Caption Competition

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.

Tobago people

Saturday 17th January 2009, day 181. 10° 40’.81 N, 061° 38’.16 W. Chaguaramas Bay, Trinidad.

A few more snapshots from Tobago:

Curtis James, the island’s ice cream man, who we met when we went to Buccoo Reef for an evening’s steel band music. We’d just finished our supper of spinach soup, sweet potato and spiced fish, and there was Curtis, perched on top of his chiller box, in the back of his open pickup. “Ice cream!” he shouts. “Which one do you want, I got peanut, pina colada, or chocolate?” “You must be yachties”, he goes on. “How do you know?” He roars with laughter and points at Anthony. “Look at him, man! Look at de colour of him! He just de same colour as me.” He has a point. We had a chance to try different flavours a few days later when we were driving along the northern road – he doesn’t need a van with a tinkly tune, he just pulls his truck into a convenient turning, waits for a passing car, then stands up and bellows “Ice cream!” at the top of his voice.

The best dancer at the steel band evening was a little old Tobagan man, with thick black-rimmed glasses and a benevolent wrinkled face. He guided his partners into discreetly flamboyant steps, his hips never quite still, knees never quite straight, every accurate movement softened by a gentle swaying. His neat black trousers and brightly patterned shirt were topped off by a hummingbird-blue crocheted hat with a narrow brim, under which he smiled in a slightly solemn way. Dancing is too much fun not to be taken seriously.

Ayo is a tall, calm Rastafari, with his hair piled high in a large black and white kerchief. He has a shop in Man of War Bay which sells car parts, a few kitchen utensils, beer and fishing tackle. The door is normally open, but he’s not there, as he’s cooking in his café twenty yards down the road. And if you go in and out of the shop in an enquiring way, and poke about a bit in the stores, and generally look as if you might be thinking of buying something, he’ll send a messenger over to summon you to discuss your wants as he stirs his pots. Then he calls out to one of his friends down the street, who helps you find what you need on the shelves to attract local fish (pink, yellow and blue sparkly lures, like Barbie’s vision of an octopus, and Tooth-Proof brand wire for the traces). And then a third friend, putting down his Bible which he was reading in front of his 10 square foot shop, will show you how to tie the whole lot together, throw in some good advice, and remind you with a twinkle that if your luck isn’t in, he can always get hold of some nice fresh fish for you himself.

Trinidad

Tuesday 13th January 2009, day 178. 10° 40’.81 N, 061° 38’.16 W. Chaguaramas Bay, Trinidad.

So much to catch up on since the last proper blog … all the Cape Verdes, Barbados, Tobago. I’ll pick up where we are right now, and then see about filling in the gaps later.

It is pouring at the minute. A real tropical downpour. Water is gushing down off the sun awning, blowing across the cockpit and in through the ports. All around, people are scurrying to close hatches and vents, workers are sheltering under hulls, tools and partially varnished wood is being rushed under cover. The temperature has dropped suddenly; it is almost cool. And five minutes later, it is all over, steam is rising from the forests behind the bay, and we are getting back to a nice muggy normality, at 30°C.

Chaguaramas is a little yachting community, which has grown in 10 years from a few men repairing fishing boats to a full-blown set up with five or six different yards, and any number of contractors offering everything from sail repairs to painting to electrical work. Trinidad is just outside the hurricane belt, so lots of boats lay up here in the summer, their crews fleeing from the heat back to more temperate climates. Building on the constant level of work this provides, the bay has become both a second home for people who use their boats like fixed, if floating, cottages, and a centre for all sorts of work. We arrived here planning to spend a few days seeing the country, before setting off for the beauties of the Grenadines, but here we are a week later, with our cruising chute repaired and a new snuffer for it ordered, electricians working on the battery charging system, quotes coming in for work on parts of the teak decking, steps made to get into the forward berths, fans installed to dissipate some of the heat, loos dismantled and re-assembled, prices investigated for satellite phones, the water-maker re-wired, an appointment booked with a hairdresser, oil changes on the main engine and the generator, a thorough spring clean for Tomia, comparing the merits of the different local data phones …also there is a wifi connection which works at least some of the time, hence the re-start of communcations.

We’ve now been living on Tomia for seven months, and have covered nearly 6,000 miles; in a normal season we might achieve a tenth of that, and then have the whole winter to bring her back up to scratch. So maintenance is an ongoing task, a little bit here, a minor upgrade there, to ensure that she continues to look after us as well as she has done so far.

