Bob has taken to whipping.  Now he has started he just won’t stop.  We now have 50 hanks of rope, beautifully whipped and a replacement, smooth furling rope for the jib that doesn’t get stuck in the clutch.  He is a versatile chap.

We left Mustique without a great deal of reluctance.  It has changed since we were last there.  There are only three restaurants on the island, two of which we visited and found to be obscenely overpriced.  Basil’s Bar is legendary but ridiculously priced, hires staff who live in bunkhouses away from their families and children and apparently the people who own properties on Mustique are trying their best to get rid of it as it attracts the tourists that they would rather do without.  The Cotton House was a strange, surreal parody of an upmarket restaurant with the campest maitre de that ever lived outside an American Sitcom. We had to smother our giggles in our napkins. They aren’t hiring out mules on Mustique any more, the golf buggy vehicles that were fun to dash around the island on, because the tourists were nosing into private properties and making a nuisance of themselves.  As a result we had to rely on taxis and as a result you become detached from the peace and quiet and naturally wooded places.  We didn’t even see one tortoise.

We do like Bequia.  It is a small and gentle place, with brightly coloured fun shops and restaurants and a friendly greeting wherever we go. We took a taxi tour with Ray, a descendant of the Wallace family from Scotland who came to Bequia as whalers.  The real, working residents have become a curious melting pot of black and white, Ray is white with a very heavy Caribbean accent and we chatted to a Rasta man with green eyes whose descendants were French apparently.  We visited the main fishing harbour where they were preparing the whaling boats for the forthcoming season, oiling and polishing their harpoons, and servicing the wooden boats which are only 20 foot long.  In a competition that is whale against 7 men in a very small boat with basically a spear on a rope, the whale definitely has the advantage which probably accounts for the fact that they caught one whale last year and none for the previous four years.  We were fascinated that the grass had been imported by the Irish to keep the weeds at bay from cleared land.  There are only two varieties: a meadow fescue that Ray called Old Man’s Beard and a thick couch type grass that Ray called sour grass and nit did taste sour, I tried it.  We loved the turtle sanctuary and were met by a very enthusiastic Orson Kent who is doing his very best in his remaining years to achieve a one man hawksbill turtle conservation programme.  He is doing a good and very worthwhile job, the the tiny turtles are really cute and those that have reached 10 to 15 years of age an awesome size.  Lunch at Firefly should have been really pleasant but was marred by the most obnoxious old chav and his family who strutted in, placed his order interrupting us, and several couples who were patiently waiting our turn, seemed to think that by buying lunch, you were buying the whole place, shouting across the tranquil restaurant “’Ere Debs, get over ‘ere” and loudly talking about his “loadsa money”.  The rest of us Brits cowered in embarrassment.

In the meantime back on the boat, Jerry is humming away heartily like a reformed and happy soul, the bow thruster battery smells fine, the new dinghy urgently follows us closely wherever we go.  The only mishap has been the loo door locking itself again, fortunately with Bob on the outside this time.  The ever enterprising Bob discovered a very handy use for his Virgin Credit Card and appears to be a qualified master burglar.

I’m off to cook supper now.  We are hoping that the minced meat that we bought from the local supermarket is beef not goat otherwise its chevre bolognaise tonight.