2024-12-08 St. Lucia, then on up to St. Anne in Martinique

 We hung out in St. Lucia most of the week.  Watched more boat racing on Sunday.  

J24 races in St. Lucia Mango Cup Regatta

A catamaran anchored in front of us was hosting a J24 racing that was from Grenada.   On Saturday, we retrieved a fender they had lost - just not tied well, and brought it back to them.  On Sunday, another fender went floating by - this one had a chaffed line.  We retrieved and took back to them.   

After the races, they then headed back to Grenada, towing the J24.  Evidently sometime in the night, they lost the J24 - as it either came untied, or the line chafed through.  Guess what - we were not surprised.  No worries, someone found the boat, and they got it back.

Monday, we walked to the Massey Gourmet grocery to see if we could find tortilla chips - YES, we did.  We can once again eat nachos. 😀

Tuesday rode the bus to the Massey Mega store - like a very small mini Costco, and got some more provisions including a new pillow for Kris's birthday present, and also indulged in two big bags of Reese's Peanut butter cups.

New pillow for Kris.  Pillows are one item that is very hard to wash on the boat.

Bought two bags of these - yummy treat

Kris has been trying to lose a little weight since we got back from the states - where we both indulged in too much junk food and goodies.  So she has decided that she has to do 5 pushups before eating.  So that is 15 pushups per day just for normal meals.  Then she decided that each peanut buttercup is 5 more pushups.   The only day she has taken off was her birthday - which was a free day.  Let's just say that Kris has been doing a lot of pushups this week since we got the peanut butter cups.

There is lots to see while out in anchorage in St. Lucia.  Lots of boat traffic, and we watched some construction going on near shore.  Was interesting to see two excavators working putting in a brand-new road through the trees.

Excavators working in tandem to put in a new road

Several cruise ships came in for a day and left, so we watched a lot of shuttles taking people back and forth.  The shuttles are also the lifeboats

Shuttle/lifeboat taking cruise ship passengers to town.

Wednesday we walked to town about a mile, and got Subway for lunch, on Kris's birthday.  The big 60.  And yes, the subway here tastes just like the subway back in the states.

Birthday lunch (and dinner)

Looking at the weather, we were trying to figure out when to make the next jump north, and we also were looking at the ARC fleet.  ARC hosts an Atlantic crossing for cruisers from the Azores to St. Lucia.  There are 143 boats in this fleet making the crossing, expected to arrive in St. Lucia in the coming days.  In fact, the first boat already arrived.  

ARC Fleet of 143 boats, all headed for where we are in St. Lucia

No Rush, a Southern Wind 105GT - first of the ARC fleet to arrive

With the number of boats heading over, we decided it was time to make the jump north, so we got ready.  Kris pulled out our French flag, and decided a bit of repair was needed.  

Sewed new read end onto a bit of beat up French courtesy flag

We checked out Friday, and on Saturday headed to Martinique.   Nice sail, a bit lumpy as seas were 2 to 6 feet, but not bad.  

Arriving in St. Anne was a bit of a shock as to the number of boats here.  Probably 3 times more as there were when we were here in May/June.  Still a lot of room to anchor.  We were in by 13:00, so decided we would head into town, check in and have a nice lunch/dinner out.

 

It is a 2.6 nautical mile dinghy ride in from the St. Anne anchorage into Le Marin.   

We made it to the office to check in just before 14:00, and had to wait 10 minutes, as they were closed and opened back up at 14:00.  That should have been a clue.

After checking in, we headed to a restaurant along the waterfront and sat down, ordered a couple of cokes, and then Kris got the Wi-Fi from the restaurant working on her phone so we could translate the menu to English before ordering.   We got ready to order, and then were told that the kitchen was closed for the afternoon rest period.  So we paid for our cokes, which luckily we had not opened yet, and went to find somewhere else to eat.  No luck.  We had forgotten that the French islands pretty much shut down all afternoon, and restaurants don't open back up until usually after 6:00 p.m.    

So we went to the grocery store - got a few items, then back to the boat.  - Oh well, we will plan better if we want to go in to eat again.  This harbor has many charter boat companies and a lot of catamarans ready to be rented.

Full Marina and mooring field in Le Marin

Derek has decided that he will be coming to visit in March, so we will keep moving North fairly frequently to make it to Georgetown Bahamas for his visit, but it still allows us about a week at every stop, so we will enjoy St. Anne / Le Marin for a while. 

