New Year - Bequia
Dearloves
Mon 2 Jan 2006 14:57
Last night's New Year's Eve was a real jamboree on
Bequia. Just getting out of our dinghy onto one of the dinghy docks
was tricky - there were so many boats tied up there that it was hard to get
close and we had to climb over other boats.
We started the evening at a restaurant called
Gingerbread, with several other families, and had a delicious meal. We
celebrated UK new year, at 8pm, toasted with cocktails, and then again at
midnight local time, with Auld Lang Syne played by a local band who had
entertained us all evening.
Gingerbread Local Band
Make mine a
Cosmopolitan...
Mindy and Fi celebrating UK midnight
- looks like Fi's margarita is hitting the spot!
Kerry and Rob from Whitehaven - their
midnight was early this morning, being from Sydney
Pip shared her chocolate cake with
Charlie - most of it went over him or the floor
Emily, Paul and Ollie from Blase -
they haven't been quite normal since the whale
incident...
At midnight there was a firework display over
Admiralty Bay. Then we hit the beach bars, where there were more
bands. Everyone was dressed up for the occasion and there was lots of
dancing.
Steel Drums at the
Frangipani
Bill and Mindy from Temula
B
Alice and Emma with
streamers
We met several other ARC boats, including Fenton
and Mullett from Expresso.
Fenton strikes a pose
This morning, New Year's Day, we are having the
worst weather that we have seen since we crossed the ARC finish line.
There have been gusts of 35 knots through the anchorage and rain showers, and we
are watching all the boats carefully for dragging. So far our new
(Fortress) anchor is performing very well and we can see from our GPS that
it has not moved at all. Earlier our dinghy flipped over (with the
outboard on the back) in the wind, and the shoes still in there from last night
floated away. We managed to recover them, eventually. Charlie and
Rob have been loving the windsurfing in these conditions. They have
discovered perfect windsurfing for the over 40s which involves one windsurfer
and one rib. The rib allows for physical recovery in between bouts of
airbourne windsurfing!