Bequia, St Vincent & the Grenadines
15 July 2014
By Catherine
Bequia, The Grenadines, St Vincent
July 6th. Happy Birthday Vicky (Cap’t’s mom). We are thinking about you. We are ready to cross the forty miles to Bequia, Les Grenadines. The winds were between sixteen and twenty four knots. The wave direction on the beam and aft, it was a comfortable ride. It was very hazy so we had to wait a while before we could spot St-Vincent. Again I had put a fishing line in the water, fish on fish on!!!! The fish pulled so hard it almost broke my rod holder, twisted it badly then the spool was unraveling so quickly I couldn’t lock the line, the line was actually smoking. George needed to come to the rescue to stop that line from going because we would have had to follow the fish for a while. Sadly a sailboat doesn’t maneuver that easy so we can’t really turn around and chase down the runaway fish. So the line snapped, I don’t know how much we lost but obviously the fish was too much for my equipment. I never felt so much force from a fish wow…!!!! I would have loved to see what it was, probably a tuna. Ah well, better luck next time. We sailed on the windward (east) side on St Vincent. We decided to not stop and visit. Have heard enough bad stories about cruisers visiting there that we’ll pass for now. When we got south of St-Vincent and in the passage for Bequia, we had some rain and we were surfing the waves. I took some video but it doesn’t do it justice. They have a lot of mooring balls in Port Elisabeth, so we went further south a bit in clear water, near a beach and a reef. Beautiful place. We checked in paying overtime on Sunday but it was a holiday for Monday and Tuesday as well so we decided to pay the overtime fees and just get it over with. They have a major carnival in St-Vincent. The island of Bequia was deserted, mainly all the shops closed too. All the people go party for two straight weeks! Two weeks!!!
July 7th. Cap’t George’s mission was to install the spare alternator. We’ve been travelling know for two days without an alternator. The diesel engine doesn’t need one to run and our solar panels keep our batteries filled just fine especially here in the tropics. He took the bad one off and one wire was rotting, it could have been the culprit but the spare one was installed anyways. We will get it bench tested to make sure if it’s done or not. That took part of the morning. I was helping when needed and I did some cleaning and organizing. At noon, we were invited to go on Sayonara II (Mr Marcel and Ms Anne) from Geneva and Mayakri ( Mado and Maurice) from France. Sayonara II is an Amel sailboat. It’s a very nice vessel with many features that our boat doesn’t have like a washing machine and a dish washer. We had a late lunch, than I went with Noelle snorkeling from Picaro while the guys went for a sundowner soaker drink on the beach. I saw some spotted morays, spider shrimp, grouper, yellow grunt, smooth trunkfish, French grunt, trumpet fish, sand diver, brown ray and Christmas tree coral and some brain corals. We swam all the way back to the boat. I did my first clean up underneath the keel, just one swipe with the scraper. For some reason, I get intimidated underneath Picaro’s belly. I will get used to it. I cleaned the water line. We get some kind of green scum. The last time I did it was at Les Saintes. Nice evening, clear moon.
Canouan, The Grenadines
July 8th. Got up before my Cap’t. I did some internet and went for a kayak ride for about thirty minutes. Got Picaro ready to set sail, about twenty miles to Canouan. At about 9:30 we lifted anchor and George tested the spare alternator for about thirty minutes before we shut off the engine sailed all the way to Canouan. It can be a rolly anchorage as per Mr Marcel, but since it’s quiet (low season) we tucked into the NE corner between mooring balls. It didn’t feel so bad. Our friends on Cavu, took a mooring in the middle of the bay and had to move at dinner time to get out of the rolly swells. Again the town was deserted because of the carnival on the mainland of St-Vincent. It seems like all the people in the Grenadine islands go to the big island to party. We were looking for some bread but nothing was open. There’s a nice resort by the beach, Tamarind Hotel. We stopped at Coconut Bar on the beach and got Ezra, the owner, to serenade Noelle. He wanted a picture with Noelle in his make shift bar and poor Noelle hit her forehead coming out. We walked by on the beach to the dinghy dock. We went snorkeling but the reef was dead and the visibility “sandy”, no light it was sad to see. We saw two starfish and a gold spotted snake eel. We had a nice dinner and hit the pillow early. The winds in the night got gusty, we also had a good wash down from a passing rain shower during the night.