Painkillers, grouchy lobsters, and key lime pie.

Chef Mal has been making these overnight oats that start our days off just right. A few blueberries, a little granola, yums. 

We wanted to take a big bite out of the coast this morning, so we plotted a course from Cumberland Bay to the famous arch rock in Walliabou Bay, a first for us, like many swims this week. Once again this island delighted us. We swam through a 25-yard long natural tunnel that led to a garden-like cove. Hard and soft corals of every color. Sea fans and giant sponges. Schools of tropical fish, including the biggest bait ball we’ve ever seen in the Caribbean. And, of course, the arch made famous by the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. In the movie, pirates were hung from the arch. We saw none today, thankfully. 

This massive school of scaled herring (Harengula jaguana) was the largest I have ever seen in over 30 years of spending time in Caribbean waters. W😍W. - HP

As you might guess, the pace of life on and around this island is different from back home. It’s actually palpable. We leaned into that through the afternoon, lunched on a bean salad and grilled chicken, napped and read. Somehow I managed to get a sunburn in the shade. 

The winds picked up from the south, so we scratched afternoon plan A and hastily put together plan B, and headed for the lovely Mt. Wynne Bay, AKA Happy Hill. It’s hard not to be happy here. Palm trees sway in the breeze while crabs skitter around the black sand beach. There’s a cave and a “shelf” reef, as we call them. I’m not entirely sure how they’re formed, but the result is a hideaway for hundreds of species of marine life. We split our afternoon swim in two: one leg to the cave, where we saw tons of fish and a very big golden spotted eel. He was pretty shy, and tried to hide behind a clump of seaweed, without success. We swam at a good clip back to the yacht, and donned masks and fins to explore the shelf reef. 

When you clear your mind, dive underwater, and get up really close to a reef like this, you see a density of life like nowhere else. We see impossibly tiny cleaner shrimp, sea anemone, juvenile reef fish, marine worms, eels, lobsters, octopi, and sometimes nurse sharks tucked under the shelf taking a nap. This time, moray eels were the main show, silently screaming at us, squirming around a stand of sponge coral, or judging all the other creatures with their equally grumpy lobster pals. Solo guest Tracy often spots interesting looking creatures and calls Heather over for identification. It’s a good system. 

Back into the wind we sailed, past the little fishing villages with houses painted in all the pastel colors that are part of the scenes we dream of on those freezing February nights back in Maine. As we approached the marina we saw a flotilla of tiny sailboats, captained by children, tacking back and forth, then surfing our wake in their tiny skiffs. I mixed some painkiller cocktails (2 oz gold rum, 4 oz pineapple juice, 2 oz cream of coconut, 1 oz orange juice, shake and strain over ice, garnish with orange slice, grate some nutmeg on top) and we sipped them as the sun set. Chef Mal, now working with almost bare cupboards, put together a lovely grilled Mahi over linguini with homemade sauce, followed by key lime pie with a crust I would marry. Heather put on a heck of a slideshow.  

This wraps up week one. Tracy was our first one-guest trip in18 years of operation, and we loved every minute. She allowed us to discover new places to swim here, along with all the caves, the wildlife, and the beautiful people of St. Vincent. 

P.S. Our move to using local crews like Canyon and Mallika is paying off, they are true professionals. 

Week 2, let’s go!

Hopper

A little video tribute to the natural wonders of St. Vincent, featuring a phenomenal fish school and original audio by my boy, Finn Weafer. - HP XO