Bequia
Chaser 2
Yvonne Chapman
Thu 1 Mar 2007 15:27
Time to do a little catching up on our progress. We
are still at 13.00.59N 61.14.51W. We arrived in Bequia more or less
together, i.e.. Jon,Kate and Sophie on their boat Aries and ourselves. The first
two fotos show us under sail on the approach to Admiralty Bay, there is always a
bit of a blow as you round the point here, so our mainsail has the 2nd reef in,
somewhat untidily, but only a mile to go and we drop it completely.
We found a comfortable spot to drop our hook, not
too close to town and everyone else, not too far to dinghy ashore. Bequia has
many dinghy docks, so its easy to take a ride into town If you don't want to
take the dinghy you can call a boat boy on the vhf for a water taxi to come to
your boat and take you ashore, or anywhere else.
We've explored a little the town of Port Elizabeth
on Bequia, the local people seem very friendly. The next two photos show
one of our favorite haunts, a very local Bamboo made bar/restaurant called
the Green Boley, as you can see it's right on the beachfront as is the
town. Jon and Kate enjoying a beer or two with us.
The Green Boley is one of the original
hangouts for cruising people, and although many places have gone a little
upmarket, with prices to match, the Boley remains as it always has been. We
were in the very same bar, same table, 16 years ago, Jon, Kate, Yvonne,me James,
Rob and Susie, no Sophie then of course, not even a twinkle.
We have since walked over to the other side of the
Island to Friendship Bay, about a mile, seemed a lot further, not used to all
this exercise! Sophie is stroking a baby goat thing alongside a beautiful beach.
We stopped for a coolie in a bar and had a picnic on the beach,
before walking back to Port Elizabeth. At the top of the hill on the return was
another shack of a bar views over both bays, what potential this place has!
Don't think the owner really sees it though, in fact he was maybe a little high
on something other than beer. We had a beer anyway, the photos of him in
some voodoo ritual on the wall kinda put us off a bit, as well as the
swearing and cursing about his wife. She wasn't there, he was just talking to
himself and now and again involved us. Time to drink up!
Back in port Elizabeth, we did a little shopping
for our evening meal, and bought a bottle of the local brew- Hard Power, check
out the ingredients on the label, Horny Goat Weed being one of the main
ingredients. We all took a glassful, not exactly a high class
vineyard. In fact we wondered what whether the goat weed was,
past tense. We didn't try too much more, we stuck to the beer and
Rum.
Back on board we had a good night, quite a bit of
wind, which fills our batteries with wigglies.
We have a morning ritual, now we are here in
Bequia. Yvonne would check our anchor and chain, to make sure everything is
holding ok. I check our batteries to see how much power we have used overnight.
Normally they are down 8-12% depending on how much wind we have had overnight.
Our wind generator gives a charge but not enough to power everything,
so we have to run our Fischer Panda genset. This is a 4kw genset, but finds it
difficult to run anything much more than 1.5/2kw, its a fault with the
generator,and Fischer Panda aren't very eager to help, but they will! but that's
another story.
We also check our water supplies and if necessary
run our watermaker for an hour, it makes 70 litres of pure water from the
sea. After a couple of cups of tea, we can check our internet connexion for
emails and Skype the kids and friends, then we are ready to go ashore or diving,
whatever, we have the rest of the day available.
Tomorrow we may take the ferry to Kingston in St
Vincent, better than taking our own boat, it's only 10 euros return for a one
hour trip, so it'll make a nice change. I'll let you know how we find
it.