2024-12-01 Thanksgiving at Bequia, then up to St. Lucia

We stayed on the boat all day Sunday, it was rainy, and we enjoyed watching our neighbor shuttle guests back and forth to town.

Yes, you can charter this fine vessel starting at 2.2 million per week.   It has 149 suites and 246 crew to serve you.

Monday we went to town and signed up for a Thanksgiving buffet to be held at the Plantation Hotel restaurant.  Took a short walk around before the rain came again.

View of Bequia harbor, we are anchored about mid photo

Walkway along water in Bequia, part of the Princess Margaret Trail

Nice dinghy dock at Plantation Hotel restaurant

Kris went for a nice little snorkel on Wednesday, she swam from the boat to shore to snorkel around a rocky area.  It was a bit of a swim in an area where boats and dinghy's can zoom around which is always concerning as it can be hard to see a snorkeler, and even harder to get out of the way of a boat when snorkeling, but luckily we had found a yellow pool noodle drifting by the boat the other day.  Did not find an owner so Kris wrapped it around her and had two bright yellow ends sticking up out of the water making her quite visible and safer to make the swim.

She saw a new animal while snorkeling, in fact three of them.  A sharp-tail eel.  Happy to see that there was more live coral than further south.  Bequia was not as hard hit by hurricane Beryl.  

Just a few photos of the snorkel.

Sharp-tail Eel

Wednesday we went for a nice walk; headed over the hill to the bay on the south side.  Only a couple of miles, but good to stretch the legs.  The hill from the dinghy dock to the main road was a killer at a 45 degree slope,  but after that it was all good.  

We are always amazed at some driveways and how steep they are. The photo doesn't do it credit, but you can see the steps on the side to help walkers navigate the drive

Nice retaining wall

Nice old wood doorway

South side beach

Nice view of island and of island to south Petit Nevis 

Near the top of hill looking southwest

Thursday we went to town and picked up some sodas at a local distributor, and then got cinnamon rolls at the local bakery.  Yes, we know - sugar sugar sugar - but it is soooo yummy. 😁

Picture doesn't show well, but this road goes to top of hill in straight line.  It is very very steep.

Thursday we joined a group of other folks for the Thanksgiving buffet dinner put on by the Plantation Hotel restaurant.   They did a great job, and we had a wonderful time.

Sat next to Alex and Lisa off of Hahalua.  You can see our plates are quite loaded with food.

Around 62 cruisers showed up for the buffet.

Early Friday morning at 4:00 a.m. we hoisted anchor and set sail.  A week of strong winds is coming, and we didn't not want to stay in Bequia for another two weeks, so we headed out before the seas got bigger.  With the week of winds hoping for a more pleasant trip north to St. Lucia which was our next stop.

The winds were more variable than we had hoped, but we made it to St. Lucia in time to check in before the overtime fees at customs were enacted.   

We enjoyed watching the brown booby's while sailing.   They have learned that boats will disturb the small fish near the surface, causing them to jump out, which makes it great for the booby's to catch a meal.  So they follow the boats, flying close to them ready to dive down and get a fish.

Looking for any disturbed fish.  The brown booby is very acrobatic, and fun to watch dive for fish

Saturday we got a nice surprise.  The St. Lucia yacht club was having the annual Mango Bowl Regatta.  We got to sit and have a nice ringside view of the around 30 J24 and similar boats racing around the harbor.  They did at least 8 races on Saturday, and more to follow today.

Small boats racing in the anchorage.

There were also 4 larger boats racing a longer course.

We took advantage of the nice sunny day to do some laundry.   We found running a line back and forth under our bimini works well to hang the laundry.  It gets less wind, but no worries about the laundry flying off the lifelines in the strong winds.

Laundry drying in the heat, but in the shade so no sun fading.

Today is more racing, and relaxing on the boat.

2024-11-24 Tobago Cays, Mayreau, Canouan, Petit Nevis and Bequia

We left Union Island early, and had a quick 6.5 mile motor into the wind to get to the Tobago Cays.  The Tobago Cays are in a marine park, and it is expensive.  It is $33.30 US a night for a boat with two people.  It doesn't matter if you anchor or take a mooring, price is the same, so we took a mooring ball.  We had been here on What If in 2013, and had good snorkeling and swimming with turtles.

We headed out to the reef to snorkel, and there were fish, but the state of the reef was a bit sad.  Warm water and hurricanes have turned a beautiful coral reef into a bit of a wasteland.

The areas we checked out snorkeling.

