{"id":70,"date":"2007-01-27T02:49:41","date_gmt":"2007-01-27T02:49:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/2007\/01\/27\/ricky-and-leon-visit-sabbatical-iii\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T17:03:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T17:03:14","slug":"ricky-and-leon-visit-sabbatical-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/?p=70","title":{"rendered":"Ricky and Leon visit Sabbatical III"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\">\n.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }\n.flickr-yourcomment { }\n.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }\n.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }\n<\/style>\n<div class=\"flickr-frame\"><a title=\"Overlooking the harbor by markmpitt, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/sabbatical3\/2262011776\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"Overlooking the harbor\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2405\/2262011776_ccd99f99ae.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"flickr-frame\"><span class=\"flickr-caption\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/48817769@N00\/370392750\/\">Ricky and Leon visit Sabbatical III<\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n<p class=\"flickr-yourcomment\">Bequia and Passage to Tobago Cays with Leon and Ricky<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday night, swells entered Admiralty Bay, Bequia and<br \/>\nthe boat rolled uncomfortably all night.  First thing in the<br \/>\nmorning, we picked up anchor and moved from our picturesque<br \/>\nlocation off of Prince Margaret&#8217;s Beach to a more protected<br \/>\nlocation off of Point Peter on the north side of the bay.  We<br \/>\nspent the morning doing some boat maintenance and cleaning<br \/>\nbefore McCarthy, our water taxi driver from 3 years ago, picked<br \/>\nus up to take us to town (Port Elizabeth).  We did the check-in<br \/>\nat Customs and Immigration, bought some fruit at the Rasta<br \/>\nMarket, and then bought 3 hours of time at the Lenroc internet<br \/>\ncafe and tried to catch up on email and the news.  We had a<br \/>\ndelicious and cheap supper at a local Creole restaurant called<br \/>\nPorthole.  The next morning (Tuesday) I spent some time with the<br \/>\nfloor boards up trying to figure out the source of a persistent<br \/>\nleak of sea water in the forward compartments of the boat, while<br \/>\nLaura prepared the boat for the visit of her brothers.  At 1 pm,<br \/>\nMcCarthy picked us up and delivered us to &#8220;Indian&#8221; and his<br \/>\n&#8220;Faithful Taxi&#8221;, a pick-up truck with seats and a sun cover in<br \/>\nthe back, for the ride to the airport.  Ricky and Leon arrived<br \/>\non an incredibly small plane from Barbados and got hung up in<br \/>\nCustoms for a few minutes over the Chemex drip coffee pot and<br \/>\nassorted other stuff they were bringing to us. After big hugs,<br \/>\nwe showed them the boat, went for a swim, and that evening we<br \/>\nhad supper at Gingerbread House.<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday, after adding the boys to the crew list at Customs<br \/>\nand Immigration and visiting the Rasta market, we went on a tour<br \/>\nwith Indian.  He went out of his way to show us some of the<br \/>\nunusual &#8220;highlights&#8221; of Bequia such as the power plant, the road<br \/>\nleading to a church, the solid waste disposal site, the gravel<br \/>\npit, his wife, an old fort with five cannons and a t-shirt<br \/>\nseller, before finally arriving at Hegg Turtle Sanctuary.  We<br \/>\nwere the only people there except for the guide who only told<br \/>\nhow old turtles were in each pool.  We ended the tour with a<br \/>\ntrip up Mount Pleasant which had beautiful views in all<br \/>\ndirections.  We actually loved the tour, appeciated the<br \/>\nidiosyncratic tastes of our guide, and found the island to be<br \/>\nbeautiful.  After a late lunch, we did some major provisioning<br \/>\nat the Rasta market and one of the stores in town.  We shlepped<br \/>\nall our goods to the dock where &#8220;Good Choice&#8221; took us and our<br \/>\ngoods back to the boat.  While on the boat, we saw a pod of six<br \/>\nsting rays swimming in  formation while occasionally breaking<br \/>\nthe surface.We watched the sunset and saw the &#8220;green flash&#8221;<br \/>\nbefore going back to shore for supper at the relatively upscale<br \/>\nFrangipangi.  On the way to town, a sting ray leaped three feet<br \/>\nout of the water with its wings spread wide.<\/p>\n<p>Thursday we had a great sail to the Tobago Cays.  The seas<br \/>\nwere down and the winds were moderate, and the &#8220;boys&#8221; did not<br \/>\nsuffer from any seasickness as we had feared.  