Plans change

Phoeb’s has been invited by Daniel to join him in Hawaii for her birthday. He is escaping the freezing weather in New York to work in Hawaii, where he will be in a better time zone for his McKinsey project in Australia. Sounds like a win win situation for both of them! As Hawaii is part of the US she just needs to enter the States with a negative PCR test. Luckily Mustique has a very efficient clinic, so she rushed over there to get her PCR test done. While I went birthday shopping for a present for her birthday on the 11th, and Rowan went provision shopping. We decided to have breakfast at the Sweetie Pie cafe while we waited, only to find Phoebs back in time to join us, incredibly efficient clinic. She has a flight booked on Wednesday to take her from St Vincent to Miami, so we are heading to St Vincent to drop her off.

There have been some big storms off America which have created enormous swells and a bit of wind. We went to Petite St Nevis, which is en route, as Rowan had read about good snorkelling there. We went to the leeward side of the island, the only place to anchor, which is marked up as a day anchor only, but we have read that plenty of boats overnight there. We were the only boat there and it was pretty windy and full of swells, so not a comfortable option. Rowan went and had a snorkel and said the coral was very good, but the creepy thing was all the whale bones on the seabed, as it used to be an old whaling station.

Leaving Mustique, the fuel tanker arrived and with an enormous floating pipe loaded up the island with fuel

Petite Nevis

We decided to go back to Princess Margaret’s beach on Bequia for the night. We anchored at 5pm, we needed a walk and went to the dock at Jack’s restaurant, to have a walk along Princess Margaret’s beach which we had not done last time. It is a gorgeous beach, it has a high steep cliff behind it, so besides Jack’s it has no developments along it, just a couple of ramshackle local beach bars which were all closed. We walked over to the beach on Lower Bay to try and find some of the local restaurants that we have read about. Sadly most were closed on a Monday night except for one. We had met a wizened lady, enjoying a cocktail on the beach with her dog. Turns out she is from the Transkei in South Africa. Left in 1979, when she and her hubby moved to the States, they have been coming to Bequia on holiday for the last 20 years. Her husband is still teaching in Boston and could not make it out this year as the quarantining was too difficult, but she has just retired so decided to come out anyway and has been here a month and adopted a dog that she has not told her hubby about! Poor thing was desperate to talk and we rather forced our departure as the light was fading and our tummies were grumbling.

Princess Margaret’s beach

Biggest waves up the beach that the locals have seen in a couple of years

We had a very reasonable meal at the only place open, luckily it was a lovely spot on the beach and the waitress was delightfully friendly. We were serenaded by an Englishman a bit older than us, he had a surprisingly good voice and very pleasant guitar playing. He and his wife were definitely seasoned sailors. There was an awkward moment when an American man on his own (a bit of an oik!) insisted on taking over the guitar and singing, he astounded us by having an even better voice! We left in the pitch dark, with no torch (thank goodness for phones) facing the huge waves crashing up the beach, which was our only way back to JeldiJeldi. We made it home just fine.