We’re currently staying at Soufriere Bay in the southern part of St. Lucia. I’m sure there will be many pics later of the beautiful scenery, so I’ll just tell a quick story instead.

I was sitting at the inside table last night watching a movie on my laptop with the sliding glass door to the back open, so the breeze would flow through. It was after dark, which means that you can’t really see anything beyond the confines of the boat.

About 8pm, I hear a little noise right off the back of the boat and then someone says something like “excuse me.” I’m really not a fan of having someone (or something) sneak up on me in the dark in a new location that I’m unfamiliar with, so I hesitantly stand up and walk to the rear. I see the outline of a dinghy and the faint whir of an electric outboard engine and then I see a guy. I tentatively say “hi”, he says “hi”, and I say something like “how are you”?

He says fine and would I be able to trade a package of cigarettes for a bottle of wine. A million thoughts go through my head, like, what type of wine? Is this a fair trade? And, what the hell are you doing sneaking up on someone in the still of the night and assuming bartering is an acceptable activity?

Anyways, I mumble that I don’t have either cigarettes or wine (not really true, but I wasn’t going to part with my prized 3 liter box of wine that easily).

He kind of mumbled something in response and then closed with “OK, have a good sober evening!” Classic.

Oh, yea, star fruit. Fantastically delicious. Like a cross between an orange and a mango.

I was finally able to get some video uploaded. I’ve been trying for weeks. Hopefully this is a good sign and I’ll be able to get some more of the GoPro video up.

This video is from our time in the Tobago Cays of the turtles and rays. Also lots of starfish.

It’s a slow day in Bequia, so I thought I would post some old pics (there’s nothing better than old news). We went to get our PCR tests this morning ($185 USD per person) so we can travel to St. Lucia later in the week. We went grocery shopping. Then we did boat chores. Then we had left-overs for dinner. Exciting.

The first pic is of a flounder under our boat back in Chatham Bay. Yes, that’s a flounder. Kind of hard to see in the pic, but trust me, I know a flounder when I see one.

The second is a nice close-up of our new anchor dug into the sand in about 15 feet of water. The anchor has definitely been a winner – we drop it and it just holds. Everywhere I’ve dove on it, it looks just like this – nice and dug in. And the more you pull on it, the more it digs in. $1500 for piece of mind (and 33 Kg of welded metal).

We went for a walk on Bequia yesterday, trying to make it to the top of Mt. Pleasant, which is the tallest point on the island.

On the way back down, I walked past this tree that is growing this fruit. It looks much like grapes, except they are not round. They’re kind of lumpy-round. And it is definitely a tree, not a bush or a vine.

So there is the question for the day. The person who can tell me what they are wins a week on the boat.

P.S. One more clue – the pic below is the entire pic (the top pic is a small cropped version of the one below). In this second pic, you can see the leaves.

Yesterday we traveled from Chatham Bay on Union Island, in the southern part of the Grenadines, to Admiralty Bay on Bequia in the northern part of the Grenadines. It took us about 6 hours and was fairly directly into the wind. For the sailor, we were close-hauled at about 60-degrees off true wind direction. This creates a fairly rough ride, even though wind speeds were between 10 and 15 knots (think MPH). Seas were about 3 feet with an occasional 6 footer. Not too bad, but makes for a long day of pounding when you’re going into them.

Anyway, the pounding creates a lot of salt water spray and the entire boat obviously gets covered in salt water spray. The two pics above were taken this morning about 10AM – about 16 hours after we arrived. The salt water evaporates fairly slowly, and, even when it finally evaporates, you’re left with salt on everything. Outside, but also inside you get a mist that covers everything. Also corrodes everything.

After traveling like that, you pray for either a hose or a good rain shower to wash everything down.

Yesterday I was out doing a little cleaning of the hull to get some of the algae off (I have to do this about once a week, otherwise it gets rather thick with algae, barnacles, etc.) and I noticed these black things in the water. They weren’t swimming like fish, they were more “hovering” (kind of like a hummingbird). They were about 3 inches long, with a point on one half, a “pope hat” shape for the other half, and small eyes in the middle. Also, they didn’t have fins – top, bottom, or sides – per se. They more had these wavy appendages on the sides that just repeatedly created “sine curves” (sorry, the best analogy that comes to mind) that kept them hovering. If they had to move abruptly, it was more of “shooting” motion, rather than a “swimming fast” motion.

