Bequia, St. Vincent & The Grenadines

St. Vincent and the Grenadines are the third to last nation in our trip south.  They are a group of islands stretching over about 60 miles and have some nice reef and anchorages. Our first stop is Bequia, just south of St. Vincent itself.  We've been hit by more and more frequent rain, but in between showers we got out and rode our bikes around the island.

Along the way we visited the turtle sanctuary.  Hawksbill turtles have a couple problems facing them - one is that only about 1 in 1000 live more than a few days due to predation by sharks and jellyfish.  The other problems is that the adults don't live too long because of predation by humans.  As a result the population is obviously declining. A local fisherman who has since retired from fishing harvests newly hatched eggs, raises them until they are 5 years old, and then releases them back into the wild with a better statistically chance of surviving the sharks and jellies.  Regarding the humans, he hosts school kids and tourists in an attempt to educate the populace away from eating turtles.  The effect remains to be seen, but he's released nearly a thousand 5 year old turtles, so hopefully he's making some difference.  Incidentally, he doesn't have the support (or permission) of his government, so we're not sure how the whole thing fits into an ecological perspective, but at least it gives the turtles a shot.

We also did two dives in Bequia, in search of the elusive seahorse.  We finally saw one (and then two others) on a dive near the western end of the island.  They are super hard to find.  As a challenge I won't tell you where the seahorse is in the photo, you can try and find it for yourself.  We've been diving down the chain of islands and this is the first time we've finally seen them.  They are bigger than we thought (TWSS).

Otherwise, we did the usual logistical shuffle of clearing into a new country, trying not to get hassled at the fruit market, and stocking up on whatever we can find to eat.  There are some in-season passionfruits here, so we bought a dozen and made juice today, I thought it came out pretty good, although Kellee said it needed more sugar to avoid the dreaded bitter juice face.

Tomorrow we head off for a short trip to Canouan island and then the Tobago Cays, which we have been looking forward to for some time.

As far as the schedule goes, we'll be tying up in Trinidad on 30 May and hauling the boat out shortly after that for the hurricane season.  After a week of maintenance in dry dock, we'll fly over to France to begin our camping trip through western Europe...we're alternately excited about the trip, but sad to leave Navigator for the season, especially since we have no idea what our destination will be when we pick the boat back up in December...the USCG detailer will have to pick for us!