HAPPY NEW YEAR!

While in Bequia for three weeks we enjoyed the New Year’s Eve fireworks, hiking up to Peggy’s Rock for the great view of Admiralty Bay, walking over to Hope Bay and up to the ruins of a fort overlooking Admiralty Bay, and nearly daily snorkeling. We also ate lots of roti, went for a two-tank dive out to “NW Point” and the “Moonhole,” and took the ferry to St Vincent to spend a day touring the east coast with friends from Troubadour and Music. That side of the island is rugged and gorgeous, including the Mesopotamia Valley, but it was sad to see the devastation from the Christmas flooding.

We dragged ourselves away from lovely Bequia in mid-January to skip north to St. Lucia and meet our friend Gerry Day (Celilo crew from last year). The sail between Bequia and St Vincent and on top of St Vincent was pretty bouncy, bow in the water, rail in the water, but most of the way a very fun sail. We pulled in to Rodney Bay Marina very crusty with salt, so it was nice to find a water spigot and hose. Plugged in the vacuum too and Gerry arrived to a nice, clean vessel.

It was fun to find cruising friends here, and to meet new ones. AND to see the Broncos and Seahawks win their play-off games!!! Being closer to the East Coast of the US, our rooting section was extremely small, but we made up for it in spirit and carried the day! HA! Now, who to root for in the Super Bowl??? Roberta just likes the fact that the winner will be a Western team. Michael is a Broncos fan and has their burgee flying. Gerry is for the Sea Hawks and risks walking the plank when he hangs his burgee in the doorway of his berth!

We were lucky to arrive in Rodney Bay in time to attend a cruiser’s potluck on the Unicorn – the vessel used as the Henrietta (Johnny Depp’s boat that fired on the Black Pearl) in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. But Roberta was sad to leave Jan 22 before the Wednesday Ladies Lunch and a Thursday tour of the pan (steel drum) yards – however, weather prevailed and we took the one nice day in a week for a very nice sail up to Martinique.

Gerry’s friends from France were in Martinique at the end of their vacation and we spent two lovely days with them. They had a car, so we all squeezed in and went to the well-known Les Salines beach and the Le Meuny rum distillery one day and up to Jardin Balata, a gorgeous botanical garden that includes a walk through the tree tops on a hanging bridge. It was fun to be with French speakers who also spoke fluent English and we had many laughs comparing words and ways.

We anchored at St. Anne, around the corner from Marin, which is a much larger town with big chandleries and grocers. But St Anne is a pretty village, and quieter, with a nice beach and clean water for our reverse osmosis water-maker. It is fun to walk the beach, hear French, and see how another country plays/wears at the beach. (More smoking, occasional toplessness, pareos, men in speedos, and little tables with wine and cheese!).

Yesterday we joined friends from Cutter Loose on a walk along the shoreline to the Savanne Les Petrifications, a place about which we were told looters had long ago stolen all the petrified wood, but the landscape was interesting. It was. We walked over a big, very old lava flow that created a stunning, rugged coastline. And it was a 20K day!!! (Sounds more impressive in kilometers! 12.57 miles…)

We then had a glorious sail (18-26k “abaft of beam” 6-8’seas) back down to St Lucia this week in time for the Super Bowl, because we could not find a place in French Martinique to watch the American football game. GO BRONCOS!!! GO SEA HAWKS!!! And then the plan is to yoyo back up to Martinique and visit more bays, do more snorkeling/diving, go hiking and island touring.

We hope those of you in the States are staying warm and finding fun, wintery things to do. Have a hot toddy for us! We’ll drink a rum punch for you!