Elizabeth, the main village, late in the afternoon checking out the happy hours, comparing rum punches both for quality and price. An excellent fruity one with lots of rum costs 5 or 6 EC at happy hour, about $2 to $2.50. The narrow road along the water has a pretty flower divider separating the directions, but it stops quickly. Then a cement pathway continues along the shore in front of the bars and restaurants. People stroll along this watching the action on shore and off. This proud Bequian father was showing off his baby boy. He loved our drink straw!


While watching the sunset there we met a charming couple from the U.S., Joe and Mary Lee. They were on their last day of a one week charter and after some conversation we all adjourned to our boat for a last minute put together dinner. One unexpected difficulty was finding their boat - hundreds of them and it was very dark! But it was a fun ending for the day.

The next morning however we didn't feel up to the dawn departure so we changed the schedule. Instead of the long trip directly to the Pitons in St. Lucia we decided to spend the night at Wallilabou Anchorage in St. Vincent, only about 3 hours away. A separate posting will talk about this event.

James' Visit - Thanksgiving and a visit to a Pirate Lair

This was the first Thanksgiving we had on the boat but it couldn't be other than traditional for me. So we had a whole small turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, squash, cranberry sauce, salad, and apple pie - all made with two burners and a small oven (our generator is on the blitz, which means no microwave). I believe the turkey was the last one in any of the islands. All of our other friends here went out to dinner but I've never been to a restaurant for Thanksgiving (yet). It was a rainy stormy day so we sat around the boat, playing cards, backgammon and dominos. James and I particularly had running games for two weeks of gin and canasta.

We had forgotten to check out of customs that day and so had to wait to leave until after they opened the next morning. With that late start we decided to stop in St. Vincent for the night. This is a beautiful island but has a bad reputation for theft. With it's steep and wild terrain, it was one of the last to be settled by Europeans. The Caribs (called so by Columbus) were in residence when a slave ship wrecked off the coast. They attempted to subjugate them and managed for a time but they revolted and took Carib women with them and formed a colony, calling themselves the Black Carib. They put up a fierce resistance to British settlement. Finally, in the late 18th century, they were defeated and shipped en masse to Honduras. There are a lot of terrible deeds done in these islands for sure.

Natural Arch off Wallilabou Bay, St. Vincent

As soon as you approach, island men in very small row boats come out to "help" you anchor. These "boat boys" are only trying to make a living but they've put off many cruisers from coming. We refused assistance until we were close to the moorings and realized we needed help with our stern line. So we chose Sean. The anchorage area is small and everyone wants to be close to each other and the restaurant for security purposes, so you take a mooring and then have a stern line tied to either another mooring or the shore.
The harbor of Wallilabou has much more recently been famous as the principal location for "Pirates of the Caribbean". Much of the stage set is still intact and the restaurant was remodeled for the movie as well. We had a lovely lunch there under the Styrofoam and plywood arches, painted to look like stone. After we had sat down our (boat boy not our youngest son) Sean came to our table and asked to borrow our dinghy to bring the police out to the large catamaran near us. Their dinghy motor had been stolen the night before. Needless to say we locked everything down tight that evening. We have dinghy davits and can bring our dinghy up each night and tie it down well.

Restaurant and pirate lair at Walliliabou Bay

Before that though we motored out to the natural arch at the end of the bay and snorkeled around the rocks. There was a wide variety of fish and colored vegetation. Early the next morning, 6:30AM, we took off for St. Lucia and as there was very little wind, motorsailed the whole way - 55 miles. Luckily we had a very positive current with us and pulled into the Rodney Bay Marina by 3:30PM. It was James' birthday and after perusing the guide book, he decided on "Razzamatz" for dinner. This was a terrific traditional Indian restaurant and they sang a rousing Happy Birthday afterwards.