It was intensely<br \/>\nhot as we anchored in front of Horseshoe Reef, and we went below<br \/>\nto have lunch and rest while out of the sun.  At 3:30 we put the<br \/>\ndinghy into the water, dropped the outboard onto the transom,<br \/>\nand went off to snorkel the reef.  The water was crystal clear,<br \/>\nand the coral and fish were spectacular.  We ate on the boat and<br \/>\nwent on deck to watch the moon and the stars.  Leon and Ricky<br \/>\nthought it was the most beautiful night yet.  This morning<br \/>\n(Friday), we snorkeled the reef again and then spent a couple of<br \/>\nhours in the afternoon dropping and folding the 110 % genoa<br \/>\nsail, and replacing it with the much bigger 155% genoa sailin<br \/>\npreparation for our upcoming passage to Bonaire.  The biggest<br \/>\nproblems were folding the sail on the deck (which was<br \/>\naccomplished on the second try), and hauling the big sail out of<br \/>\nthe forward sail locker.  In unrolling the big sail out of the<br \/>\nsail bag, where it had been since September, we found Ben&#8217;s<br \/>\nsandal which mysteriously went missing on the day he helped me<br \/>\nput that sail away. After it was up and furled on the headstay<br \/>\nwe all clapped and hugged, as did the people on the boat next to<br \/>\nus.  As we finished the delicious meal that Leon prepared this<br \/>\nevening, the wind gusted up and a series of strong squalls swept<br \/>\nthrough the anchorage.  We sat in the cockpit as the rain pelted<br \/>\ndown and told stories.<\/p>\n<p>One of the most interesting characters we have met so far is<br \/>\nMcCarthy, our water taxi guy in Bequia.  When you pick a water<br \/>\ntaxi in Bequia, that person has proprietary rights over all<br \/>\nsubsequent transactions including tours, land taxis, and boat<br \/>\nservices.  It was McCarthy who set us up with &#8220;Indian&#8221; for the<br \/>\ntrip to the airport and the tour of the island, and it was<br \/>\nMcCarthy was brought us home baked banana bread in the morning.<br \/>\nHe insisted that we only use his taxi services, which we were<br \/>\nhappy to do.  One evening we called him on channel 68 and<br \/>\nanother taxi responded saying McCarthy was home resting and that<br \/>\nhe was his cousin and had been delegated to transport us.  It<br \/>\nturns out that this was a lie and he had stolen McCarthy&#8217;s<br \/>\ncustomers.  Later that night when we went to call the &#8220;cousin&#8221;<br \/>\nfor a ride back, McCarthy came storming in to tell us that the<br \/>\nother taxi was an impostor.  On more than one occassion, we have<br \/>\nseen driver taxi drivers shouting at each other for poaching<br \/>\ncustomers, which is rather unpleasant for the customer.<br \/>\nMcCarthy is a very emotional person with a distinctive deep<br \/>\nvoice that occasionally turns into a whispered falsetto while<br \/>\ntelling us a story.  While driving us to or from &#8220;Sabbatical<br \/>\nIII&#8221;, he suddenly slows his boat down and leans forward to tell<br \/>\nus a story in his Creole inflected English.  He is like a<br \/>\nShakespearean actor as he relates his tale, acting out the parts<br \/>\nwith expressive body language.  His eyes fix on us while doing<br \/>\n30 knots without lights through the crowded anchorage.  (We<br \/>\nfigure he knows what he is doing &#8212; after all he is a<br \/>\nprofessional).  On the last trip to town, he told us a story<br \/>\nabout coming eye-to-eye with a huge whale while taking his small<br \/>\nboat to St. Vincent.  This was almost a religious experience to<br \/>\nMcCarthy and he did not hold back in telling us details about<br \/>\nhis run in with the whale, the meaning of the ocean in his life,<br \/>\nand how the sea cures pus filled sores and makes one a strong man.<\/p>\n<p>Tomorrow I hope to put our new crew to work helping us clean<br \/>\nthe boat under the waterline, as well as snorkeling the Tobago<br \/>\nCays reefs.  We are hoping that Ricky remembers to duck his head<br \/>\nin the companionway and under the boom as a large goose egg has<br \/>\narisen on his head from at least a dozen hard knocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ricky and Leon visit Sabbatical III. Bequia and Passage to Tobago Cays with Leon and Ricky On Sunday night, swells entered Admiralty Bay, Bequia and the boat rolled uncomfortably all night. First thing in the morning, we picked up anchor and moved from our picturesque location off of Prince Margaret&#8217;s Beach to a more protected &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/?p=70\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Ricky and Leon visit Sabbatical III&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21,1],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-caribbean","category-other","tag-caribbean"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabbatical3.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}