Admiralty Bay
Port Elizabeth, Bequia,
The Grenadines
13.00.687N
61.14.506W


We raised our main and dropped our mooring ball at 7am and together with Orpailleur, MTNest and 2 more boats from the anchorage, motored out, unfurled our jib and raced to St. Vincent. Along the way, more and more boats either joined us or were coming towards us. We felt as if we were on an invisible super highway.

The first half of the trip, Dale drove while I sat with my sail handbook and tweaked the sails, trying to get every inch of performance out of them. I’d ease the sheets, adjust the blocks, play with the twist in the sail and look for where the wind was positioned in the sail. I think it was working since we were streaking along with speeds between 7-8 kts and well over 8 kts on occasion.

Once we got to St. Vincent, we switched. I drove and Dale tweaked. When he turned the wheel over to me, he cautioned me that it had been a work out, so not to over do it. It was about this time, we came into the lee of St. Vincent and the winds died completely. I ended up sitting down, and driving with my feet. Shortly after that, we turned on the engine and motored most of the way down the island. We noted a few boats anchored in some of St. Vincent’s bays. In the past, it was well known that visitors were not welcomed. Perhaps things have changed since last year, but we weren’t stopping to find out today. As soon as we rounded the southern tip of St. Vincent on our way to Bequia, I was on my feet again and got my work out for the rest of the day.

MTNest and Orpailleur had taken a more direct route to Bequia but had run into a couple of nasty squalls. Dale had tried to side step a west setting current which ended up keeping us out of the squalls but also took us closer into the lee of St. Vincent and the long way to Bequia. Terri radioed back to ask if we were OK and promised to save some lasagna for us when we eventually showed up.

About 5:15pm, we moseyed in and dropped our anchor in about 8’ of water to the side of MTNest; we noted that Orpailleur had elected to take a mooring ball. We backed down and settled very near the anchor of another boat. Dale says he’s not comfortable with that, particularly after the other morning, so we lifted the anchor and moved further forward, dropping in about 7-8’ of water. Just to be on the safe side, Dale agreed to jump in and check things out. The anchor looked good on a sandy bottom and yes, there were some shallow spots but we appeared to have plenty of room and depth to swing in.

We took a couple of quick showers and headed over to MTNest where Terri had prepared a wonderful lasagna dinner for the 3 boats. It was especially delicious when we were all tired, hungry and didn’t have to cook it ourselves. Gerry made positively obscene sounds when she produced a cake with chocolate frosting. He is a bona fide chocoholic. We all eagerly devoured everything she placed in front of us and announced that we’d sleep well tonight after all the exercise and good food.



Photo 1: Orpailleur & MTNest heading off into the rainbow.
Photo 2: Gypsy Palace heading into Admiralty Bay, Bequia (taken by Kenmore).