Heading south, and future plans

We're leaving Saint Lucia this evening (probably about midnight) for 12 hour or so sail down to Bequia, south of St Vincent - its one of the bigger Grenadine islands and is said to be lovely (and a bit less expensive than the neighbouring private island of Mustique). There is big group of tiny islands around it, some of them uninhabited and Tobago Cays (not in Tobago at all, confusingly) sound particularly lovely with a protective reef providing shelter for turtles and some great snorkelling.

We'll spend the next month or so down in the islands before moving further south to Grenada and then there's a thousand miles or so to travel further west to Panama (via the ABC islands - Arruba, Bonnaire, Curacao). Lots of Google Earth opportunities if you have a slow day in the office..

We are hoping to pass through the Panama Canal at the beginning of April so have been studying various websites with care - it sounds like a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare (and it isn't cheap) so we are pleased that our friends Sally & Mike on Jaccaranda are going through about a month ahead of us and will update us with the latest news. The Canal is obviously a major shipping route so they tolerate rather than welcome yachts and the timing of our passage will very much depend on the amount of commercial traffic going through.

Anyway, that's all ahead of us; we'll update some photos when we get to Bequia.