Position 17:17.22N 062:52.25W

We spent Wednesday in St Barts – cleared in and cleared out (needed frequent help from the capitainerie as we could not master the computer system) and then wandered around the town. Visit to the chandler (new boathook, longer ropes for the mooring buoy), couple of beers and a burger at a waterside café and then a visit to shell beach.

St Barts is a small town with loads of designer shops (Cartier, Dior, Hermes, Lacost, Benetton, etc) all designed to woo the glitterati on visiting charter yachts (of which there were many) and cruise ships – with some success based on the number of Americans we saw carrying discreetly branded carrier bags. Not for us, and shell beach was too hot and not as exciting as we had expected, so back to the boat.

The ride from the mooring to the town and back was quite exciting – about 2.5 Nm each way in a good swell, and through a cut in the rocks (only passable by dinghy) where you could clearly see the rocks below. A trip we could never have undertaken in our old tender, and only with care in the new.

So, Thursday first thing off we go again. Cracking sail; wind 20–25 knots, boat speed 8.5 knots with double reefed main and handkerchief genoa, towing our new rib. Fairly wet, as there was a 2-3m swell, and hand steering was the order of the day. We elected to go to the West of St Kitts, distance a bit further but we thought we would have more protection from the weather. That worked for about 10 minutes. Half way down St Kitts we were hit by a squall which lasted 30 minutes – winds up to 35Kn, rain, the works. James stayed in swimming trunks, Rosemary in Bikini, so when it inevitably passed we dried off pretty quickly and when we could actually see, found ourselves halfway to Nevis.

Picked up a mooring buoy in Nevis (perfect, first time) and now have showered, eaten and are half way through a bottle of wine.

Total distance 60.5 Nm, time taken mooring to mooring 8 hours 10 minutes.