Bequia Heritage Sailing — Traditional Whaleboat Charter
Location: Belmont Road, Port Elizabeth, VC0400, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Port Elizabeth, Bequia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Bequia is the only place in the Western Hemisphere with a legal IWC-quota Aboriginal subsistence whale hunt, conducted from an open sailing boat with a hand-thrown harpoon — virtually unchanged from New Bedford methods of the 1860s — and local boat-builders still hand-carve double-ended whalers on the beach
Bequia is the only place in the Western Hemisphere where an IWC-sanctioned Aboriginal subsistence whale hunt is still conducted — from an open sailing boat, using a hand-thrown harpoon, by methods virtually unchanged from New Bedford in the 1860s. The boats are double-ended whalers hand-carved on the beach, descended from the beetle boats brought by Yankee whalers in the mid-19th century. The island's most famous whale-woman, Suni Ollivierre — great-great-granddaughter of the legendary whaler Joseph Ollivierre — curates the Heritage Museum. Charter sailing in Bequia puts you in the water next to the last community in the Americas for whom whaling is not history but present practice.
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