Turtles in Bequia

Dignity is now looking nice and clean after yesterday’s downpour. Yesterday evening was uneventful. We stayed on the boat and went to bed early. It’s warmer and more humid here than further north and that is making things a little uncomfortable. Perhaps this is a teaser for summer to come.

This morning I set off into ‘town’ to check in. I was the first one in at 8:30am and by the time I had completed the paperwork there were quite a few others behind me. Good thing I went in early. I picked up some fresh out of the oven bread and headed back to the boat.

Back on the boat I managed to Skype with John on Windancer IV who expects to be in Bequia by the weekend. No doubt we’ll bump into each other fairly soon. In a week or so he has to go back to Canada for 2-3 weeks and has asked us to keep in touch with his family. We’ll be delighted to help out as we’ll never be far apart.

We made plans with Bees Knees to rendezvous ashore to go for a walk. Helen and I went back into to town to wander around while we waited for Jim and Anne to sort things out, come ashore and check in too. I found a shop selling fishing tackle. I bought some multi strand leader to replace the stuff that’s been coming in without lures on the end. He thought it could easily be something like a kingfish chomping through my wire leader and thought the multi-strand was a good idea. I also bought a replacement lure to make up for my last loss.

Having wandered around some more we hadn’t heard from Bees Knees. I checked my handheld VHF and found the squelch too high. I lowered the setting and tried hailing them only to discover my battery was practically flat. I borrowed the port captain’s radio and still had no luck. Figuring they were adults and would work out what to do, Helen and I headed off to the Atlantic side of the island to find the turtle sanctuary. It was about 3 miles walk about in the heat. By now we were walking in the midday sun which is not the best of ideas. Nevertheless we got there and were able to see many turtles that were being reared from eggs til the age of five and a half and being released into the wild. The sanctuary also had some red legged tortoises for variety.

(Postnote: On our way back we passed by a party of cruisers heading out the way we came. Turned our two of these were Laurie and Dawn from Cat Tales whom we’d often heard on the morning net/VHF and got to know in May when we met them in Union Island.)

Back in town we treated ourselves to ice cream after our hot walk. We made one further trip into town to drop off our empty propane tank which we’ll pick up tomorrow. Back on the boat I have started replacing the leaders on the lures I have. In my Skype chat with John I learned all their success was on pink plastic squids and hand lines. Turns out I have some of those so I’m making one of those up too. Maybe I should get one of those things that allows you to put out two lures on one line. Hmmm.

Tonight we’re off to Bees Knees for dinner. They have bought some fresh fish and are sharing with us. Helen says we could be living of fish for weeks with all I’ve spent on the gear but that’s not the point is it?