We leave around 10 am with Chessie. The rain hasn’t let up in the night and the morning is grey and drizzly, turning to real heavy stuff as we leave the bay.
The sea is a bit lumpy and uncomfortable but the wind is in a relatively good direction and we put the genoa out and motor sail. It’s only a 13-mile passage but it still takes us nearly three hours giving Moe plenty of time to peel all the potatoes.
Last night it was decided that as the weather was forecast to continue to be grotty, and there was no real rush to get to St Lucia, we would stop off for a night at Wallilabou (isn’t that a fantastic name?) on the west coast of St Vincent. This is the main location for one of the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movies. We have never spent time on St Vincent and it is not thought of as a particularly safe haven for yachts, but going in with another yacht and with five on board, we thought it would be OK. I am so glad we do.
As we enter the bay, boat boys come at us from all directions. Chessie is already tying up and has three such boats in attendance. I sigh with resignation – I hate being hassled especially when I am still trying to deal with the boat. Mike rejects all the mooring balls as he thinks they look a bit dodgy and tells me to put the anchor down while he reverses the boat towards the shore, intent on attaching a stern line to the shore. Enter Joel Browne. He is the only one who seems to know what he’s doing at this point. Moe ties together two of our long hurricane lines and Joel takes them ashore and ties them to a huge rock. He comes to talk to us and explains that he is working with the government and tourist industry to try to ‘educate’ the boat boys into not hassling the yachts immediately they come in. He’s got his work cut out!
The bay still has some of the film sets from ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, a bit dilapidated now, but interesting all the same even though we discover that some of them are only facades. Moe organises a little walking tour with Joel for later on in the afternoon.
Ashore we meet up with Joel and go for a walk to the waterfall. On the way he tells us about the experience of having a huge film crew on locations there and how the full set (most of which has been destroyed by the elements) took 6 months to build. The remains are looked after by the locals to encourage visitors to the area and houses a museum of sorts (mainly filled with old radios, sewing machines and telephones for some reason).
It’s only a half hour walk to the waterfall. The land all around is lush and green and now that the government has sold small plots off to individuals, we can see little areas being cleared and cultivated. Joel points out all the fruit growing and is generally very informative. He knows his St Vincent. As we walk, cars streak past us occasionally, coming so close we have to jump into the verges to avoid them. They are mad drivers here and like in Grenada, many of the men still walk around with machetes.
We pass an amazing garden filled with iron works and sculptures. We meet Junior, the guy who makes them just as decorations for his garden, out of old bits of engines and other scrap metal. Some of them are really good.
When we get to the waterfall, Bev and Stuart go in. Joel explains that because there has been so much rain, the pool is not as deep as usual as stones and sand has been brought down from the hills and filled the pool up. It is usually chest high but now only comes up to Bev’s thighs. She does her familiar wet hair flip.
On the way back Joel picks us some nutmegs enclosed in their bright red webbing of mace and the outer ‘fruit’. They are beautiful.
We arrive eventually back at the black sand beach, meeting Anthony (The Shadow) Edwards at his restaurant shack on the way through. What a character. This scrawny little man with bright, shiny intelligent eyes chatted away to us in six different languages, going from one to the other. Obviously I could only understand the English and French but could recognise the others enough to know that he could speak them well.
We stop to look at the ‘museum’. In one of the buildings there is the filming schedule for all the different scenes, along with photos of all the cast members and plans for the film sets. It’s really interesting but everything is covered in dust and it’s dark so difficult to see everything.
I can see that the dinghy has gone from the boat and know that Mike has gone for happy hour with the crew from Chessie so we all go to the Anchorage Restaurant to join them. Joel comes too and over a couple of bottles of Guinness, he chatters to Mike about his sailing experience (he has skippered for Barefoot Yacht Charters). He ends up leaving for a while but comes back with some Sunset rum for him, which at 85% alcohol, would probably strip paint. Frighteningly, the label on the back, instead of giving a government health warning, says flammable liquid, do not open near a flame!
We head back to the boat after a couple of drinks and finish off the marlin that Joe and Jared caught. We leave in the morning for St Lucia. I hope our warp is tied onto the shore securely!
Our position is: 13 deg 14 min N, 61 deg 16 min W
Distance so far: 24654 nautical miles
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