what goes up must come down
Kirsty and Lee's Excellent Adventure
Lee Matthews
Sun 3 Mar 2013 13:33
12:38.0N 61:21.42W
Well we cleared out of St Lucia at least for a month anyway. We had a
lovely time in Rodney Bay met some great people on the anchorage there and Jambe
de Bois on pigeon island,was the most atmospheric (and cheap) bar we found
yet on the islands...great cocktails and Rotis. We spent a week with Robin and
June who came to visit with a ton of chocolate!!!! yesss!!! and other goodies
that are too expensive to buy out here like good cheese and good wine....take
note future guests. The water maker saga is over too and we can produce water
when we like slowly but at last quietly.
In a futile attempt to justify this trip educationally I thought we would
outline some of the things we are learning in the island for our learning
passports.....(Topointers will get that)
1)there are a lot of places called Soufriere..... it means Sulphur in the
air!!! Im not kidding, down at the amazing pitons where we have a spent a lot of
time you can smell it. The volcano on St Vincent is also called Soufriere
....think they need a marketing person onto it! To be fair the volcano on St
Vincent is much much bigger than St Lucias (in height anyway) so maybe Soufiuere
Biggiere?? (thats why I dont work in Marketing) We went to the drive in Volcano
on St Lucia....imagine an undeveloped building site smelling of v v bad
eggs making you want to vomit ....thats about it really but you have to do
the tourist trip sometimes..I am waiting for “the petford wives” to arrive to
climb Soufiere on St Vincent as Kirsty has ruled that out! (The word
‘climb’ being the big issue not the “Sulphur in the Air”)
2) anything a rasta on a boat wants to sell you that you are not sure about
buying, suddenly becomes definitely “good for the mon” eg...make him strong in
da trouser department. This goes from strange odd tasting fruit, to dodgy cocoa
powder, to poisonous apples on trees, to strange smelling tobacco. The local men
here obviously have it easy, it seems they have so many things “good for the
mon”. We did ask one rasta what was good for the woman....he said a bottle of
Campari!!!!
What was interesting was that that particular rasta rocked up at breakfast
so we got him to try a thick splodge of marmite on a small piece of bread. He
looked very suspicious at first till we told him ... “ its good for the mon” !!!
he quickly ate it and needless to say he wasn't impressed but took it in good
spirit!!!
“Good for the mon delivery services”
3) just like home the wind is always on your nose. Because of the current
just small windshifts to the north or south can make life uncomfortable and when
we go north they shift to the north... and vice versa...Im calling it the Lee
and Kirsty Phenomena. Other yachties are now using us a way to work out where to
sail...ie not in the same direction as we are going.
Arriving in Bequia to wind again!
4) there are 1000 good drinks to be made from Rum..... Rum being the
cheapest drink on the islands it makes sense to experiment. Our latest is the
Bequia Bounty (which we named after our favourite island and chocolate bar) 2
parts rum 1 part kahlua then add thick coconut milk to taste and sprinkle with
chocolate shavings (we used galaxy) see below (I’m sure it wasnt that blurred
before drinking it)
5)Let us here in lesson 5 quash the stereotype of the French not being able
to park or anchor a yacht. It is NOT a stereotype its true. Admittedly most of
the charter yachts around are French making the death toll due to French
incompetence artificially higher than it would normally be for other
nationalities, but after nearly being reversed onto by a French liveaboard the
other day, and seeing daily incidents of French boats in near or full on
collisions with other anchored vessels(including our friends) ....they get
the wooden windlass award for bad anchoring everytime. (Phillipe after
your expert anchoring with Jaff, you know better ...please have words with your
countrymen back home!!!)
So anyway lesson over we set sail from St Luica and arrived bashed about
but back in our own shangri la....Bequia....we still havent found a place
like it it is developed enough to enable a long stay, has some great eateries
and bars and beautiful scenery, good snorkelling and the people are
lovely.
Adios to the Pitons
Hope it stays that way. After a pit stop we headed to Mayreau and
anchored in an amazing bay called Salt Whistle Bay after another tough sail with
a crescent moon beach separating us from the Atlantic ocean. But that was just a
warm up for the magnificent tobago cays where we currently are. The photo below
doesnt do it justice so ive added one off the internet(in case you thought we’d
leaned to fly!) We just came back from a swim looking for turtles and I managed
to video about 10 in 20 minutes. Amazing. We will stay here for a few nights
being waited on by the boat boys
our picture taken from Jon Jon
Tobago Cays from above
Sunrise in Tobago Cays this morning
So life continues we head further and further south to meet Graham and
Sharon and then plough north again to meet the Petfords before turning back
south to meet Cara and Jaff and take the boat to Trinidad.
Preparing for our next guests Graham and Sharon....(note the space
left for wine and chocolate)
Our flights home are on the 21st may...see you all then hopefully.
Lee and Kirsty.
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