Swimming Sailing Diving Carnival Bugs and Breakages

The Heritage falls at Walilabou are an ideal opportunity to really get the salt out of my hair.

But Bequia gives a chance to watch the local kids sailing. Up until now I have seen them in Oppies and Lazers with the odd outing in a J24 but I was realy pleased to see that the sail training organisation has acquired 2 of the iconic ' two bow ' boats that were used for fishing and local transportation but are now raced. There is no keel and no ballast, the only thing that keeps them upright is crew weight correctly placed.

Much of the local fishing is done using live bait. This is sometimes kept in a net suspended between a couple of boats anchored in the bay. Boobies are no boobies and they know an easy lunch when they find it.

Mud dauber wasps are always on the look out for nooks and crannies for their nests, but we had a very strange build job on one of the solar panel junction boxes. The wasps somehow built a spike about 29mm long and less than 0.5mm in dia. They then constructed a ball of mud on the end. I could find nothing like this on the net.

Last but not least the Friendship Rose is out of commission with a broken main mast. They have ordered new masts of Douglas Fir from Scotland and shipwrights are working on the cross trees and other mast furniture on the beach under the shade of palms.

















It is Carnival and the Juve parade was held starting at dawn on Monday. I give this parade a miss as local ladies delight in teaching old white men to dance in particular to "wine". This consists of a couple leaning against each other, with rhythmic gyrating and grinding. Another reason for skipping Juve is the custom of throwing buckets of mud all over each other, painting everyone with big paint brushes, and generally having a wild time. Been there done that. In past years the young men would cover themselves with old engine oil and run through the crowds, having a really dirty time. The childrens Carnival has parades and costumes of sequins, feathers, and bright colors which attract an enthusiastic audience. They dance along, doing their own thing, or mimicking the adult groups they have seen. The principal of one of the local schools made headlines by insisting that in their school group, there could be chipping, or dancing, but absolutely "no wining" would be allowed.