St Lucia and the Grenadines
Trippwire
Mon 21 Dec 2009 15:07
Any regular
followers would have noticed a little tardiness on the blog publishing; we have
been having complaints from the UK! so, I am sorry, but I was taking a
holiday...from the errrr... holiday. We have had a fantastic couple of weeks
since we arrived. After 2 days of sorting, fixing and drinking in Rodney
bay, we headed south to the Pitons, (which are a well known tourist
attraction here) with the aim of at least giving Charlie a brief taster of
Caribbean life. In addition to that, we were all feeling pretty toxic and wanted
to get out of the rather intense Rodney Bay.
We spent the
day snorkeling and swimming off the boat, and after a long lunch at a beach side
restaurant, we headed back and got the barbecue going, but not before Charlie
had negotiated a fantastic price on a local lobster. It was only after having
bought it that we discovered that none of us had ever cooked a lobster
before...straight on the barbecue?! Kill it and then boil it?! or just boil it
alive?! Given that Charlie spent some time in the army learning how to kill
things, you would have thought a lobster would not be beyond him....but, after
much deliberation, we decided to go for the boil it alive option on the basis
that we would probably do a botch job of killing it any other way...all was
going well until it moved in the saucepan, which gave us a bit of a fright!
Anyway, is was actually seriously good!
The following day
was time to say good bye to Charlie who had to head home to his long suffering
pregnant wife....thank you Charlie for all your help, it would not have been
half as much fun without you!
The day after
Charlie left, we got up very early to set off for Bequia. It seems that the
weather is a little belated in clearing from the hurricane season this year, and
so we are getting some very impressive squalls. In this case, our 50 mile trip
to Bequia was rather beset by lots of squalls which were preceded by 30 knot
squalls....but given Trippy's speed, we were soon in Bequia, and ready to
celebrate with another swim and more rum punch; for the first time it felt
really like we had arrive and! In the evening Dom and Caroline very
kindly treated Jen and I to a fantastic meal at a French restaurant, which
was fantastic. It was here that the last few weeks of sleep deprivation
started to catch up with us...well, all of us apart from Dom who has the energy
of a Duracell bunny plugged into the mains...he spent a lot of time talking
to himself over the next few evenings as Jennifer, Caroline and Myself fought
our own personal battle to stay up beyond 8pm!
One more day (and
more importantly another 10 hour sleep!) in Bequia and we then headed down to
Tobago Keys. This is a marine park
that is surrounded by a horse shoe reef which allows you to anchor inside. It is
fantastic scenery and after only 20 minutes of snorkeling we had seen and swum
with turtles, sting rays and even a small nurse shark.
We spent a couple of
days anchored up in Tobago Keys, doing a lot of barbecuing before
heading around the corner to a small bay called Salt Whistle Bay, which is a
quintessential Caribbean beach, and which has a beach side bar next to it. We
headed off for supper, and by the time we got back, the tide had dropped rather
further than planned, and we were bumping on the bottom, and so needed to do a
bit of an anchor re-set further out in the bay; all very well, but it was pitch
black and there were reefs on either side of the very narrow bay. When we
specked the anchor chain, we rather over did it with more than 70 meters of
chain, and Dom was some what bemused to see me stick the whole lot out; there
was no way that a reef 50 metres behind us was going to deprive me of my still
much needed sleep!
The following day we
headed off to Mustique, which is a private island with houses going for upward
of $12 million. It felt rather like being on the Truman show, with every corner
neatly manicured, but it was nice not to be hassled by boat boys who in all
other islands come around offering anything from tee shirts to a morning
bread delivery or fresh lobster.
We spent a couple of
days in Mustique, with Caroline and Dom going horse riding and myself trying in
vain to do some kite surfing (not only my lack of ability, but also a lack of
wind!). The sunsets here are fantastic, and so it is always our intention to get
washed and changed before sunset.....needless to say, we are always late, but,
when we do catch it, they are pretty fantastic as you can see below. One night
we had a cracking barbecue on the boat with some fresh local
barracuda
Last
night Dom and Caroline treated Jennifer and I to an amazing dinner at
a restaurant called Firefly as their final night farewell. It is situated up the
hill and has fantastic views over the bay as well as amazing food -
a really good way to finish up our time with them. We woke up
this morning and dropped them off in St Vincent. It has been fantastic to be
able to share the adventure with them both, and they were both brilliant (and
very tidy) shipmates and great friends. I am still very grateful for Dom's
suggestion, when we got a spinnaker wrap around the forestay (and I was
helming!), to gybe...and miraculously the spinnaker unfurled itself, saving a
large spinnaker shredding and lots of time up the mast! We will miss not being
able to continue to share our adventure with them, and if any of you need some consulting work done, Dom
has just set up his own consulting business, and would much appreciate the
work!
We are now
back in Bequia, with the intention of re-stocking and re-supplying, before
heading back to Tobago Keys for Christmas, and to
work out what our next plans are. It was our original intention to head over to
the Galapagos and then either to the west coast of the US, or as I was hoping,
that once Jennifer was free from London that I may be able to persuade her to
continue on to Australia, (which would make sense given that we have the boat
pretty much ready for the Pacific). Having spent some time chatting over the
last few weeks, interestingly, both of us feel that we are not ready (yet!) to
go feral, and actually want to get back into the working world, and that we have
much more to achieve before heading off into the blue yonder. So, for those of
you who thought that with luck you may have seen the back of us....sorry
but we will be back to see you in late May, early
June!
After working out the macro scale plan, we then got on
to how to spend the next 5 months. We have done 5,000 miles in the first 3 1/2
months, and found that we have fairly consistently been on the move and working
to a relatively narrow timescale. As such, we think that we are going to slow
the pace down for the last 5 months. This means that our Panama, Galapagos,
Western US option, (which is another 5,000 miles) is a little ambitious. So,
given all of that, then we need to re-plan our route, which is our job for
Christmas.
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