Bequia

We had a very nice sail over from Barbados. As we left in the evening it meant normal watches and arrive there at about 9 am. On my watch that night it was very starry and clear as I watched Barbados disappear into the night. There were a few big container ships around but all were heading for land. Then looking around with the night vision scope I spotted another ship. It was hard to tell which direction it was going so I watched it for a bit, often going down to check the A.I.S but it was a bit too far out and the A.I.S did not have it showing. When it finally did show it was coming straight for us on a collision course. I straight away got Dale out of bed and he had to radio them up to ask for them to change course.

We arrived at Bequia on time in Admiralty Bay. It was a very popular place for sail boats and there were about 75 – 100 sail boats there. We anchored a bit further out from the other boats. As soon as we were anchored Blyth and I set to pumping up the big dingy with our foot pump. It took forever! Once that was done and the motor was put on we set Dale off to go and do customs and immigration.

We went for our first dive that afternoon on the northern corner of Admiralty Bay. It is called Devils Table. It is where I did all 3 of my dives. The first 2 dives we started on a pretty boring wreck on an old fishing boat which was just off the main reef. But nearly all the way around it were meadows of sea grass which had little colonies of fish living in them. Then we would get to lots of these boulders which were covered in coral and fish. We saw Garden eels, cow fish, parrot fish and lots more really cool stuff. The last dive I did was on and beside the Devils Table its self. It was a very nice dive. There were lots of really cool fish there but the best thing I saw was a yong little turtle. He let us swim right up to him and then swam straight towards me. It even let me touch it.

One of the days Bryony, Blyth, Tim and I got a taxi and went to the other side of the island (the windward side of the island). The first thing that we did was go to a turtle sanctuary and see what they were doing there. It was very interesting how they collected the turtles as they went down to the sea from their own private beach and then place them in their own sanctuary. After six years they are released back into the wild off the same beach and then the same turtles will come back to the same place to lay their eggs and so on. It is a long term project but they have already increased the percentage of the turtles by a good margin in that area.

On the beach transect side of things we had a similar answer. Lots of plastic on the windward and very clean on the leeward side. The beaches are like the perfect tropical island beaches that you might imagine, white sands, turquoise seas.

Having a really cool time and I can’t believe that it is really over. Just St. Lucia to go.