Dead Men Tell No Tales!

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The island of Saba is forbidding and steep, a natural fortress, and so the island became a private sanctuary for smugglers and pirates. The most notable native Saban pirate was Hiram Beakes, who famously quipped, “Dead men tell no tales”.

Saba has had a chequered history, having been French for 12 years, English for 18 years and Dutch for 345 years.

We got to Saba in the early afternoon and discovered the wind pretty well swirls around the island – when its blowing there is no lee shore – the wind tends to bend around the west coast. Saba is pretty impressive on approach with steep cliffs dropping off into the ocean.It is a challenging spot to go to. It’s just a big volcano that comes straight out of the ocean, with no natural harbours anywhere.

We came around the northern end and past Ladder Bay. Out came the binoculars to spy on Elsa, a once impressive 150T super yacht who was up on the rocks having broken free of a Marine Parks mooring 5 or so nights ago when Gloria was there. Our Barbados 50 friends Kirakou had come to grief in this same bay, having wrapped the mooring line around their twin keels and chafing through, ending up also on the rocks. By the time we got there, Kirakou had been refloated and put on a barge to be hopefully fixed up.

We passed by around the corner to the main “port” of Wells Bay.  There’s some mooring buoys, both in the Marine Park and at of Wells Bay, but we chose to anchor n 20m of water and quite a swell. Safely anchored, we went and checked in, paying the customs fees and the Marine Parks fee that is mandatory.  We then retired to the one and only bar in Wells Bay and had a great chat with the local Spanish bar owner and the local fishermen, who filled us in on their version of the Elsa saga.

Next day it was off in a taxi for a bit of an island tour. We went up “The Road That Couldn’t Be Built”, as its name implies it is a road from Wells Bay to a town called The Bottom that the Dutch authorities said could never be built, but that didn’t deter a local who did a road building correspondence course and got the job done. True Story!!!  

We continued on up the road to another picturesque town called Windwardside before ducking over to see the spectacular and somewhat scary airport that looks like the deck of an aircraft carrier. We did a short hike through some impressive rain forest before heading back to Windwardside to book our diving for the next day, our main reason for coming to Saba There’s a good walk to the tallest part of the island which we passed on but next time it looks like something we should do.

The diving next day was both spectacular and frustrating. Frustrating because I had a leaky hose and had to cut my first dive short. To make matters worse the toothpaste trick on my new mask didn’t work and I couldn’t see what I was trying to photograph. The second dive was a bit better with a loaner reg and some mask cleaner. Meanwhile Dee and Barbara really enjoyed their diving on Saba.

We had planned to do a couple of days diving here but in the end we had to leave early because of the horrible anchoring/mooring field that had quite a swell running through it.

So apologies as the photos I took didn’t show off how good Saba diving is.Will definitely come back for some more next year but will pick our weather and swell window better.

The highlight of the island was hanging out with the local fishermen and the salvage crew we met who were working on rescuing the 150 ft Elsa from her resting place wedged on the rocks. We bought three lobster off Nikky, the local fisherman on our last night and headed off with Justin Time (no kidding!) up to Lollipops Hotel to BBQ them up.

It turned out to be a great night as we chatted to some very interesting salvagers, some of which had worked on the Costa Concordia. Lollipops is a bit of an institution on Saba and it was interesting to hang out there with its rather eccentric owner and a few of its regulars.

Evening over, it was time to get down the mountain and back to the boat. No probs – they just called the local cop who gave us a lift down in his very impressive 4×4. Another interesting night in our journey through life.

Next morning it was into the dinghy for a roughish ride into Customs and Immigration to check out before bashing our way to St Barths for a bit of Les Voiles action and partying.

Dutch or French – Take Your Pick

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Sint Maarten or St Martin – the choice was ours. We decided to head for the dutch side first and then head over to the French side after that.

The Dutch side is called Sint Maarten and is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It borders Saint Martin to the north, which is a French overseas collectivity. Quite bizarre really as you need to check in and out of either territory to go to the other, but you can take your dinghy across the lagoon between the two, no probs.

The run up from Statia to Sint Maarten was a nice broad reach and we made it with plenty of time to check in. Arriving at Simpsons Bay ,we had to dodge around one of the big super yachts who had managed to ground itself in the channel leading into the lagoon.. Pretty funny but they managed to get off and retreat to deeper water. We picked a spot outside the lagoon in Simpsons Bay just off the beach in beautiful clear water.