In the top pic you can see the shape and kind of see the appendages. The second pic has a bunch of them congregating around the keel. I took this second pic because all their eyes – the light colored spot mid-way down their bodies – stood out in the shadow. It was kind of cool and creepy at the same time.

They are called Caribbean Reef Squid.

The last pic is a sunset.

We went snorkeling yesterday here in Chatham Bay. It was pretty good, although I thought it might be better.

The top pic is of a massive school of minnows. Thousands and thousands that you could swim through. The pelicans were perched on the rocks about 4 feet away making sure I knew who’s territory it was.

The second pic is of a Porcupine Fish – I think. I thought it was a Puffer fish, but then looked it up on our chart and it says Porcupine Fish (although I didn’t see any quills, so I’m not sure why they would call it that. Or maybe I’m just wrong.)

All-in-all the snorkeling was good – I guess I’m getting spoiled – but some friends said there were schools of big fish. I guess I’ll just have to go again today. On a related note, there are fishermen in this bay periodically using their “nets from row-boats method”, so maybe there are schools of larger fish and I just don’t know how to find them.

The last pic is from days ago when we were on Mayreau. I played the drums with Righteous Bob on the top of his restaurant. Super nice guy. Told us about living on the island, his travels, his kids, his grandkids, COVID, etc. Super friendly and a great conversationalist.

We decided after the marina to go back south. We originally were thinking about going to Mustique – north, the direction we’re generally heading – but after some thought, reading, and talking to people at the marina we decided not to. Mustique is a very exclusive private island where cattle like us are highly restricted. You can hike through the salt-marsh area, stay and moor on one beach, and visit the shops in town, but you can’t go anywhere else without permission. Fine, I get it, people like their privacy (I certainly do) and don’t want others gawking.

And there was a Jazz / Blues festival at a bar on the beach coming up, which would have been fun.

But the book which we use as our guide also mentioned that the anchorage was “swelly” at least twice. Ocean swells will keep you up all night and make you seasick so we try and avoid them.

But we like the Grenadines so far and were looking to spend a little more time somewhere. Many people we met mentioned Chatham Bay on Union Island, so we decided to go back south and visit for a couple of days.

Anyways, the point of this post: this bay is very steep to the bay all the way around, as shown in the first pic. There is no good road in, no electricity, and no running water. Also, no homes built anywhere – beach bars and one 3-room “resort” on the beach, but no permanent homes in sight (you can see some of the beach bars in the background of the second pic). I don’t think I’ve seen any other bay like this.

But, the one thing it does have is cell-phone reception (LTE) – you can see the tower on top of one of the bluffs in the second pic. This has also been very regular down in the Caribbean – regular cell phone reception and everyone has a smartphone – everywhere.

So why Tom Brady? Well, I was sitting here monitoring the Bucs game last night and thinking that when Tom started playing, cell phone service and smartphones were not regular, they were just starting to come into widespread use. It is simply amazing to me, and has to be one of the fastest rollouts and transitions of technology in the history of man, how quickly pretty much the entire world has hopped on cell services.

If I had had a streaming service and if I had the money to pay for the bandwidth, I could have sat on my boat in a fairly secluded bay and live-streamed the bucs game on my large-screen TV. I don’t have a streaming service, didn’t pay for the bandwidth, and don’t have a large screen TV so I read a “live-blog” only to watch the greatest QB of all time lose in the final seconds.

But the technology is simply amazing.

The marina on Canouan was named Sandy Lane Marina. It was fairly new and very nice.

The marina consisted of a winding channel about a mile long parallelling the beach (Glossy Bay – nice Bay also), with tie-ups for boats along both sides. I think it holds about 100, but there were less than a dozen there and many were charters. Shops (yummy bakery), condos, and the fuel dock are at the entrance.

There were also slips for about 8 superyachts. About 5 were there: Steve Jobs yacht, still owned by his wife, and one of the owners of Home Depot has a boat named Dreamboat that came in last night. It was too big to fit in their slips, so it parked in front of the condos (if I owned a condo, I’d be upset that some guy ruined my view).

The second picture is of the airport terminal – thatched roof, nice touch. The airport backs up to the marina. They fly prop planes in for the cattle but the airport mostly supports private jets.

Steve Jobs, that is.