The Grenadines

Hello Everyone,

This is Matt. My dad says that since he did the first half of the trip my mom, Dani, and I have to do the rest.

Well, anyways, our group of friends from Rhode Island left just a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was really fun. Especially the part of having other kids around. My parents always say that I'm way too shy, because we have seen "alot" of kids on the trip, but I don't go over to meet them. Everytime we see a kid on another boat my dad says that he'll do me a favor or something like that if I go and talk to them. The idea really never appealed to me. I always just hung out with the adults that we knew (as you might guess, spending time with your sister 24:7 gets a little old). The most fun adults to hang out with were the people on the boat "Aquila" because they were always up for doing something. Everyday they would come over at 6:30 in the morning and get us out of bed and off on a new adventure. As my dad always says to them "You guys are the most energetic grandparents I know." All the other grown-ups we spend time with, even the ones that are younger, always want to sit on their boats and have cocktails all the time. BORING! OK, now back to our friends.

My friend, Cam and his family came down and chartered a Swan 65. With them was Dani's friend, Jenna. Lucky me, I got to stay on the the Swan and Jenna stayed on Calvin. I even got to SAIL on their boat, much different. Cam came with all the news from "The Real World." I think he was surprised at how out of touch I was. Dani and her friend were off as soon as she got there, disappearing in the dinghy for an hour, up in the V-birth giggling all night, you know - GIRL stuff. We spent around two days in Grenada, where we met them. Then we sailed the whole day up the coast of Grenada and to Curacao. When we got there we didn't do anything at all. Which was nice.

The next morning we motored to Sandy Island, an island off of Curacao that is all sand except for a couple of palm trees. We went into the beach and swam and snorkeled. The captain and my dad decided that it was too rough to stay overnight so we sailed to Petit St Vincent. This island is a resort basically, so there were a lot of sunburned couples with Zinc on their noses lying on the beach. That night the parents were begging us to go do something, so Cam, Dani, Jenna, and I went in to watch the steel band. When we got in, there was a security guard sitting in a chair. He asked us what we were doing and Dani said that we were going to see the band and he said that it was for hotel guests only. So we asked if we could just walk on the beach, and the guy said that he didn't want us disturbing the hotel guests. So much for that idea!

The next day all the kids went on the Swan (Jenna really didn't want to go on our boat because she got seasick the first day sailing) and my parents went on Calvin. They had to go to Union Island to clear customs. We went to the much debated Tobago Cays. We planned on staying there for the rest of their visit. That night we all went in to the beach and had an awesome beach barbecue. Tina, the cook on the Stewarts boat, is VERY talented. The next day Phil Garland and his family came. They were in St Vincent for a week on a Swan 51. We all went snorkeling on the humongus reef that surrounds all the islands. The water there was soooo clear. The rest of the time we were there we did a variety of snorkeling, hiking, swimming, and more swimming.

The Stewarts left the next day. We all posed for pictures and said our good-byes and no tears were shed. We then traveled to Mayrue with the Garlands. While we were there we went to the beach. After that we somehow managed to lose the dinghy out to sea and had to go recover it in the Temptress dinghy. We then sailed to here (Bequia) while they went to St.Vincent.

All in all the whole visit was real fun. What we can't understand is how anyone can come down on vacation and only stay for a week. We used to do it but now our perspective has totally changed. Down here, in a week, we usually collect e-mail and that is the week's project. It was strange for us to be on something like a schedule. We usually go to a place and if we like it we stay for a week, if we don't we leave the next day.

We like it so much here in Bequia we've decided to stay for another week. Then it's up to St. Lucia to meet my grandparents, aunt, and cousin. Someone else will update you next. I'll talk to you later. Matt out.