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Send me an email with your caption - the best one gets immortalised on the blog, and wins a prize ... not sure exactly what it is yet, but it will come from the Caribbean and be small and light.

St Vincent

Sunday 8th February 2009, day 204. 13° 14’.84 N, 061° 16’.27 W. Wallilabou, St Vincent

We left the peace of Bequia and sailed the ten miles up to St Vincent, the capital island of this group. We realised pretty quickly that we were in a different place, as soon as we got into a maxi (a shared minibus taxi / bus), and were hurtled off to our destination: probably Kingstown, unless it turned out to be a premature arrival at the pearly gates. The road along the south coast is as full of steep bends as the Nice Corniche, and they are navigated by the maxis with verve, faith and a nice appreciation of centrifugal forces.

Up in the hills behind the coast, the landscape is a stunning mixture of harsh volcanic ridges, covered with lush forest, and, in the valleys, cows, goats and fields of beans and bananas. We ended up at the Montreal Gardens, where a New Zealander, Charles Vaughn, has created a beautiful tropical garden. So many plants there we recognise from the UK, whether struggling as annuals in borders, or sold for vast amounts in florists. Here they are all in their natural environment, ten times the size we are used to seeing them, bursting with life and colour.

St Vincent has an unfortunate, and probably undeserved, reputation among yachties for aggro and violence, so we tread carefully here, and are less adventurous than we have been elsewhere. We wanted to walk up the side of La Soufriere, its 3,000 ft volcano, which is said to have a precipitous crater – last active in 1979 – but given that there have been a couple of attacks on its slopes, decided to take a guide – which would have cost US$125 – far more than we can afford. So we didn’t go at all, and the maxi drivers and the owners of the village shops where we would have bought our lunch and cold drinks all lose out – as of course do we.

Which meant instead we went up the coast to the world famous Wallilabou bay. World famous? You’ve never heard of it? Perhaps not, but you may well have seen it: look again at the photos at the top of the blog … think of Johnny Depp … yes, the Pirates of the Caribbean series was filmed here. All the scenery they built has been left here: backless warehouses which from behind are only held up with scaffolding, a pile of coffins, a gibbet …

For better photos than I could take, see http://www.wallilabou.com/pirates.html

As some of the only people in the world who haven’t seen any of the films, all of this was a bit lost on us, to the great disappointment of the boat boys, who in between trying to persuade us to pay them to take us to visit a tiny waterfall five minutes’ walk away, or to buy a block of ice that would fill our fridge, wanted us to spot which of them had been extras in the film so they could sell us their autographs.

It took a while for it to sink in, but once they realised we genuinely hadn’t seen the film, a consensus developed – there would have to be a showing, for us, that night. So later on that evening, you would have found us in that salubrious eaterie, Ronnie’s Golden Spoon, nibbling plantain crisps, and then feasting on grilled tuna and chips, avidly watching the 18” screen six foot above our heads, on which pirates cavorted gleefully, ignoring the chattering of Ronnie’s friends who had come to see the show, standing in a deep circle behind our two seats.

The film was a hoot, much funnier than we’d expected, with the doe-eyed Johnny Depp coming through blood and thunder with his eyeliner and mascara unscathed, but it all went at such a pace that we still couldn’t honestly say we recognised anybody, or even anything from the village. We’ll just have to watch it again.

Mustique

Monday 2nd February 2009, day 198. 12° 52’.81 N, 061° 11’.41 W. Britannia Bay, Mustique

This comes to you from a mooring just off Basil’s Bar, where the last days of Mustique’s annual blues festival are playing out. The music is drifting across the water to us, competing with the shrilling of cicadas and tree frogs. One of the regular showers has just sent us back below briefly, but at least it has rinsed today’s salt out of the bathing costumes.

We approached Mustique with some trepidation, given its reputation for being the haunt of beautiful and rich people, neither of which we are. We found a lovely island, manicured of course, but built up in a very restrained way, and whose denizens may well be better off than us, but are certainly no slimmer or more gorgeous (rather the reverse, says Anthony loyally).

One change is that the size of our neighbours has shot up. Tomia has got used to being outclassed by 100’ boats, with “garages” in the back that contain jet skis or lasers – in Mustique we are cosying up to something that carries a power boat and a full-sized yacht side by side on its aft deck. And by full-sized I mean a yacht whose mast needs four spreaders – we are not talking 25’ here. At the stern, where we have a bathing ladder and newer boats have a bathing platform, she has a lido, complete with sun loungers and two beach umbrellas. How the other 0.001% live!

The island is tiny; even in the midday sun we can cross it in half an hour, and that includes climbing up to its 400’ peak. It boasts two lagoons, a month’s worth of white sandy beaches, an air strip for six seater planes, two nature trails, a riding stable and a tennis club, and a hundred or so discreetly opulent houses. The whole is very – and surprisingly – charming. All the houses are tucked away behind long twisting drives and thick hedges of bougainvillea, jasmine or a broad swathe of indigenous forest, so the visiting yachtie, the only person walking on the narrow concrete roads (locals move around in little golf carts, offering us lifts) is only really aware of the island’s natural beauty, the birds, flowers and butterflies, and the stunning beaches and turquoise sea.