Broken dead corals

Some fish and soft corals

Brain coral

Resting nurse shark

Ocean side of reef 

Never seen this configuration of brain coral before

Completely bleached white brain coral

Mostly dead and some bleached corals

Dead broken Elk-horn corals

Still quite a few fish around

Broken and dead

Snorkeling has been sad in the southern Caribbean.  Don't know if it is the spots we are picking, or if what we are seeing is truly representative of the conditions. Hurricane Beryl certainly did not help things.   

We did see some turtles (no good photos), and watched an Eagle Ray looking for food.   It would come to a spot, then "blow" the sand away while in an almost vertical position.  It had an entourage of fish following it everywhere.

Eagle ray looking for a meal

We had planned more snorkeling the next day, but more rain and clouds were coming, and the anchorage area had turned into a bit of a washing machine, so we decided to motor over to the lee side of Mayreau and anchor.

We headed into shore, and had one of the worst beach dingy landings we have had in a while.  Big surge came while near shore, and turned dinghy sideways right after Dean jumped out.  The dinghy swept him off his feet and landed him back in the dink, but he lost his sandal, which broke when he got flipped back into the dink.  We were able to recover and fix the sandal.   Kris also knocked down into the bottom of the dink, but she hadn't fully stepped out yet, so was unscathed. (no video thank goodness)

We walked across the island to check out the windward beach, but saw a large rainstorm coming, so did not stay long.

That dark cloud doesn't look good

Went to the small grocery store in town, and it was a very sad little store, with very few items, but a good selection of ice cream in the freezer, but looked a bit old.

The rain came, and we waited under a building overhang for around 20 minutes until it passed

Waiting out the rain

Walking flooded dirt/gravel road back to beach and dinghy

Goats on every island

Next day quite rainy, so just hung out on the boat.   Wednesday we headed up to Canouan.

Huge signage for the luxury marina on Canouan - very out of place in the Caribbean

We went snorkeling off of L'Ance Guyac Point.  We had snorkeled in 2013, and made notes that there were tons of fish, and even saw a Manta Ray.

  

We started snorkeling on the south side of the point, and started seeing lots of jellies.  They did not have tentacles, so we were not too worried, and didn't seem to be stinging, as there were snorkelers off of charter boats also in the water.

Spot wing comb jellyfish

As we snorkeled we would pass though clumps of these jellyfish, with close to 50 in a clump.  It got so bad it was impossible to avoid them in some spots, so you just swam through feeling their squishy bodies on your legs, hands and face at times.  Kris was not enjoying.   They got fewer as we rounded the point to the north, but the current picked up as well, and the water got cloudier, so we gave up on the snorkel, as we had not seen many fish, and mostly dead coral as well.   

At one time it was beautiful coral.  Now dead

Nice rainbow in Canouan after another squall passed.

After a boat day in Canouan with many rain squalls, we headed up to Petit Nevis, a tiny island that used to be a whaling station, but no longer.  

We snorkeled from the boat along the shore.

Mostly dead

Some still living

Had a few live sponges still

Lots of surge made getting out of the water onto the small beach difficult, and sea urchins added to the treachery, but we made it not without difficulty.   We had put our land shoes in a net bag that we hauled with us snorkeling.

On land, pretty island

Old building

View from the old dock to the anchorage area

Windward side of Petit Nevis

The island is private, so we did not explore too much, and rain was coming, so back to the boat.  The anchorage was a bit choppy, and since we had time, we upped sail, and headed to Bequia a short 5 miles away to the anchorage.

One of the Moonhole buildings on the south shore of Bequia.

Found a nice spot to anchor in Bequia.  Next day stopped to see Hahalua, who is also anchored here.  They suggested dinner that night, which sounded good.

Found a dead squid on our stern steps in the morning.  The ink stain took some scrubbing to get off.

We headed to town, dropped off our trash, and went to a few spots to get some fresh fruit and veg.  Went to dinner that night, but due to some rain squalls and high wind gusts Hahalua did not come in, but we did meet some new friends, Dave and Stephen on Stella Mari were also friends of Hahalua, and were invited to dinner.  Enjoyed dinner with them, and had a nice evening.

One weird thing going on, is that we got a sim card in Grenada to use for internet.  Supposed to allow us 45GB for a month.  It hasn't been a month yet, but we are up to 57 GB of use and it still hasn't shut off, but the phone call ability has been, and we haven't used the phone minutes at all.   The month plan is up on November 30th.  We will probably get cut off then.

We will stay in Bequia for a bit.