I was too tired last night to do the blog, after only a couple of beers you understand, so I am catching up today.

We had a very tasty meal in the giraffe restaurant, beautifully presented in Masterchef style served by the most helpful French waitresses that we had ever met, helpful and French usually being an oxymoron. We remain confused as to what the giraffe was all about.

We set off early to head for Montserrat on our whistle stop journey to Nevis and met a steady 15 to 18 knot wind, on a beam reach cantering along at 7.5 knots so found that we were making remarkably good progress. As we came up to Montserrat and marvelled at the grey smoke still trickling from the volcano, the broad gashes of defoliated streams of lava flows and caught the sulphurous smell of the escaping gases, that reminded us very much of our very own self destructing battery, we came to an autonomous decision to press on to Nevis rather than worrying about not making it in time for the arrival of the rest of the family.

We made it to Charlestown by the skin of our teeth, anxiously watching the sun disappearing as we hurried around the last headland, heading to Pinneys Beach and the mooring balls that we could just see in the fading light. We claimed one, captured it, Bob likes the lassoing method he obviously has calves in mind, and made fast just as darkness fell completely and we couldn’t see a thing except for the magnificent spectacle of the Christmas like lights on St Kitts.

We were so far from Charlestown dock that we decided to eat on board, cook multi-tasking while playing Scrabble, and tucked into a good old macaroni cheese washed down with a beer.

It had been a long day bowling along on in the glorious sunshine, Francesca even seems to be getting a tan after spending her day on the sun deck, and we were unanimous in our decision to turn in. Bob took his DVD player to bed to “finish his film”, Aviator. As Howard Hughes took off in The Snow Goose, the DVD player crashed and Bob said “ouch” when it smacked him in the face, so much harder than his KIndle .

We woke in the night to rain on our faces and leapt about closing all the hatches and windows but not before the sofa received a good soaking, discovered by myself as I sat down to breakfast and felt that inexorable creeping feeling. The rain persisted though a big wash up, fridge clear out and we leapt out at the very first glimpse of a gap in the big grey cloud pouring down from the extinct volcano that is Nevis Peak, to set off up the coast to Oualie Beach, our Christmas destination, with Bob in his blue cagoule, its first Caribbean outing, and his swimmers which made a curious spectacle.

Oualie Beach is very shallow, all the best slots in the lee of the headland seem to be taken up by local mooring buoys. We are anchored and bobbing about rather rockily but hoping to sneak in a bit further once we have worked out the lay of the bay.

We are girding our loins, and bailing out the dinghy, to go ashore and find the Christmas villa. We can see it from the boat! Exciting!