Clearly a lot of work goes into keeping the whole place neat and tidy. We pass people strimming grassed areas, blowing leaves off drives and raking beaches. Hedges are trimmed, rubbish is cleared, lawns are mowed. It’s slightly disconcerting to find a beach where the waves are too strong to be able to swim – everything else on the island is so perfectly tuned to the guests’ enjoyment.

We find little picnic tables shaded with grass-umbrellas on the beaches and at viewpoints, placed by the island’s management company. Perspex sleeves carry signs indicating if the table has been booked by a particular villa. At a table further down the beach, staff are unloading and serving a picnic (well more a déjeuner sous l’herbe) to a party of ten, the grass umbrella wreathed with bunches of fresh flowers, which will only last an hour or so in this heat. We open our rucksacks and pull out a tupperware box of sandwiches, a bottle of water and two apples, and are quite content.

It may appear wilfully naïve, but part of the pleasure of the island is that it doesn’t seem commercialised. Of course this is nonsense in one way: the whole place is about, and is funded by money, great wodges of it. But apart from the few shops, the fish market and the vegetable stall in the tiny village, the island is apparently unspoilt. No street lighting, no telephone cables, no garish beach-side developments.

There are such contrasts: each house is a pocket of ultra built up-ness (and we can only guess at the private cinemas, marble baths, air conditioning and vast stainless steel kitchens) but all we are aware of are these lovely stretches of wildness, the beaches, the rocky headlands, the mangrove swamps and the forests behind them. Up on the north east corner, we walked in rocky scrub without seeing a soul; with the windswept views out to the Atlantic, and the harsh landscape it might have been the Outer Hebrides (if it wasn’t for the cacti – and the fact that we were probably picked up on someone’s infra-red security system).

Bequia

Wednesday 28th January 2009, day 193. 13° 30’.33 N, 061° 14’.56 W. Port Elizabeth, Bequia, St Vincent and the Grenadines

We finally finished all the things we had to do to Tomia in Trinidad, released our new cruising chute snuffer from Customs, and set off on the short hop to Bequia.

There were masses of American boats in Chaguaramas, and they were a bad influence on Tomia, who got rather mistressy. I would catch her whispering to Anthony and fluttering her eyelashes like mad.

“Oh darling, I was just talking to Willow. She’s such a pretty boat, and much younger than me.” Giggle. “Oh darling, you’re just saying that. Do you really think so? You are so sweet.” Pause. Casually: “Anyway, darling, Willow’s got air conditioning. It’s wonderful, so cold and fresh. She says it hardly cost anything at all. Well, no, I know, darling. Yes, of course we’ve got to be careful, you’re quite right. But I know how difficult you find the heat.” And then, allowing a flicker of breeze to run across her foredeck and ruffle his hair: “Of course, you know darling, I was only thinking of you …” We left just in time.

A short hop to Bequia, I said, well in fact it is about 140 miles, taking us just over 24 hours. We went up the windward side of Grenada and the Grenadines, motor sailing most of the way with a nice 4-5 coming from the north east. We arrived in Bequia at around midday, just time to have a nap and get ready for the first evening of the annual jazz festival.

The festival was brilliant – a real mixture, everything from steel pans to heavy rock (the sort where the lead guitarist throws himself round the stage contorting his face during 5 minute solos, just as if he were playing air guitar in his bedroom in Pinner), via Bequian country and western (totally feel-good), and a bit of blues. I didn’t recognise any of the names – perhaps you will know them – the memorable ones were Toby Armstrong (air guitar), Julien Brunetaud (French pianist, just like a young Jules Holland), Dana Gillespie (jazz singer, mature but still rocking in size 18 leopard print two piece), Ian Seigal (playing the mad bad and dangerous to know rôle, in a black shirt with skull and cross bones, white wasted face, and so out of it that the band were exchanging looks the whole time “Do you have any idea what he’s gonna do next?” “Not the foggiest, but I’ll watch him like a hawk, just in case he decides to change key suddenly again”) and finally Mike Pearce (round glasses, straight floppy badly cut hair, deeply lined face that could be age or a hard life, saxophonist and harmonica, and probably most other wind instruments, and a general air of never having quite got as much limelight as he deserved). We danced till early morning, negotiated the dinghy and beach without mishap, slept most of the day, and, highlight, Anthony got offered some dope for the first time in his life. He was thrilled, reckons he’s not quite past it yet – but if you can’t get offered dope on a beach at a Caribbean music festival …

The weather here is – well, there’s plenty of it. Mostly boiling hot sunshine, but a couple of times a day a downpour blows in, and we charge round closing hatches, and hanging out any salty clothes for a good rinse. The past day or so has been very windy, and last night found us at midnight trying to get the sun awning down in gusts of 30 knots, getting soaked through, but luckily we only had our skins on, which dry nice and quickly.