Matt and I played backgammon last night, he couldn’t face another drubbing at Scrabble.  It was a close run thing but I was extremely lucky and rolled a huge number of very useful doubles.  The toad in the hole was a well received peace offering although the wine served with a flourish to accompany it turned out to be pudding wine.  No matter, we had Christmas pudding lined up to follow so tried the second bottle which turned out to be far more suitable with such savoury fare.  The Christmas pudding made it by the skin of its teeth, being boiled dry was not conducive to good taste,  and went down really well accompanied by creme anglaise and some further fervent debate about a woman’s role within the family and war, not connected, but I am expecting David Dimbleby to appear and referee at any moment.

We set off this morning at a sensible hour, 8am, on a really quiet and gently breathing sea.  We motored down the coast, in the lee of Guadeloupe, pottering along, Matt commenting on how it was nice to have such a sweet whiff of wind after the relentless beating we have been doing up until now.  This continued for some time.  We bunged up some sails, Bob being cautious and not putting it all out there, and flopped along.  Then the gusts started, one was 35 knots, and we had one of those ridiculous sails where a fierce blow was followed by a weak whiffle.  Matt was taught the art of playing the main sheet to spill the wind as each blast threatened to knock us sideways and then heave it in to keep up the speed.  Once out of the lee, it changed again and we were back to beating ourselves up against an irritating wind that happened to be blowing from whence we wished to go.  Annoying.  We put in one of those almost back on yourself tacks and eventually made it into The Saints.   We parked on a mooring buoy, after frightening the living daylights out of the helpful French harbour assistants by nearly running them over, a slight misunderstanding on what constituted 10 metres. Since arriving we’ve been having a lot of deja vus.  We had forgotten that we had been here before until the various land marks such as the house that looks like a ship, the restaurant with a marlin’s head sticking out of it showed themselves.  It is all coming back to us!  There seems to be a surfeit of scooters, as many as in Florence, the place is swarming with them unlike the mainland of Guadeloupe which seemed to be seriously infested with bicycles, the racing types with the keen men dressed in uniform lycra. 

We’ve booked into a restaurant tonight of which I have high hopes because the chef once worked at Le Gavroche for our hero, Michele Roux.  Bob said that he was probably fired which is why he is now here, he is in that sort of mood today because all this constant beating is rather tiring and Gerry is proving very tiresome.

PS We saw a green flash yesterday.  We weren’t hallucinating from too much gin and tonic because all three of us witnessed it.