We hit Sint Maarten with the specific intention of getting some stuff fixed and spending some tax-free boat dollars at Budget Marine and Island Water World. To do this effectively you need to avoid the distraction of the numerous bars, restaurants and beaches that are also there. Needless to say these, when combined with quite a few friends we caught up with In these here waters, trapped us helplessly as you have probably guessed by now. Lagoonies, the St Maarten Yacht Club, Buccaneer Beach Bar, the Red Piano Bar, Karakter Beach Bar were all just too tempting to pass up.

In between the haziness of our hangovers, we did however manage to get a few things down. We paid our 21USD to go through the bridge and into the lagoon and got a marina berth for 50USD a day for a couple of days whilst an electrician came and sorted a few things out. The Lagoon is huge, and your dinghy becomes your car as you go from dinghy dock to dinghy dock to get to the various shops. We did quite a few dinghy trips across to the French side (and vice versa).

We found Carrefour and did some provisioning and Ace hardware and Electrotek was also a hit. You can find most things in Sint Maarten at a reasonable (for the Caribbean)  price. We even found a Spanish wine store where you can spend a pleasant hour or two sampling some wonderful wine and cheese for free. Okay, it wasn’t exactly free as we did buy quite a bit of their wine.

After our stay at the marina, we went under the causeway bridge (free) and anchored in the lagoon for a night before going through the Sandy Ground Bridge on the French side (10m wide so a bit of a squeeze) to anchor in Marigot Bay. Checking into the French side is easy (and cheap if you go to the Chanderly in the canal just outside the bridge – a 2 Euro donation to Sea Rescue is all it costs).

We took a dinghy ride to the dock closest to the airport and walked 10 minutes to the end of the runway to check out the planes landing just above a pretty little beach – the one you see on all the postcards with a big plane metres above your head as it lands just after the beach. We got the obligatory photos and headed off either side to check out the beach bars, which were fun. Then we headed into Maho for some great sushi at Bamboo, before heading back to the airport to pick up Barbara.

Barb arrived just in time for some April Fools birthday the following day and we managed to get 16 or so of my friends and dubious acquaintances out to a wonderful dinner at an awesome French restaurant called Tropicanas. It made me very appreciative of the great people you meet and become friends with cruising around on a yacht. It sort of weeds out most of the dickheads (although you do run into them but they stick out a mile) and you get some wonderful authentic people as friends.

Birthday celebrations over, we had a few days spare to head over to Saba for some great diving before we needed to be back in St Barths for Les Voiles. So off to Saba we went.

Going Dutch

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Everybody seems to call Sint Eustatius by its nickname, Statia. It was a nice downhill run under genoa only from the top of St Kitts – a couple of hours and we were there.

At one time Statia was one of the biggest ports in the world as the Dutch exploited its geographical placement and its neutrality and status as a free port with no customs duties. The island was known as The Golden Rock.

Statia is also known as the place where the first international acknowledgment of American independence took place as the Dutch Governor gave an 11 gun salute to a USA Frigate in 1776. Nearly half of all American Revolutionary military supplies were obtained through St. Eustatius. Nearly all American communications to Europe first passed through the island. This tended to piss off the British and resulted in a war between the Dutch and the British which ended badly for the Dutch.

We spent a very pleasant day and night there on a rolly anchorage exploring the historic harbour town of Oranjestad, which is divided into Lower Town along the waterfront, and Upper Town with its restored historic buildings and forts overlooking Lower Town.

Once again, we caught up with Tim and Sarah from Gloria for dinner and drinks at a nice waterfront restaurant. We listened intently to their story of the 48m   super yacht Elsa breaking their mooring and ending up on the rocks at Saba. They had to endure a night of grating metal on rocks as the hull continuously bashed itself against the rocks.

Next day it was up early and off to Sint Maarten.

Alexander Hamilton Waz Here

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After a frustrating “not much wind to write home about sort of day”, we reached Charlestown on Nevis just as the wind decided to get up for the day. We were being tailed by Andy and Allison on Venture Lady who had come across from Jolly Harbour. We motored just south of the town to the mooring field off Pinney’s Beach and picked up what looked like a good mooring (but who knows here in the Caribbean).

We then had a choppy dinghy ride into town and tied up to the dinghy dock, just south of the Ferry terminal. You can’t lock dinghies up but everyone says it isn’t a problem here.

Andy and Allison passed on the long dinghy ride and instead put their dinghy on the beach and walked into town.

