Last night’s meal was glorious.  A very old fashioned quintessentially French restaurant, no English spoken leading to a strange pantomime trying to act out “tap water”.  Francesca had the frog’s legs, Bob the asparagus and I had the scallops and they were all divine.  The lamb chops, red fish and lobster that followed was superb but the piece de resistance was the tarte tartin with three spoons, melt in the mouth, gooey, just delicious.  The two bottles of Muscadet went down rather well too.

We set off at the crack of dawn as we had a lot of miles to cover, headed north hugging the coast of Martinique with a mere whisper of wind.  We kept the engine going to charge those batteries, so not a bad thing.  It was so calm that Bob felt quite confident going and sorting out Francesca’s shower which had refused to pump away.  He emerged with enough hair in the filter to make a toupee, for whom I will leave to your imagination.  Another problem solved by Mr Fix It.

Then we came out of the lea and were wowed with a whopping whoopee wind of 25 and more that had us racing along at 8.5 knots on a beam reach.  It was fantastic and we revelled in our first proper sail as we were biffed and boffed by the waves and regularly drenched.  We also had to remember the knack of replacing the clothes after a visit down to the loo because it is very difficult when you need one hand to hang on with to avoid being rocketed around like a pinball machine.

After such exhilaration, meeting the island of Dominica was suddenly very tame.  Within moments the wind dropped to a whimper, sheltered by the land mass, and so we decided that after such a brilliant sail that a bit more motoring couldn’t do any harm and indeed would be good for the batteries.

Unfortunately the whiff of yesterday started up again.  All that time spent mopping out the muckle had not done the trick.  Bob had a good puzzle over it as we glided along to our next destination.  A visit to the loo had me choking with the acrid fumes.  What was happening?

Once anchored Bob went investigating under the fore peak bunk and found some very hot sail bags perched over a sizzling hot and horribly smelly battery.  It seems that the new charging system, that was installed over the summer to solve Bob’s perennial electrics problems, had perhaps been too efficient.  That battery was overcharging and burning itself to a frazzle and as a consequence belching out strange gases.  All the extra effort we had put into charging batteries had become a problem not a solution as we had surmised.  We are trying to contact the boatyard for some ideas of how to proceed, without being asphyxiated or combusted, and still get to Nevis in time for Christmas but so far have not heard back from them.

At least the patch on the dinghy is working, for now, so we pottered to the beach and had a pleasant stroll along the black volcanic sand and laughed at the little ghostly crabs scuttling about and diving into their holes.   We came back through the very cosy and friendly village and were relieved to find the dinghy still parked on the beach.  Francesca decided to swim back to the boat, and believe me it was a long way, so Bob and I acted as the support crew offering encouragement.

On board we have had a quiet and peaceful evening listening to music, pizzas, a game of Scrabble and Bob is now settling into Aviator.