Category: Cruising

Like a small green version of the Matterhorn they look great from the sea. Emergency manual furling on the foredeck is such fun on a reach – get ready for a salt shower.                                                  

As usual as we rounded the point of Admiralty Bay the wind went from 5 to 28kn. We were well reefed and the boat loved the reach up to St Vincent. The north of St Vincent is known to be a bit rough and the pilot suggests taking it close to the coast. This also gives a good reach up to St Lucia. We don’t know how we did it but we were making about 9.6 knots on the reach suggesting a strong current. The back of St Lucia was very turbulent and it was like being in a tidal

A cross between a great place and a bit of a slum it’s so small that you can’t avoid walking in circles.

All dressed for lunch. Now wrapped in insulating tape I need to find a power socket to test it on                   At least in Bequia most yachting services come to you without having to lift a finger. This includes diesel, water, laundry, lobster, beer, coke, bread and other items…also stuff fetched to order.

A successful export from Bognor Regis?

Fast food?

We believe the mothership attacked the tender as a split pin on the back stay had rotated and pierced the skin on reversing to check the anchor was dug in. Eventually the tube part filled with water and collapsed at a faster and faster rate so we had to go for a field repair. And a quick word on tenders; we made the mistake of listening to a professional and did not fit davits. This has restricted our mobility as it’s a big effort and very time consuming to keep stripping the tender down every time you want to move.

There is a strain of cruiser that seems to suffer from an onslaught of stress of mammoth proportions at the the sight of another boat in an anchorage. We witnessed this when an old British pilot cutter started checking out a bit of water in Prickly Bay. Frankly if you can sail an old gaff cutter with a monster 10m bowsprit around UK waters then you are going to know what you are doing. But we watched the owner of American yacht Mr Curly rush to the bows of his ship and start yelling at the skipper that he couldn’t

Commercial traffic is dotted all over the reefs in the Caribbean as it’s too heavy to haul off. The ship below turned up in January and is still stuck on the rocks.                                       Not in any way connected with this is the very interesting sailing vessel from Denmark that we have been alongside for the last couple of days.

                    Fishing 200 yards from the fish market – now that’s fresh.               The airport terminal         Panorama from ‘The View’ restaurant