We are back in Bequia for the last day of the Bequia music festval, and to stage ourselves for or return to St Vincent. and on to Boston by air.
We left Clifton harbor for a short sail over to Chatham Harbor (still on Union Island). Chatham is a very quiet spot in the lee of the island with a few local beach bars and one development by outsiders. The development has the look of Herman Mouk's (sp?) play, "Dont stop the carnival" in which the protagonist had great ideas for improving the island, but is confronted by obstacle after obstacle, mostly cultural, until the projects grinds not to a halt, but to island time. Which may as well be a halt. The development has a couple of LARGE titki huts with a nice bar and upholstered lounge chairs surrounded by a dozen or so cinder block structures that are barely started. No progress at all in the weeks Dawn and Laure have been around.
We went to a local beach bar for dinner, When you arrive, the boat boys come out and solicit your business for buying their fish, lobster, or coming to their bars. If you do want to come to diner, they take your order right then, I guess that allows them to know what fish to keep, and which they are free to sell on the local market, Or maybe that tells them what they have to go catch.
No need to worry about getting frozen fish, there is no electricity on this side of the island. This particular bar is lit by LED lights off of batteries. Technology that was doubtless imported by the visiting yachts.
At Vanessa and Seckie's place, Happy hour is from 3 to 6, with all drinks half price. At 6 they go up to regular price which is OK since they become twice as large. Dawn and Laure swear that they saw print ads ad heard radio adds for a bar that offered 3 beers for $10EC and 4 for $15EC. The stupid tax takes many forms.
We snorkeled and read, and the next morning we sailed for 4 hours back to Bequia for the music festival. We just caught the end of the festival, and really enjoyed only one of the 3 acts we saw. But it was cheap and a nice scene for hanging out, and we ran into old cruising buddies from SV July Indian for pleasant conversation. The music was mostly popular, and we would have preferred local forms; they have become one and the same..
Dana has become the fishing soothsayer, She successfully predicted each of our two catches this trip. True to her second prediction, we caught a nice little barracuda on the way, and will have it for dinner tonight. You don't think of Barracuda as an eating fish, but we all like it's nice white flesh with a flavor of scallops.
More pictures will be posted on http://corbettgonesailing.blogspot.com
ttyl