Due to the profitable Slave Trade and the high quality of its sugar cane, the island soon became a dominant source of wealth for Great Britain and was given the nickname “Queen of the Caribbean”.   The cane juice from Nevis yielded an unusually high amount of sugar and this made Nevis very rich and very influential in the British Empire as the plantation owners bought themselves seats of parliament back in England.

The check in was easy, and the Customs, Port and Immigration folks were really nice – something we came to see with everyone on this island. After exploring the town, we headed into Pinney’s Beach and Sunshine for one of their famous Killer Bee rum punches. None of us stuck to the recommended dosage of just the one – something we regretted the next morning.

Hence next morning, a swim was required to clear our heads. The water was nice and clear with a weedy bottom and lots of turtles. We swam to shore and walked through the Four Seasons resort where all the rich and famous supposedly stay. However having failed to spot even a minor celebrity, we swam back to the boat and headed into town for some touristy stuff.

The main attraction is the house where Andrew Hamilton was born and spent his early childhood, which has now been turned into a nice museum with lots of stuff about the guy who helped engineer the US constitution and the modern financial system before being killed in a duel. Interesting stuff after just watching the HBO series on John Adams, the second American President, who had a lot to do with Hamilton.

As well as Hamilton, Nevis’es other famous historical figure was Horatio Nelson who was stationed here as a young sea captain, and is where he met and married Frances Nisbet, the young widow of a plantation-owner from the island.

Next stop was the hot springs that flow through the town but these turned out to be too hot and I got as far as my knees before giving them a miss. The view from the old building behind was worth a look see.

We then checked out the local music scene and found that a band was playing at Qualie Beach that evening so we up’ed mooring and meandered up the coast 5nm to the shallow anchorage off Qualie beach. It turned out to be an excellent move as the owner of the small resort and bar was really into his music and we were treated to a succession of good musicians, some of which just seemed to materialise from the crowd. We did the proverbial dance the night away to a whole heap of our favourite rock and roll tunes.

Next morning it was up early for a sail up to St Kitts. We were heading to St Kitts Marine Works on the north of the island to get our SD50 sail drive looked at. The alarm for water in between the seals was going off, and it wasn’t lying when I pulled the sensor off to have a looksee myself.

Marine Works advertises itself as a marina but really it’s a good boat lifter and yard where they bury keels and tie boats down for the hurricane season. The mechanic they dug up for us didn’t instill us with much confidence, they couldn’t work out how to order the necessary parts and La Mischief was getting pulled and battered tied up to the surgey dock – so we said our goodbyes and checked out of St Kitts and Nevis. Marine Works had a customs office on site but I needed to catch a local bus to the police station to get our passports stamped out.

So off we headed to St Eustatus, which we could make before nightfall, on our way to Sint Maarten where we knew we could get our problem attended to.

Sailing Past the Kingdom of Redonda

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We left Montserrat in light winds and tried very hard to sail but it was not to be so motor sailing it was. We were heading for Nevis but with an interim objective as well.

We were keen to pass close to Redonda, a small uninhabited island that is a mythical Kingdom, with quite a few “Kings” claiming to be the rightful heir to this piece of mythology dreamed up by an author called M.P. Shiel in a promotional leaflet for his books. Since the late 1800s the title has been “passed down”, to various literary figures and continues to the present day where it gets a bit murky with multiple claimants from Bob the Bald to Michael the Grey to a friend of Dee’s from California. The Caribbean’s own Hutt River Province.

For the record, Redonda is really a dependency of the country of Antigua and Barbuda but don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

From Dire Straits to More Dire Straits

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Montserrat used to be an idyllic tropical island where famous bands used to come and record famous albums in Sir George Martin’s famous Air Studios.  Maybe Jimmy Buffett knew something when he recorded Volcano about the then dormant Soufrière Hills volcano on the island.      

Let me say now I don’t know I don’t know
I don’t know where I’m a gonna go
When the volcano blow

The volcano did blow and nowadays the southern part of the island is deserted – and it’s where most of the people used to live and work.

So with Barry and Ramona on board, we set off for Montserrat, 26nm away. It was another nice broad reach doing 8s and 9s under a single reef.

We arrived at 1.30pm to find one engine alarming with the water intake light. So we anchored quickly on one engine and I headed in to check in. There’s an online check-in facility called Sailclear that makes life easier – except when you have people leaving the boat in Montserrat. It took me two return trips back to the boat to complete the process. Finally at 4pm, we were able to walk out the gate and off to the bar.

