Hope you all had a nice St Valentine’s Day. We don’t normally celebrate this too much but it was such a nice day, in a beautiful location we made a picnic with a bottle of champagne (the last of our French ChampagneL) and a couple of beers and set ourselves up on the beach and swam, and enjoyed live music off a huge catamaran that parked on the beach further up. It doesn’t get much better than this.
We enjoyed relaxing and watching some local kids clowning around on a paddle board.
Unfortunately later on a small motorboat came in, absolutely overloaded with locals and with a petrol generator on the roof, blasting very loud music, for a couple of hours, competing with the cat. It was a bit of a shame and it was with much relief when they packed them in and departed.
We had a very early night and retired to bed with our books.
February 15th Tobago Cays
We dropped the mooring as soon as we had breakfast and headed over to Tobago Cays, it was only 3 miles from Salt Whistle Bay. It was quite choppy, the wind was 16 knots and creating short choppy waves. We dropped anchor quite a way out off the island, the ideal anchorage was between the two islands but it was quite crowded in there and a lot of moorings. As soon as we got the anchor down we got a visit from the boat boys selling a baguette for $15 which we brought, and Banana bread for $30 which we declined. It sounded nice but not at that price.
We kitted up for a snorkel and took the duck off, which was a bit tricky in the wind but OK. We headed in between the islands, passing the boat boys, some who were sleeping and some preparing their wares for the day. We got to the Turtle habitat and it was still choppy. We both felt a bit uneasy about Southern Star, so we zipped back and Robbie dived on the chain. All was good, it was dug in good and proper. We were in 4.5 metres of water and we had 25 metres of chain out. Robbie let more chain out for good measure and we set off again.
The Turtle area was cordoned off with rope and small floats and we tied the duck to a small buoy and jumped in. Straight away we saw a couple of big turtles and Robbie was able to stroke one on the back. We watched them for a while and they were grazing on the meagre pickings on the sandy bottom. We swam to the beach but it was really choppy and we decided to get going.
We after some initial confusion, headed for Bequia. Robbie thought Bequia was Canouaun but we soon sorted ourselves out and made the 20 mile passage with 17 knot winds and short choppy waves. We had been warned this is not a pleasant passage, and it wasn’t.
We arrived at 4.30pm, found a nice patch on sand in only 2.5 metres of water, yes this is very shallow for us but Robbie dived on the anchor and it was all good. There is a good breeze running through the anchorage, and there are a lot of yachts and a few super yachts on anchor.
Quiet night I cooked a Red Thai Curry and early to bed. Tomorrow we will explore Port Elizabeth and try and do a bit of provisioning and also check out with customs and immigration as Bequia is the last island in the St Vincent Grenadines group.
We heard from Mark on Starlet and he has seen 3 other Nordhavns and got to have dinner with a couple from Moonrise, another N47, who are in Saint Lucia. Hopefully we can get to meet them too. There is also a N55 and another N46 but he had not caught up with them. Jennifer will be back from the USA at the end of the week and we should be able to catch up with them on Friday. It seems ages since we saw them but its really only been a week.
