The mood of crew, however, was suddenly more positive. Maybe it is our over eagerness to rise on the leaderboard [by sailing safely] (editors edit) at any cost or just the desperation to get closer to land by any means necessary. Anyway, the result was four grown men spending the afternoon happily crowded around the radar (which shows up rain) and spotting black menacing clouds, hoping that they would head our way.

As the first squall engulfed us, we pictured riding into St Lucia on the back of a tidal wave, having cut a normal four day journey down to one. Instead, as we sat cowering in anticipation in full wet weather gear and harnesses, we were treated to a hard hitting few droplets of rain and a massive 1% uplift in wind.

These squalls were therefore clearly of little consequence, so I headed up for my first night watch still in Caribbean cruise mode and dressed in some decidedly not waterproof swimming shorts. I was hit with a minor hurricanes worth of rain in the first ten minutes with an hour and a half left to go on my watch, excellent, this trip just gets better and better.