11/6 Tuesday

Got up early and my wife and I repeated the hike I did the day before to the northern part of the island. We stopped at the bakery again for breakfast items. Today was scheduled to be a "race" between the flotilla boats back to the anchorage in Bequia. I still wanted to show my family the wreck I found the day before and we hoped to make a stop at Petit Nevis, so at the risk of being a wet blanket I bowed out of the race. I'm really not that much into informal races anyway and my crew even less.

We really liked Mustique and I'm sure we will make it a stop next time we visit these islands.

We headed out in the dinghy together and after some searching I found the wreck again. I wanted to be able to dive without the dinghy drifting away, so I tied the dinghy anchor rode to the end of the painter and dropped the anchor on the deck of the wreck behind a hatchway, where I hoped it would stay put. We snorkeled the wreck and made a foray into the shallower waters of the shoal. It is certainly a large area to explore and we saw some nice sized schools of fish.

Returning to the boat, we left our mooring and headed for the passage between Isle a Quatre and Petit Nevis on a somewhat bouncy beam reach. Dropping anchor at Petit Nevis, we snorkeled the reef to the north of the anchorage which was very nice, with lots of colorful coral and plentiful fish. Definitely one of the better spots we found on the trip.
After lunch, we hoisted anchor and put up the headsail only for a dead run to West Cay at the tip of Bequia. We again saw the wrecked cargo ship and the cave houses and from there motored directly upwind to Princess Margaret beach where the other boats were already anchored.

It wasn't until I got back from the trip and re-read some old threads that I realized this was the spot where a visiting yachtsman was shot on his own boat. In hindsight, this is very hard to imagine and the circumstances must have been very different from the anchorage in which we found ourselves - surrounded by other boats - it didn't seem to warrant the slightest concern.

A group dinner (the last) was planned at the Devil's Table restaurant. Seated around a large improvised table, the flotilla group had the entire restaurant to themselves. The "catch of the day" was salmon, which raised a few eyebrows. Some of the group ordered it and declared it entirely unlike the salmon they were accustomed to at home.
I had the $20 Caribbean hamburger special, which I did enjoy. Once my 13 year old son had endured all the geriatric hijinx he could stand, we paid up and made our way back completely across Admiralty Bay back to our boat, an anchor light needle in a haystack of lights.

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