July 4th

It was looking a bit breezy at breakfast and those who had hoped for a swim were thinking they might be disappointed, but we should have faith, Barbara took some of the anchor chain in so that we were in more protected waters, life buoys were attached fore and aft to provide a safe swimming area and the dotty boat deployed to round up any escapees. The water was wonderful, although the same cannot be said for the diving techniques that were displayed by some of the more adventurous VC’s.

Once everyone was safely aboard once more, the rest of the chain was taken up, we weighed anchor and set sail for Bequia, population 6000.

As it was a bank holiday weekend we were incredibly lucky to get a berth behind one of the island car ferries – to say the parking space was small is an understatement – and Barbara confessed that her husband says she parks the ship better than she parks her car! It was a bit of a case of a quart in a pint pot but all was done very quickly and smoothly, and to give us all a bit of extra energy for the throwing, & hauling we celebrated US Independence day with another delicious star spangled cake.

The local constabularies of customs, police and fire were given a tour of the ship while everyone else got through a very potent Caipirinha – that’s Brazilian rum, sugar and limes – well we don’t want to catch scurvy do we?

The bunk list was put up and in no time at all every green “on ship” tag was changed to read “off ship” and 40+ crew descended on a very unsuspecting island.

Rum punches galore were consumed along with food and goodness knows (in this technological age) the amount of data gigabytes as everyone attached to Wi-Fi to check the football scores, download emails from home or Skype loved ones.