And then there were two... but not for long
A year afloat: to the Caribbean and back
Sam and Alex Fortescue
Sun 2 Jan 2011 18:04
I know it's now January 2nd, but technically it's still part of the New Year weekend. We celebrated with Will and Jesse (Tabitha was asleep) at the bar next to their little house on beach - all part of the Phare Bleu 'resort'. We dined splendidly on lobster at the blue-topped lightship that gives the place its name, then sidled off to the bar where the Swiss-German owner was doing a heavily-accented countdown, sounding for all the world like some sort of Bond villain.
A pair of Canadian singer songwriters had been drafted in for some upbeat country-style music, followed by the bar owner's husband's blues band - playing a curiously undancy medley of John Lee Hooker classics. All great fun, though. Grenadians call it 'Old Year's Night', followed by New Year's Day, which has a certain logic to it, not to mention offering the opportunity to have two parties instead of one.
Jesse, Will and the Twoo went home yesterday. A huge downpour set in as they lefft in a fitting end to what has been a glorious six weeks. We've seen almost as much of Will since we left Las Palmas as we have of each other, which has been fun - he's never short of a tall tale or a dubious plan of action. Jesse and the Twoo have been pretty inseparable, but we managed to persuade them that we could Tabitha-sit for half a day - with very detailed instructions. It was astonishingly good fun, and made easier by the fat that Tabitha knows her routine by heart, and lets you know when it's time for bed or a feed. She also finds 'Aunty' Alex unaccountably amusing, so that it was just a question of Alex hoving into view to reduce the Twoo to ecstatic grinning.
Today it's fine again, and we're shuffling one bay westward, back to Hog Island, where we hope to make the famed barbecue on the beach. After that, we are preparing for the arrival of Andy and Celia - Edinburgh Uni friends, who live together in Gothenburg (Goteborg [yer-ter-bore]). We're planning to do a big hop up to the Grenadines, 50 miles north of us here, then spend ten days lolloping from one tiny palm-fringed, coral-encrusted island to the next. They're both keen campers, so life on board should be no problem...=