Attack of the killer bees

A couple of days after our family had gone home we decided to clear out and head for Trinidad which was about 65 miles away. We left at around 4am in the morning so we could make it there by day light. We were having a really fast sail and everything going really well until about 11.30am when we starting getting attacked by the vicious psycho bees. I know can you believe it. We are out at sea (at least 10 miles of the coast) minding our own business when a few bees flew into the cockpit. At first we thought nothing of it, but they were a bit scary cos they looked a bit nuts and were flying around very frantically. A few more landed on the boat so we started to kill them by rolling up and newspaper and squishing them. All cool we thought, until an hour later and we were running up and down the boat, shit scared, killing bees left right and centre. We killed way over 100 bees. It was absolutely horrible. I’m really not fond of them anyway to say the least but there were so many. They kept landing on us and going crazy. A couple flew up Sym boxer shorts and landed on his go- nads and one piece of work flew down my bikini bottoms and stung me and my ass cheek. Sym went down stares to get us some protective clothing and came up with the tightest spandex shorts he could find…he looked hilarious. We can still not figure out what they were doing out there so far from land, but i'm just grateful we starting killing them when we did, otherwise we would have been completely swamped. Shackles was not much help wither she was just lying there watching us getting stung! It sucked really and turned an enjoyable sail into hard bloody work.

Anyway our ETA was after 4pm so we decided to anchor up in Scotland Bay instead of going into the main anchorage t avoid paying overtime fees in customs and immigration which are quite expensive. The anchorage was amazing. It was so picturesque. There were only a couple of boats and we were surrounded by the rainforest, it was so peaceful and quiet expect for the howler monkeys you could hear in the trees. It was the first time we could hear them and they were so noisy it was unreal. They sounded like were wolves or something in that mean, run for your life category. We spent the afternoon fishing on the boat and then were accompanied by these massive bats circling the boat in the evening. At first I was quite frightened, but I learned to respect them as they were doing me a favour and eating all the horrible million of mosquitoes and bugs that were driving us crazy.



The next morning we departed and motored on round to the chaguramas where we did our usual check in stuff. The anchorage was rubbish: really windy and choppy and the water was crappy. We decided to go the bar with free wifi and suss out the scene. We made friends with the local bar maid who told us that her brother got murdered a few month back because his son was bullying another mans child so the father came over to his house and shot him in the face. Can you believe that, over something so stupid? I mean things like this happen between children all the time – its part of growing up but to murder someone over that is crazy.

Sym wanted to try and get some work working on peoples boats, but after chatting with the locals we found out that things were so quiet there and there was no work going around!!