We set off later than expected because Bob had to find the puncture repair kit and mend the hole in the dinghy.  It transpired that the security wire had popped it.  It was just a hop and a skip between Anse Matin and St Pierre, our next port of call, which was a good thing because there was not even a whiff of wind.  This meant that we motored all the way thus recharging the batteries, a bonus, and I decided to steer manually avoiding the autopilot and therefore hopefully putting as much as possible in and taking as little as possible out.  I do try to be supportive.  Meanwhile Bob whipped the pointy wire to hopefully prevent further dinghy catastrophes.

Arriving in St Pierre, we were overcome by the whiff from below.  We had been suspicious yesterday but were far too polite to comment lest we embarrass anyone.  Bob investigated and discovered that where they had removed the holding tank they had had rather an undue amount of spillage and they hadn’t bothered to clean up after them.  This meant that Bob then spent a happy half hour with his head in the bilges mopping out muckle as I handed him wads of kitchen paper.   All the bilges then had to be flushed out with bleachy water and then perfumed with a bit of flash spray.  We then had lunch but weren’t really that hungry.

Francesca and I then leapt overboard, intentionally, and went to investigate the nearby buoy marking a wreck.  Sadly it was too murky to see anything but it was most refreshing.

We then pottered into town, the dinghy repair held out, and cleared ourselves most efficiently through customs and immigration at the tourist information office, despite the AZERTY keyboard, leaving behind the camera as a trophy, visited the museum and the decimated theatre that was destroyed as part of the total wipe out of the town in 1902 by the looming volcano, were about to pop into the church but they were conducting a funeral so didn’t want to intrude and then visited the local 8 a Huit supermarket which despite being tiny, tiny stocks smoked duck and duck terrine.  Francesca and I enjoyed wandering around examining the French goodies as Bob nagged us to get a move on.  He really loves supermarkets.

Back on the boat we watched a beautiful sunset between putting away the goodies, before showers, gin and tonics and deciding to go into town for dinner in the inflated dinghy.  Nature is amazing, the moment the sun went down we started gently swinging around and are now pointing 180 degrees in the opposite direction but still 70 metres offshore (a much debated distance).