Check in finally completed, we headed for the bar to give the skipper a well deserved drink. Little Bay isn’t much of a town, just a port. We wandered further afield and found a T20 cricket game happening between all the expats that had returned for the festivities and the locals who had stayed on after the eruptions. It was interesting to see people from Boston playing cricket.

Next day, we hooked up with Joe and did a tour of the island. Wayne and Ali from Blue Heeler also joined us and we headed firstly to the Volcano Observatory where all the scientists work. We saw a great short film on the volcano and the devastation it caused.

Joe himself lost his house in the eruptions and had to start again. A lot of residents took advantage of an offer to relocate to the UK.

The highlight of the tour for me was visiting the now disused Air Studios, set up by Sir George Martin in the mid 70s.

Elton John recorded three albums at the Montserrat studio in the 1980s. Dire Straits recorded their successful Brothers in Arms album between 1984 and 1985. Other artists such as Ultravox, Paul McCartney, The Police (Ghost in the Machine and Synchronicity), Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Little River Band, Duran Duran, Sheena Easton and Supertramp have also recorded albums there. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo devastated the island and the Montserrat facility was severely damaged and thus forced to close. We were able to clamber up a wall through a hole in the fence and have a good sticky beak at a piece of music history.

Next day we lucked on St Patrick’s Day in Montserrat. It’s a big thing here and through no planning Montserrat’s Irish heritage dates back to the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The island’s first generations of European settlers were predominantly Irish, forced out by religious persecution by Oliver Cromwell and his henchmen.

Since then, the sugar industry started up bringing an influx of African slaves, who In 1768, rebelled again their inhumane treatment. The revolt took place on St Patrick’s Day. It failed, but the association lingered – a cry for freedom.

So here in Montserrat, St Patrick’s Day has a dual purpose in celebrating the freedom both the Irish and African heritage craved.

This legacy of St Patrick’s Day has carried through to present day where St Patrick’s Day became an .officially designated national holiday in 1985. The whole week is one long celebration with many Montserratians that live abroad in NY, Boston and London returning to party.

The place to be for the day was Salem where they had a big parade. Salem gets the gig because its the closest habitable village to the parish of St Patricks, which is in the exclusion zone these days.

After a great tour of the Island and a day spent at St Paddy’s celebrations we still had a few days to kill so we motored south to have a closer look at the devastation of Portsmouth from the sea. We nearly made it before the fumes and the threat of ash that was blowing out over the sea got us to turn back. We anchored for the night at Old Road Bay, technically in the danger zone but only when the volcano is active. It was a lovely anchorage except for the surf beach which we decided was not for our dinghy. Dee and I snorkelled in and checked out the very nice bar with live music that night. Shame we couldn’t get in.

Next day it was back to Little Bay to do a bit of snorkelling before a quick last meal with Ramona and Barry before we waved them goodbye as they caught the ferry back to Antigua.

Next morning we headed North West to Nevis.

 

Birds and Beaches

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It took a lot of patience to wait out the high winds all week, waiting for that elusive weather window that would allow us to sail the 30nm over to Barbuda. We ended up taking off a day earlier than most of the rest of the mob, some of which were delayed by some Rugby team who have been doing well lately, probably because they are coached by an Australian.

The sail over was exhilarating, doing 8s and 9s with a single reef in a tricky 2m swell over 30m shallow water. Once we got close to the island, the water shallowed up and it was simply stunning – clear and beautiful. You could see the bottom in 8m of water. We dropped the sails and heading into shore on the recommended approach as per the charts and motored along the coast 100-200m out from shore. As we approached our anchorage at Low Bay, the water turned that cloudy milk colour that we had experienced on Antigua. The locals say it’s because of the ground swell. Disappointing. We SUP’ed into shore and checked out the resort that was closed and Codrington Lagoon that was across a narrow sand spit.

Next day we up’ed anchor and headed off in search of that wonderful clear beautiful water we’d seen on the way in. We found it 11nm around the bottom of the island at Cocoa Point, where we dropped anchor in 3m of stunning water.

We spend the rest of the day snorkelling and walking on the beach. The reef at the point looked interesting but wasn’t that great. The beach has being unofficially renamed Lady Di Beach because she evidently loved it there. As well as Cocoa Point resort, there’s also another one that’s currently closed called the K-Club that De Nero and Packer have purchased – but is currently the subject of a court case surrounding the extra 180 acres of land that got thrown into the deal.

