Last week most people were busy doing the holiday season thing – us included. As a result, I haven’t been blogging as often. This post will list some of the events during the past week – starting with our last few days in St. Lucia. We have mostly been relaxing and not trying to do much activity. We have also been going out for meals more than usual – especially since we were in Bequia which has lots of restaurants near the anchorage.
We made one last trip to the southeast end of the island at Vieux Fort. It’s kind of a pain that the only major International airport at St. Lucia is so far away. It’s a 2 hour taxi drive from Rodney Bay (with the associated costs). So, we decided the 3.5 hour sail is a more practical course – especially considering our two daughters were returning on two different days.
We again spent days at The Reef – a wind and kite surfing center with a nice bar and restaurant on the excellent Sandy Beach just east of the airport. They also have good WIFI. The girls enjoyed the fact they put things on a tab, so they would just go up and order food and drinks as needed.
Unfortunately, I spent our days there dealing with an intestinal bug. I’m still not totally recovered from that after 10 days. Although its mostly just been a nuisance and has not been physically debilitating.
In an earlier post, we mentioned after our second daughter left, we moved to Bequia. We didn’t realize it, but Bequia is the happening place for New Year’s Eve. They have fireworks and lots of special dinners and parties. Which explained why there were easily 2 to 3 times as many boats as we’ve seen at that anchorage. Reports were there were 300-400 boats. We had some interesting anchoring issues for a couple days there. But, by the end of the weekend the anchorage was much more pleasant with plenty of room for the < 100 boats there.
On late Friday, our friends on Northfork showed up. They had gone to Trinidad & Tobago and picked up Mark’s parents and were making their way back north. After spending a week visiting the Grenadines, his parents were going to St. Vincent to stay in a hotel for their last few days. So, we had brunch with them the next day. Meanwhile, I looked into the local dive shop and got our air tanks filled and investigated going on a dive on Sunday. Mark wanted to go diving as well, so he said after dropping his parents off that night they would sail back in the morning.
On Sunday we had an excellent dive on a reef on the west end of Bequia. I’ll do a separate post on that and upload photos from the dive. I also took some video of some eels and lobster we saw on the dive – but, those will get processed even later.
We have been researching how best to get a new laptop delivered to the boat. On Monday, when things were finally open again in Bequia, we got some answers. According to Bequia’s customs office a 4% duty would have to be paid. I’m going to try and find out what Grenada would require before deciding where to have it sent. Meanwhile, we ordered some maintenance kits to fix a leaky water pump, got some more provisions, ordered some prescription medicines, and made some phone call home.
Our friends on Northfork are headed north. They have someone to pick up in the US Virgin Islands. But, we will most likely see them again as they are also doing a circumnavigation. So, we said “au revoir” to them yesterday.
Mid-afternoon Monday, we departed Bequia and sailed a couple hours over to Mustique. More on this later as well. That pretty much summarizes the activities over the last 10 days or so.
