Christmas in Bequia
Oriole
Mon 27 Dec 2010 10:43
Admiralty Bay, Bequia 13:00.66N
61:14.64W
We arrived in Bequia after a textbook Grenadines
sail from Clifton. There were a few puffy trade wind clouds and a slight
sea and 12-14 knots of wind allowing us just to lay the course. We were in
company with Breezing Up a J46 in which we had competed very
successfully in the Easter Regatta and Shian an Ohlsen 39. Breezing
Up sailed right past us and into the distance but we managed to hold off
the racier Shian until the winds went light in the final
approach.
Breezing Up comes storming
past.
Bequia was practically empty when we arrived on
Sunday and we wondered where everyone was. However in the days leading up
to Christmas the bees collected around the Bequia honeypot where there are
enough restaurants and food outlets to satisfy an armada.
We celebrated Christmas Eve in the Auberge des
Grenadines with lobster dinner and an excellent blues trio. Christmas Day
saw a small gathering of friends from other yachts for champagne and nibbles in
the Green Boli (closed for Christmas Day) with the generous permission of the
owner who joined us for drinks and single-handed consumed the better part of a
whole bottle of champagne. Traditional Christmas Dinner was with a select
group of friends in the Gingerbread Restaurant, this time to the accompaniment
of a jazz pianist and vocalist.
Champagne at the Green
Boli.
All of this gastronomic excess was to some
extent offset by an energetic walk for Chris and me on Monday before a bbq
dinner ashore to more traditional West Indian musical accompaniment. Today
we have serious exercise planned and no gastronomic excess!
The winds have been quiet in the lead up to
Christmas which as the anchorage was very crowded allowed for a relaxed
time. However on Christmas Day evening just when many people were ashore a
series of squalls went through which started several yachts dragging their
anchors, one of which went right out to sea. When the owners returned from their
dinner ashore there was another boat where theirs had been! There is a
happy ending to this story, as a superyacht spotted the drifting yacht on
its way to Panama and took it in tow and brought back into Admiralty Bay.
Our nerves were somewhat sharpened by a yachtsman's nightmare - a French
catamaran came in just after dark on Christmas Day as we were going ashore
and anchored a few yards in front of us! He was warned as politely as
possible in my best French that he was endangering us and another adjacent
yacht. Independently the other yacht owner also had a go at him and in
quite untypical Gallic generosity, when we returned, we found he had gone!
It is time to go sailing again - harbours rot good ships and their crews and we
are not going to wait until Twelfth Night to take down our new Christmas
lights.
Our Christmas LED lights were brought
for us from Miami by good friend Paul Pantin.