As usual our social calendar was impromptu, depending on who turned up in the anchorage. As we were swimming back to the boat, we saw Venture Lady pull in. Gloria pulled in as well so 8 sailors meant sundowners one 5 o’clock on La Mischief, with a call to reconvene on Venture Lady for the subsequent 5 o’clock somewhere session.

Next day, we organised a tour to the Frigate Bird Sanctuary. We caught a taxi into Codrington and then hopped onto a small boat with Junior as our tour guide and zoomed across the lagoon to the mangroves where the frigate birds were mating and breeding. There were thousands of them hanging out of all the trees. We were able to get up quite close to the cute chicks and their parents who were gliding about on their 7 foot wingspans.

 

After two glorious days in Paradise it was time to up anchor and head back to Jolly Harbour to pick up Ramona and Barry and head off to Monserrat.

Lots and Lots and Lots and Lots of Wind

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Cricket over and done with, it was time to plan to see some of the rest of Antigua, even though it was blowing its t–s off. We toyed with the idea of using a small weather window to shoot up to Barbuda and sit out the bad weather up there; but we stuck our nose out into the swell and quickly decided this was not an option. Instead we kept inside the protective reef system to the north of Antigua and made our way around to Long Island.

Long Island was stunningly beautiful – a fact picked up by the up market resort that had taken over the whole island. Landing was forbidden by the resort ( As Chris Doyle says “Security is as tight as a cramped sphincter”) so we stayed on the boat and tried some snorkelling in Jumby Bay. Once again the water was cloudy and not great for snorkelling. It seemed that this was the case everywhere on the sheltered west coast of Antigua, where the fine shell grit was stirred up by the ground swell. Disappointing.

Next day we decided to up anchor and go around to Parham, which has seen better days. The holding was exceptional and the local fishermen sold us 3 huge crays for 80EC, but after that I’ve run out of anything else to say about the place. We had intentions of eating all three crays but they were so large that we were pretty full after the first and the other two were dispatched to the freezer for another day.

The pick of the places on the northern side appears to be Greater Bird Island so we motored out there and checked out the moorings, but just like the cat that got there just before us, we decided it was just to blowy and decided to head back. We checked out the anchorage in Davis Bay on the south coast of Long Island but decided to give it a miss and head back to Deep Bay on the West Coast.

Heading West, all we needed was a genoa and we were soon there. We anchored in 2m of milky water tucked into the bay. We contemplated snorkelling the wreck in the bay but it was just too blowy so we dinghied to the beach and climbed up to the fort instead. Nice views.

Friday Night at the beach bar in Jolly Harbour was beckoning so we only stayed a night in Deep Bay before heading back to anchor outside of Jolly Harbour in Mosquito Bay. Good news is there was no mosquitos in mosquito bay in this wind.

We gathered up Peter and Jenny, Peter from Stormbreaker, Andy, Alison, Fiona and Steve and headed to Castaways for a beach BBQ and a band.   Another great night with the B50 crew, plus some other yachties that we’d met along the way.

With the weather on the improve, it was time to set our sights northwards to Barbuda.

Dreadlock Holiday

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I don’t like cricket oh no
I love it – Dreadlock Holiday

We left English Harbour on a windy day and headed downwind towards Jolly Harbour, which was much closer to the cricket stadium. On the way we were passed by Lionheart, a “J” that was on its way to St Martin.

We got to Jolly Harbour and anchored outside near the boat channel. It was a longish dinghy ride into the marina passed all the houses on the various canals. We caught up with a few of the B50 fleet that were there along with Venture Lady who were also going to the cricket.

Its fair to say that some of us were looking forward to the cricket more than others. Dee for one was unimpressed how the shortened form of the game could still go a WHOLE day. Meanwhile the English contingent were pretty confident given the West Indies these days can’t seem to get a lot of their good players to play for them.

Me, I was just excited to get to see a cricket game in the Caribbean. And given I was going with some Pommie friends it was indeed necessary to barrack for the West Indies, my current home for the moment.

Anyway it turned out to be a fun day, despite my adopted team just failing to beat those dastardly Poms. Besides the cricket the highlights included the yummy well priced street food – Ribs, Pork and Chicken all delicious and meeting Ritchie Richardson and Sir Andy Roberts. Even got Sir Andy to smile.

