13 February Mayreau Island

 

We upped anchor at 9am and made our way out of the harbour, dodging the reefs heading towards Mayreau Island, only 7 miles away. As we departed we could see the two small islets, one natural and one man made which are inhabited by locals selling souvenirs which we didn’t bother to check out but they look pretty cool.

It was quite windy and choppy but only a short hop so it wasn’t too bad. We debated stopping at the bottom of the island as it had an internet tower, but we had ready the anchorage on the top of the island is very sheltered and also very beautiful, and that won the toss. We motored into the bay and it was very full of charter yachts but two were leaving and we nosed our way quite close into shore and one of the guys in the wooden dinghies came razzing up to us and said it would be fine for us to grab one of the moorings, which we did, at a cost of $100 EC for 2 nights.

The bay is beautiful, white sandy beach, swaying palm trees nice clear water and protected from the wind which you could see was still gusting on the other side. There is a small sand spit between this bay and the one on the other side. The conditions on the other side are the extreme opposite. Surf rolling and crashing in, lots of reef and not so nice beach. There were a couple of kite surfers testing the elements, they were really flying along.

We took the duck in and had a swim, a sunbathe and another swim. We walked from one end of the beach to the other (sounds good but in reality was not so far). We checked out the few bars and restaurants and decided we would eat on the boat today. We find that as nice as it is to eat out, 9 times out of 10 the meals we have on the boat are far more enjoyable.

We had a swim off the back of the boat when we got back and Robbie dived and came up with one of the conch shells. They sell them everywhere here and I would love one but I don’t think we are allowed to bring them back into Australia. Anyway the ones they sell are all beautiful and polished up, the one Robbie brought up was all crusty and yukky and 2 crabs crawled out of it, AND THEN 2, horrible, slimy, slithery sea slug, snake looking very gross creatures slithered out!! Yuk it all went straight back in. Conch is quite often on a restaurant menu but we haven’t tried it.

We had a sleep after lunch and then got invited to a nearby charter yacht for sundowners. One was an Australian, one was from Denmark, one from Bermuda and the others were Americans, all living in Hong Kong, and loving it. They are all sailors, some divers and they chartered the Cat for 10 days, and were all impressed with how it handles and the room.

They had had a bet that we hadn’t brought the boat from NZ, Peter the Aussie thought we had and the others thought we must have hired it locally. We had a great night with lots of laughs. They invited us for dinner but we already had some Mahi-Mahi thawed out that we wanted to cook.