Friday 12 – The Great Goat Stew
At anchor West Bay, Middle Island,
Percy Group Yesterday morning, the Riviera Club departed leaving the anchorage to three yachts, including Sylph. Presumably they had not heard about the Great Goat Stew that was scheduled for this evening. As the day wore on, the anchorage gradually filled with boats again but this time they were nearly all proper boats, that is sailing craft (I reluctantly allow catamarans into the category of proper boats otherwise we might get very lonely in this part of the world). In the afternoon all the various yachties ferried ashore in their small inflatable dinghies with relatively modest outboards on the back (Sylph stubbornly continues to buck the trend with a hard dinghy and oars). Shipwreck and Beck provided the goat (shot by Beck) and a great sauce. Most of the other yachties provided vegetables and Sylph’s modest contribution was a pressure cooker full of rice. Several guitars had come ashore in the dingies and, after liberal lashings of stew and rice lubricated with Percy Island mead and a variety of vintages of red wine, a modest round of singing and music naturally ensued. Certainly it was a quieter affair then the preceding evening. We have stayed at Middle Percy longer than intended, the attractions proving too hard to resist, but the time has come to move on. Tomorrow we sail. All is well. |