A Very English Harbour

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We left Deshaies at first light on Sunday morning bound for English Harbour in Antigua. It took us 40 minutes to clear the wind shadow of Guadeloupe and start some real sailing. At 45 degrees to the wind we could just make the line we needed, whilst doing 5-6 knots. A squall came half way across and we had to put in a reef, but that didn’t slow us down any more.

We got to English Harbour just before 3pm and we were surprised by how small the three different choices of anchorages were. We’d gone to English Harbour in preference to Falmouth because the e-SailClear system only had English Harbour as an option. In reality we could have gone to Falmouth as it’s only a 10 minute walk around to the same Customs and Immigration office at Nelson’s Dockyard.

After checking out all three anchorages in English Harbour we settled on Galleon Beach, where we were just able to sneak in – as there were a lot of yachts in a small space; and to top it all off, the holding was not the greatest with a rubbly bottom. We ended up putting our secondary Fortress anchor out, shackled to our primary Rocna on 7m of its own chain to make sure we stayed put, especially since the wind was picking up during the week.

Shortly after getting our anchor set, Maisie dinghied over and we had a drink or two on the bow. Then they disappeared on a hot date at a local restaurant; and Dee and I headed for the hills. Shirley Heights on a Sunday evening is the place to be. There is a steel band to start with and then when the sun goes down there was another band with lots of dancing to be done. In between there was some great cheap barbecued food. It’s an Antiguan Institution on a Sunday Night and it turned out to be loads of fun. After we’d danced the night away, we caught a $10 taxi down the hill and ended up at The Cheeky Marlin, a beach bar run by Nick from Port Adelaide. Nick’s a great guy and it made a perfect end to a perfect night. Nick is supposed to shut the bar at sunset and he was still trying to do it at 10pm when we arrived. He thought he had finally managed to kick everyone out, but the rain came and we all raced in again for more drinks.

We spend the next day, exploring English Harbour and Falmouth, especially the chanderlies that were quite numerous. Both Falmouth and English Harbour are full of boats…from old classical boats and big new horrible looking motor yachts. The museum at the historic Nelson’s Dockyard was a highlight as was the bakery behind it. Yum!

Then it was off to Maisie for drinks with Martin and Rita, as well as Ken and Jenny from Lady Rebel, who had just arrived. After drinking a few too many red wines, we added the term “Maisied” to our vocabulary.

Where we were “Maisied”!!!

It made getting up early to pick up the hire car a bit more challenging than usual. Hiring a car in Antigua is a bit more expensive than you expect as you need a temporary local license that sets you back another $20. We managed to see most of Antigua driving around in a day. The beautiful beaches were the highlight – just a real pleasant island to drive around.

Antigua had a couple of really good walks. The first we did was up to Shirley Heights for the obligatory photo down to both harbours. From here we checked out the national park with a few other forts and an impressive interpretive centre, complete with a film presentation. From there, it was a short drop down to Galleon Beach, our original starting point.

The next day, we were on foot again across to the other side of the entrance to English Harbour where there is another fort, before trekking across the range to Pigeon Beach at the entrance to Falmouth Harbour. Then it was a short walk back into Falmouth.

Sitting on Maisie, we decided we needed to organise a bit of a mini B50 reunion at the Yacht Club. As well as the usual suspects from the previous drinking session, Thetis joined us from the Catamaran Marina across the bay in Falmouth and Peter, Jenny and Bill taxied down from Jolly Harbour to join in the festivities. A great night catching up with everyone.

Sitting on La Mischief one afternoon, we saw a commotion out in the entrance channel and out came the binoculars. We quickly worked out that it was a couple of competitors from the Talker Whisky Atlantic Challenges, a rowing race across the Atlantic.The idea of the Atlantic Challenge race came to Sir Chay Blyth whilst he was rowing the Atlantic  Ocean in 1966 with John Ridgeway. We met Chay sailing in Turkey in 2015. We took the dinghy out to see them and when we worked out they hadn’t had a beer in 3 months we rushed back to La Mischief to grab a couple for them.

Our last night in Galleon Beach was spent at the Cheeky Marlin eating burgers and watching Captain Ron on an upturned table on the beach with a white table cloth for a screen. The rain was a bit of a problem but a tarp over the projector did the trick. A great last night.

With the cricket fast approaching, it was time to head off to Jolly Harbour on the West Coast to get ourselves a bit closer taxi ride to Sir Viv Richards Stadium to hopefully see the West Indies beat England!