Tim Howes here.  I’m the older of the two guys in the photo, wearing my Bagel Bin Christmas present T Shirt!  Nigel has asked me to write a blog post for him and I was quite happy to do so.  On Boxing Day morning we set out for Mayreau fairly early, after a proper breakfast of course.  After being in Bequia for a few days, it was nice to be sailing again.  First mate Ryan was the skipper/navigator for the sail from Bequia to Mayreau.  The trick for this was that Ryan was not allowed to use the GPS locator so he had to do it all manually and Nigel had good fun testing him by implementing heavy fog conditions on him to make things a bit more tricky.  I got to steer the boat for a good while, which was a lot of fun but much more difficult than one might imagine.

Upon reaching Mayreau, we found our friends on the catamaran already anchored further in.  We decided it was time to be properly lazy, so we all sort of laid about and didn’t do too much.  A group of us did go ashore though to check out the beach bar, which was fun.  For dinner we went on what was described to us as a ‘short, 15 minute walk’ to Dennis’ Hideaway.  As it turned out, it was up over the mountain and down the other side, in the dark and we weren’t quite expecting it.  However, we did get there in one piece, and the food was absolutely fantastic.  Dennis himself entertained us at the bar, telling us stories such as how he once met the Prime Minister of one of the islands. 

Next morning, we sailed over to the Tobago Cays.  One of the locals took my young brother David and me in his motor boat at high speed so that we could find and reserve a mooring buoy.  Let me tell you, the Cays were absolutely breathtaking.  Just paddling around Oboe herself, we saw several sea turtles who weren’t much bothered by our presence.  I was also able to go scuba diving, which was fantastic.  Huge schools of fish, so large that we couldn’t see either end.  To top the day off, we went over to the island of Petit Tabac, where they shot the scene from Pirates of the Caribbean, where they’re marooned on the island with rum.  The island was quite small, but not exactly deserted!

That brings us to today when we left the Cays, but not before making friends with a few more sea turtles.  Today ended up being a lazy day, and we did some light sailing down to Palm Island, and then a short motor over to Clifton Bay, Union Island.  Clifton is an interesting little town, and we ate at a restaurant that actually had some sharks in a closed off area.  They looked like nurse sharks I think.  Tomorrow we’re off to Mustique to rub shoulders with celebs.

I’m Tim and I’m having a great vacation on Oboe.

Skipper’s Note:  Tim asked his Mum a while back if he could have a tattoo.  Thinking it would be a discreet tat. she agreed, especially as he planned something to celebrate his Welsh heritage.  See what you think!