We ended up spending a full week at Bequia;  we had a fairly lazy time, but did get across to see the turtle sanctuary, the fort, and Friendship Bay.

I think we will soon be eligible for honorary membership of the French maritime rescue organisation.   We had already towed two broken down French dinghies at different locations.  In Bequia we added three more rescues- once towing a dinghy with a broken shear pin from dinghy dock to boat, and then  collecting a dinghy where the engine had failed and the owner was attempting to row.  But the third was more bizarre;  Rosemary spotted a dinghy drifting with nobody in it, identified that it was from the adjacent catamaran and shouted across to the professional skipper to warn him;  James then took to our tender, collected the skipper and went at high speed to collect the dinghy which was disappearing into the distance.  The disappointing thing about this was that the skipper never came back to thank us.  Resolved – stop helping the French – arrogant and ungrateful!

Bequia is beautiful, the water crystal clear (except in the aftermath of some high winds one night which cause a fairly heavy swell – heavy enough for the boat boys to move us to a mooring closer to the shore) and the people friendly and welcoming;  we even saw a couple of turtles swimming in the bay.  Bequia has been granted “Aboriginal Status” by the World Whaling Commission, which means that they are allowed to catch whales for 3 monthe in the year, using traditional sail boats with hand harpoons.  An island just off Friendship Bay is used for rendering the whales caught;  it has shallows and then buildings whose sole use is for whaling  – the last whale caught was in April 2013.

We had some good meals ashore,  and then last night we went with Sid and Peggy to “Pappa’s” for our farewell dinner – Limin Time is now heading south to lay up in Grenada, while we are now heading back north to Antigua.

We set off this morning at 06.20 (our earliest start yet!), had a good sail across to St Vincent, then motored through variable winds around the back of the island, followed by a great sail from St Vincent to St Lucia – wind 15 – 18 kn on the beam, boat speed 6 – 7 kn according to the log, and 8 – 9 kn according to the GPS (since I don’t think the tidal flow is 2 kn, I suspect our log is underreading;  we have not cleaned it since Antigua).  We arrived back in Marigot at 14.45 having covered 51.2 Nm according to the log, but probably more than that in reality.  It was nice to be welcomed back by the boat boys and boat vendors – even if it did cost us some beers and 200ml of 2 stroke oil for a fisher boat.