I must go back to Bequia.

One of my favorite sea captains was Capt. Archie Horka a Scandinavian gentleman who had sailed before the mast on barkentines circa 1926 around Cape Horn and was proud of his Cap Hornier status.
 One of his shipmates during those voyages was a fellow named Nils Thompson who later joined the U.S. Coast Guard retiring as a Captain and then made some money in Alaska with fishing and mail boats. He then invested his money in The Friendship Bay Hotel on the Atlantic side of the Island of Bequia in the Grenadine island chain. When Capt. Horka heard I was considering a sail thru those islands he said if we ever called at Bequia to look up his friend Capt. Thompson. As it came to pass with a short deviation we dropped anchor in Bequia harbor and with a few shipmates we took a taxi over the hill and there was the Friendship Bay Hotel up on a hill overlooking the Atlantic. It was April 1st - the high season was over - and the hotel was empty but for Thompson and a few ladies in the kitchen. He greeted us and when I dropped Archie Horka's name he had the ladies lay on a seafood spread and the beer from his cooler was cold. His dining room had a large picture window overlooking the blue Atlantic ocean with his ketch bobbing at anchor and beyond was Europe. A neighboring island was celebrating the rare catch of a whale using hand held harpoons and they had beached the whale and were cutting up the meat and blubber and the whole village came down to get their allocation - similar to a cooperative. It was a festive day for them and we took an outboard back thru the coral reef to rejoin our schooner. If you get down that way Bequia is just below St. Vincent and near Mustique where Princess Margaret of Great Britain used to hang out. So much for name dropping. A lovely part of the world.
tjs
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