Another absolute corker of a sail today.  We came out of the lea of Dominica to be met by bulging, bold waves and a strong wind gusting up to 32 knots.  Windy slashed into the waves, sending spurts of surf dramatically in all directions, including over us.  It was thrilling.  It was hard work fighting our way in the direction that we wanted to go but good old Windy held steady, close hauled and made excellent progress.  We decided that the combination of bumps and grinds and pouring milk over cereal was a poor combination so stuck to the tasty pomme bananas that Winston had bought us yesterday for breakfast, followed by a snack of some ancient hob nobs that Bob found lurking in the goody drawer.

We remembered all the little things that happened on Dominica that didn’t make it to the blog yesterday: the squished boa constrictor on the road,  that snake oil make a very good liniment, Winston stopping suddenly leaping out and handing us a branch of bay, that bay rum oil makes a good liniment, the way that Winston beeped his horn with a shouted greeting, beeped his horn with a shouted warning and beeped his horn for the pure hell of it, even beeping his horn at a meandering drunk who promptly fell across the roadside ditch like a crazy bridge.  It made Winston cackle with glee. A fun day.

We reached Marie Galante at 13:30, got our bearings in yet another enormous bay, parked up and settled to a tasty lunch of the delicious duck that we had bought from the Huit a huit (that actually opens from 9am to 6pm), with a salad of oranges (that are actually green), beetroot and crispy, crunchy christophenes washed down with a Carib beer.  You can’t beat it.

We then ventured ashore to investigate and find somewhere nice for dinner.  It turned out that Saint Louis had died, or gone into a sleeping beauty’s sleep.  The odd ancient person sat on their veranda and muttered “Bonsoir”, but most of the houses and shops were shuttered firmly to keep out the anglais.  We eventually found a desultory bar that was actually open and with great reluctance on the part of the patron, bought a beer.  They made it clear that we were not welcome and we paid and left as the ubiquitous shutters were slammed up.  And “they were not opening this evening for dinner, so there” was the gist from the snooty patron who gave us a good old fashioned Gallic shrug and grimace straight out of the rudest Parisian cafe.

We know when we are not wanted so have returned to Windy to hunker down to more home cooking with the vague notion that we may have disturbed a town of zombies.  C’est la vie!