Monday 28^th, Tuesday 29^th, Wednesday 30^th  and Thursday 31^st March

I cannot be certain just yet, but I think we have come across paradise.

Certainly Bequia is a wonderful island and our first trip ashore confirmed that this was very much more of what we had expected when we first headed out to the Caribbean.

This island is not easy to access and so the run of the mill tourists simply do not get here and so it is quiet and very friendly. Admittedly there is a slightly faded air to the place as a lot places are closed up or for sale, but following the credit crunch etc, almost everywhere is feeling the pinch.

Our first contact with the locals was the process of Customs and Immigration clearance as usual, but here it was just that little bit different. We again were able to use a new online clearance system called eSeaClear which has been running for just a couple of years out here and was intended to make the whole process of sailing from island to island (country to country) much more straightforward, but sadly as yet very few of the islands actually have embraced it yet. In addition it is so badly publicised that it seems that only a handful of sailors such as us know about it or use it anyway – it doesn’t feature in the standard pilot books used out here. However Bequia is one place that does accept this system and so I marched into the very smart and imposing government building and stepped up to the Customs desk brandishing our reference number. It was a breeze and so whilst at least 5 skippers were stood around frantically completing forms in writing and having to produce multiple crew lists, we were processed in minutes with all the work as such being done by the officer.

Sadly this enlightened approach did not extend to the next desk which was Immigration. Here a long queue snaked around the lobby as the one lone Immigration officer dealt with each case. This involved him completing a large form in pen and ink for each boat and carefully noting the details on the form of every member of the crew with all their passport details. He then had to stamp each passport and again add various details and counter signatures to each one, in long hand. He was however very cheerful and smiley and seemed totally unfazed by the length of the queue, pausing at one stage to take a lengthy mobile phone call.

Once this was all complete we took a stroll around Port Elizabeth and visited the handful of shops before pausing for a coffee at Gingerbread Cafe and restaurant. We also booked our tickets for a day trip on a schooner to Mustique for the next day.

The rest of Monday seemed to pass in a bit of a blur as we enjoyed swims in the beautiful clear blue water of the bay until 1730 hrs when we took the dinghy over to Saltscar 3 to join John and Sue for drinks. We had a entertaining evening and even managed to witness the green flash again as the sun set over the ocean.

On Tuesday we were up and running bright and early and took the dinghy over to the dock where we were joining the schooner, Friendship Rose for our all-inclusive day trip to millionaire’s paradise – Mustique.   The usual complement of guests on board is 35 but today there were just 12 of us and we had a wonderful day out. The other guests were on land based holidays and filled us in on what else there is to see and do on Bequia and at the same time take in how small and empty the island is!  One couple are staying at a brand new hotel where they are 2 of only 4 guests!

Bequia is also rather special in that by agreement with the IWC the islanders are allowed to take four whales each year. These are hunted and killed in the traditional way with hand thrown harpoons and sailing boats. Not surprisingly they do not always get their annual quota and it seems that only a week ago they harpooned but lost a humpback. So it was a little exciting that as we headed across to Mustique in the schooner, that we came across two of these sailing boats trying to hunt down a whale. I am not sure that either of us fully support this idea of hunting whales and so we rather hope that they were unsuccessful!   We understand that the successful whale hunter’s spoil will make their own parish very wealthy for a short while as the proceeds are shared amongst their local community and will support the local school etc, it is therefore incredibly important to the locals and at least one of the sailors on the schooner was very wound up by the spectacle.

However, the trip to Mustique was great and we arrived in the crystal clear anchorage in Britannia Bay and were taken ashore where 6 of us combined to take a taxi on a grand tour of the island. The taxi was actually an open backed truck, but Michael, our driver, took things nice and steady and was very experienced in dealing with the likes of us! The tour therefore included the major features such as the houses belonging to Tommy Hilfiger, Sir Mick Jagger, Bryan Adams and the late Princess Margaret etc etc. In fact the island is so small and exclusive that it only lasted an hour because Michael drove incredibly slowly. He did from time to time interrupt our chattering to tell us the weekly rental rates for each and every house we came to, which ranged from 30,000 US dollars a week down to merely 12,000 US dollars.

We returned to the schooner for an excellent inclusive lunch and then were taken off in the tender to spend some time snorkelling on a nearby reef. Finally we headed back under sail and motor to Bequia, enduring a very impressive rainstorm along the way and plied with yet more drink and tea. The schooner was built here in Bequia by hand some 43 years ago and it first worked as a mail boat carrying the mail and essentials from Bequia to Union Island. It then was pressed into service as the only ferry between St Vincent and Bequia carrying literally everything between the two islands, before being replaced by modern ferries and taking up its eventual role as a trip boat visiting Mustique and Tobago Cays on wonderful day trips. The one ever constant in the life of the boat is the skipper, Lewis. He and his brothers built the boat in Providence Bay and he has skippered the boat from then until now. Lewis is 85 years young.

New photos at http://www.rhbell.com

Wednesday was spent working and Sarah put in a good few hours cleaning the hull in preparation for the least popular part of our travels which is the lay-up.

In the evening we had John and Sue from Saltscar 3 round for drinks and again enjoyed a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting evening with them both.

On Thursday we had invited David and Debbie who we had met on the day trip to Mustique, on board Serafina for coffee. I picked them up in the dinghy from Jack’s Bar and after coffee and a bottle of wine(!) they kindly offered to give us a tour of the island in their hire care. They hail from Sutton Coldfield and are staying in a villa here for a week and by coincidence also celebrated their wedding anniversary on the 27^th March. (The difference being that they have achieved the more impressive milestone of 40 years.)

This is not their first visit to Bequia so they know their way around what is actually a very small island with only a few roads and of course no road signs at all. The highlight of the trip was undoubtedly the Old Hegg Turtle Sanctuary which is a very unassuming place but the work they do is remarkable and here they rescue and raise Greenback and Hawksbill Turtles which they nurture and release back into the wild when they are about 5 years old. They run a school education programme which   is their main mission, to educate the kids on the island all about the turtles etc. This is because the turtle’s biggest predators by a long way are humans. The eggs are considered a valuable delicacy and so the locals have always raided any nests they find and steal the eggs; and they are still legally allowed to hunt the turtles for food.  There are laws against selling turtleshell products, so it is pretty sad to see the stalls set up in the street outside Customs doing just that. The school programme aims to change the habits and put pressure on the adults to stop killing the species. Currently a turtle’s life expectancy is such that only 1 in 3000 makes it to adulthood and they do not start breeding until they are about 20 years old . Clearly things are beginning to work and even the fishermen who used to hunt the turtles now donate fish free to the sanctuary to feed the healthy population.

The other aspect of such a small island is that there are very few people here and so you meet all the same people everywhere! It is impossible to go anywhere without bumping into all the people we met on the boat trip – repeatedly.

In the evening we came ashore and met up with David and Debbie again for a meal and then went along to the Frangipani bar to listen to the steel band and watch the ‘jump up’ dancing. Of course we met everyone else again and had a great end to a wonderful day before finally retiring to Serafina just after midnight.