14:05.37N 60:57.72W

Wednesday 15^th Dec.

We spent a bit of time wandering around Bequia town visiting a few of the shops and galleries and generally having a good nose around. This was followed by a sandwich at Gingerbread after which it was time to return to Serafina and get her ready for a 4.00pm departure.

We got away promptly, but the wind was pretty much as forecast and the light east, north easterly at least allowed us to set a very slow course for the south western tip of St Vincent.

As darkness fell we were reduced to motoring slowly and this remained the situation right through the night. One of Sarah’s watches in the middle of the night was at least enlivened for 20 minutes by a group of a dozen very enthusiastic dolphins, who were delighting in causing the phosphorescence to sparkle as they leapt in  and out of the sea. Sarah said that it seemed like they were all wearing fairy lights on their backs!

Our timing was upset by the very unusual phenomenon of a very positive current under us the whole way and so despite all our efforts to slow down so as not to arrive in Rodney Bay before first light, we were  still there rather too soon. Once dawn broke we made our way over to the north west side of the bay, close to Pigeon Island where we found a good spot and dropped anchor. We had a few hours rest before launching the dinghy and making our way into the marina within the lagoon where we had to clear in through Customs and Immigration. This proved to be just as slow and frustrating as ever and so it was early afternoon before we were able to nip over to the shopping mall in the dinghy to get some urgent supplies, prior to returning to Serafina who was now being buffeted by some heavy swell and a growing north easterly wind.

We seemed to have found a good spot again as the sea and wind were combining to make huge sections of the bay completely untenable. We witnessed some  yachts suffering dreadful rolling as they caught by the huge cross swell. In fact we watched in some kind of awe really as one big blue Oyster sat there dipping its toe rails into the sea repeatedly as the crew seemed to be simply hanging on in the cockpit for dear life! After several hours of this, we watched them finally work out that they needed to move and were frankly horrified as they set off and started trying to anchor in a spot that was if possible, even worse than where they had been before.

More and more yachts started to work out the benefits of being where we were and we were soon joined by any number of others. There was just one extraordinary coincidence during all this. We have come here principally to meet up with Shaun and Gabby on their yacht Tabasco Jazz, but we were told in the marina that they had not yet arrived because of problems at home, but that Shaun should be here soon, heading down from Antigua. So we were delighted when at around 5.00pm we saw Tabasco Jazz nosing its way through the mass of yachts and neatly dropped their anchor almost alongside us – before they realised it was us. We did invite Shaun and his crew on board, but they were exhausted from a hard three days travelling south and we were quite pleased ourselves as we had a night’s sleep to catch up on as well.

Might be a noisy one as the wind is still rising as we are heading off to bed.