PETIT NEVIS

Petit Nevis is a small island, less than a couple hours sail from Admiralty Bay, where an old whaling station was. The remnants of it can still be seen along the coast line including a ramp that they pulled the whale up onto for butchering. The old wharf is evident as well but mostly under water at this point. With it's Royal Palms, rock faces and sharp incline up to a fairly dramatic peak the island was picturesque in spite of it's history that wouldn't find much favor today. John had remarked on how good the snorkeling was here and there was no doubt it was the best so far.

We had good visibility, very little swell and plenty of sunshine when we went the first time. It was ….well the pictures, again, will tell the story! It was difficult to chose what pictures to include.

John's comments I have visited this tiny island before and always found the crystal clear waters with the abundance of fish life and the paucity of charter boats attractive. But it was the first time I had seen so many squid.

My pics do not show the initial line up as they were all hanging in the water at exactly the same angle. Just like a display team.

In the last pic see if you can find the Peacock Flounder. I snapped him within a second of him alighting and he had already camouflaged himself.

Mind you the best sighting of all was a pair of odd looking fish or just possibly they could be whales. If so they were keeping a good look out for the Iron Duke and Nollie Simmonds.

Why well whaling in Bequia today is done just as it was when William Wallace, started it. The whale is hunted from an open wooden boat, like the Iron Duke, launched from the shore and powered by sail and oars, with a hand harpoon and a lot of rope.

Nollie is the last of the hand harpooners.

We will do more on the Iron Duke and the traditional Beqia built double enders.

WALKING ON PETIT NEVISAfter getting out of the water and having a bite to eat we decided to take a walk on the island.

Thanks to all the experience John has had landing with the dingy we managed to get ashore without any trouble. We pulled the dingy high on the shore and tied up to the wharf-one story up! The wharf once extended out a 100 feet ot so to allow for the cargo boats with building materials to be landed.

But nature got there first and reduced man's great plans to so much broken concrete.

We were rewarded with an interesting walk seeing an abandoned fishing camp (a mess!), a beach that was totally made of coral

that had washed ashore,

an old road that we followed for a while until it became more rock than road, and a tortoise.

The poor tortoise had plenty to tell the relatives about his afternoon. After going airborne, turned upside down with comments on his sex life and color scheme from a couple of tourists!! Last we saw him he was speeding along into the tall grass.

We saw many trees all sporting the same general shape.

Any questions about what direction the trade winds blow can be answered by a quick glance.

And 'yes' the dingy was still there when we went back to retrieve it. Always a good thing.