Turtles and Fish

Our last stop in St. Vincent and the Grenadines was the relatively unknown island of Bequai. The anchor bay was full of boats on moorings or lying at anchor. We cheerfully threw out our anchor in a small spot between the masts and waited for it to take hold. It didn’t. Try again, still no luck. We gamely moved to another spot ad tried again. Still no luck. After five tries the holding was finally solid. Whew. Result was a rather grumpy arrival. It was a slight relief to hear that our troubles were not a reflection of our skills but that the holding ground was generally considered to be terrible. A favourite pastime in the bay is watching boats arrive to anchor or re-anchor and placing bets to see if the crews will be speaking to one another when the ordeal is over.

Once ashore Bequai is a rather sleepy and sweet island. There are a few fabulous restaurants along the shore, a great bookstore and a well stocked fruit market (if you can stand the pushy sellers). We found a very friendly driver of a pick-up taxi and he took us out to the Old Hegg Turtle Sanctuary. This place was founded and is run by ex-skin diving fisherman Orton King who now dedicates his time to saving the hawksbill turtles. To date, he has released 2000 turtles back into the wild. Orton himself took us around the sanctuary and his enthusiasm and love for the turtles was wonderful to see. The tanks were low on the ground and Emma and Macsen spent ages watching the turtles (ranging from 6 days to 40 years old).

Left St. Vincent and the Grenadines and headed towards St. Lucia. On the way we fished as usual and were thrilled (as usual) to hear the zzzzzing of the line pulling out signaling that something had taken a bite. After a rather significant fight, Seb pulled in a lovely long barracuda with extremely vicious looking teeth. Despite the ferocious looks the very firm white meat was delicious and made for two good meals.

Our first stop in St. Lucia was on the South West of the island by the Pitons. Unfortunately, although the view was stunning, the bay was very rolly and uncomfortable and we headed on the following day to Rodney Bay in the North. Rodney Bay has a comfortable little marina with a swimming pool but does not have a great deal of character.

On our next sail, from St. Lucia to Dominica Neptune was kind to us again in the form of a 7,5 kilo tuna! This is (in our opinion) the most impressive fish that we have landed to date and it took four rather large meals to consume it. Our first meal was a romantic lunch for two (during naptime) of tuna sushi with a lovely chilled white wine. We are again grateful for our wonderful working fridge and freezer for chilling the wine and freezing the remains of the fish.