We went for the safe option for dinner and went up to the fort that has been turned into a hotel.  It is a very strange and convoluted journey to find the restaurant, a bit like a maze with many dead ends, but we were greeted most profusely once we had arrived, they seemed as surprised as we were to have found our way there.  Dinner was ordinary but served very enthusiastically.  My conch fritters were nice and Bob’s smoked marlin pate not as nice as it sounded.  Bob opted for pork for a change and I went for snapper.  We tried to have a bottle of Sancerre to go with it but as is so often the case, the chosen one was not to be found.  A rather warm replacement arrived and we drank it without any ecstatic murmurs.  The last time we had dined here was with Matt and we reminisced about the door that kept making a realistic farting noise when opening and closing.  They have fixed it, sadly.

Our night on board was quite the most rolly we have ever experienced.  Big swells had us bouncing about the bed in a most unpleasant way.  I nearly resorted to the lee cloths to preserve my person from a rolling husband.  We didn’t sleep at all well and were eager to leave in the morning to get away from the ugly motion.

We motored out and waited for the wind.  We waited a long time and when it came it was a weak little whiffle hardly worth the effort to put up the sails and from the north west, a most curious phenomenon for the time of year. In anticipation we put out every last inch of the mainsail but still nothing to speak of and we motor sailed along sails throcking against each other.  We watched with great puzzlement a yacht apparently moving along quite happily straight into this strange wind.  We don’t know how. 

I went below to make lunch and heard a great kerfuffle on deck and much rushing about.  I was concentrating on juggling the contents of the fridge and getting food into moving bowls and left him to it.  I reappeared salad and beers in hand to find that the wind had decided to swing round in a matter of minutes right round to the south east,  unfortunately accompanied by some beefy broadside waves.  Settling for lunch, one really massive wave sent Bob’s beer flying and filled his shoes, literally not metaphorically.  To keep the wind in the sails we took the adventurous route into The Saints with a bit of trepidation on my part normally being risk adverse.  However it was achieved without incident and we were soon in calmer waters amongst the jumble of islands that make up the Saints.  We chose to park conveniently for our selected restaurant this evening on some handy mooring balls.  Bob decided that he would abandon the tried an tested lasso techniqque for the hooking ducks boat hook method, I'm not entirely sure why because it usually ends in tears.  I approached very sedately and came to a halt, Bob hooked the ball but appraently it didn’t do what he was expecting and as we drifted back on the current his arms were getting longer and longer and it all swent horribly wrong with much grunting and shouting of god know what because I can’t hear a thing over the engine particularly when Bob has his head bowed over the sharp end.  I leapt up forward (okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration) to be told that he was shouting go forward.  I leapt back into the cockpit and did just that but too late obviously because the boat hook flipped overboard while Bob was still knitting the ropes or something.  I spotted the boat hook alongside and realised that if I let down the ladder I could easily pluck it from the water.  Unfortunately the clips that let the ladder down are notoriously stiff and require a bit of brute strength to shift.  I yelled for Bob to come and lend his brute strength, which he did, but the boat hook had already drifted towards the dinghy.  “Go get it!” I yelled enthusiastically.  Bob eventually complied and got into the dinghy shouting for me to undo the rope, I tried to unravel it as fast as I could while being biffed on the head by the fenders and it took a lot longer than anticipated by which time, as I let the rope out, the boat hook had gone even further.  I let go of the rope and shouted for Bob to do the decent thing.  He paddled after the boat hook swiftly joining a much faster than expected drift into the blue yonder.  Bob the hero rescued the boat hook but then had to get back to Windy.  Unfortunately the cheap and cheerful dinghy has at various times lost its rollocks so Bob was reduced to paddling like Hawaii 5 O.  I was absolutely convinced that Bob, kneeling in the front of the dinghy and digging into the sea frantically with the oar that he was sure to fall in so I did the decent thing and reached for the camera, who wouldn’t?   After much hysterical paddling against wind and tide Bob returned to safety, safely.  He wasn’t very pleased.  But we do have the boat hook don’t we?  We have since calmed down, Bob is refreshed with a shower and we are watching the sun go down, g&t in hand. Its been a funny old day!