White Island and Life Update

A belated Happy New Year to everyone as 2020 fades off into the sunset. I have been enjoying being offline for a while, sometimes social media just seems irrelevant, and I have just not been in the psychological head space to edit photos or post anything up. A lot has happened since the last post. We have left Grenada after being there for a few days short of six months. We are now up in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG). Two Covid tests and six days in quarantine on the boat waiting for results to clear into Union island, and then a sporty 30 knot sail up here to Bequia where we have been able to take some down time to celebrate Christmas and New Year with friends.

Seems we just made it in time as the day after we left Grenada they declared an outbreak of covid linked to a quarantine bubble resort throwing the whole country into partial lockdown. Since then SVG have declared Grenada high risk and have since shut down Union island as a point of entry. Feeling glad to have made it in, and now have 32 new islands and cays to explore! Just to keep us on our toes the La Soufrière volcano which is about 20 nautical miles as the crow flies to the North of us on the main island of Saint Vincent has to decided 2021 is the year to become active again. Its last activity was in 1979. This past week it has been venting gas and oozing lava building a brand-new lava cone. As a result, they have everyone on 24 hour eruption alert. So its already shaping up to be an interesting year 😉

The shot is taken of us anchored off White Island (back in the territorial waters of Grenada) with Saline Island behind it. It’s actually a sunrise shot, despite the sunset reference above. I tried to shoot the sunset the day before, but my drone caught in a stray thread coming of the headsail as I launched it from the bow. Miraculously the tiny translucent thread did not snap, rather it pulled the drone into the sail, as it wound around the rotor. The issue now being it was dangling over the water 2/3 of the way up the mast on the forestay. So we quickly scrambled to get the harness out and I headed up the mast, and then climbed across the diamond stay where I could just reach across to the drone on the forestay. Was quite tricky hanging up there to break the thread and try and deactivate the drone before it tried to cut my hand and fly off on me. By then with the sun setting and nerves frayed we called it a day. But I did manage to find the courage to launch again for sunrise the next morning to get this shot.

If you would like to learn a little bit more about my background in photography you can read the interview @photofeed did with me here.

Robert Downie
Love Life, Love Photography

_{All images in this post were taken by and remain the Copyright of Robert Downie - http://www.robertdowniephotography.com}