In addition to all this boaty stuff, we’ve rented a car and explored the island a bit, going down to the La Brea tar pits in the south, and a wonderful nature reserve in the north, with an amazing array of bird life presenting itself. 4” long iridescent humming-birds, the bearded bell bird which does indeed make a noise just like the clinking of a rather tinny bell, and any number of brightly coloured tanagers and honey creepers. We also saw 2 ft long lizards, with black and gold stripes, marching along licking their lips as they looked for crumbs that had fallen off the birds’ table – and a tree porcupine, fast asleep, but looking rather precariously balanced, on the branch of a tree (of course).

The pitch lake was fascinating, but not exactly beautiful – Noel Coward called it a bunch of tennis courts in need of re-surfacing, and that is not unfair. In fact, it looks a bit of a mess, to be honest. I’d expected a vast cauldron of liquid tar, with the odd bubble breaking the surface every now and then with a great “gloop”, but it’s just a large surface of rough tarmac. The bitumen is not spooned out with giant ladles as one might have imagined, but dug up in chunks. We walked out over the surface, a bit gingerly at first, noting a slight give underfoot, but no more than a sprung ball-room floor. Even hopping on the spot couldn’t make more than a small impression in the surface. There is a lovely clean smell though in the tarry bits, and, oddly, a pond of pink and green lotus flowers just at the edge of the tar which give off a strong smell of an over-sweet air-freshener, so the nose is more stimulated than the eyes.

We then managed to get our hire car thoroughly lost as we went down to the south coast in search of mud volcanoes (which we didn’t find, and probably just as well). I have never known any where like Trinidad for not having road signs. Even the junction of the two dual carriageways on the island doesn’t have one. Do the taxi drivers and tour guides come out at night and steal them, to discourage tourists from driving themselves around? We had three maps, which disagreed with each other, even about the location of the roads … names on the map which weren’t where they should be, places on the ground that weren’t on the map … of course, being sailors, we can, and did, navigate by the sun, and ended up bumping our way to the end of the track, through dense thickets of wild bananas and palms, with the local vultures circling overhead. There was a tiny beach, three Trinidadians, and a brown, almost salt-free sea, in which we swam. “Why is the sea so brown and the water so fresh?” we asked. “It is the River” they replied – the great outpouring from the Orinoco, only ninety miles to our south.

Christmas in Barbados

How do you celebrate Christmas if you’re a yachtie, far from home? We had loosely planned something involving a swim, a large tin of confit’d duck thighs, Christmas pudding and champagne, rounded off with rum punches in a very relaxed beach-side shack. But no, we were thwarted … in the best possible way.

Two days earlier, two slightly scruffy yachties had scrubbed up the best they could and presented themselves at the extremely colonial Barbados Yacht Club. Along with four Christmas cards we picked up … a lunch invitation for the 25th, all formally written on stiff card. The writing was familiar, if a little hard to read – was it a joke, to make us realise what we were missing? We looked at the invitation again – there was a Barbados address in the bottom left hand corner. We hardly dared believe it, but the truth suddenly dawned – two much-loved friends had decided to take their winter holiday in Barbados, to join us. I don’t expect the staff of the BYC are used to their guests getting all emotional when they collect their post, it’s not that sort of place – anyway, I sniffed, blew my nose, and rushed off to the phone to accept.

What a lovely day we had. We started off with stockings in the cockpit, with all the things that our resourceful friends and family had managed to have delivered to us, from new books to waterproof mascara. We put on our smartest shorts for the service at the Episcopalian cathedral, feeling very under-dressed compared to the Bajans in their sparkly ball gowns, and sharpest suits. Then to the Queen’s Park to hear the police band play, and to admire the state of the cricket pitch wicket. We found a taxi to take us up to our friends’ apartment to a wonderfully warm welcome, hot showers – and a washing machine at our disposal!

They had scoured the shops to find the components of a proper English Christmas, with everything from sprouts to crackers, gravy to brandy butter. And even a large collection of Braeburns, which we had been longing for ever since eating the last piece of fresh fruit, a few days out from Cape Verde. And, which we devoured almost as ravenously, English papers, not seen since La Gomera, in mid November.

Thank you both for a wonderful, totally unexpected treat, and for making our Christmas unforgettable.