Francesca very sensibly slept as far away from the stench of the fore peak last night and chose to sleep on deck.  In avoiding one problem, another so often arises and she woke with a puffed up (evil) eye from a mossie bite right on her eyelid. 

The moment we headed off from Mero the bow thruster battery belched out volcanic, acrid fumes to rival those that destroyed St Pierre in 1902.  Thank heavens that they stopped when we set the sails, Bob fighting with the outhaul which seemed to be jammed, and we enjoyed a lovely sail in glorious sunshine making 7.5 knots and having to take a reef in the mainsail as we emerged from the lee of Dominica.  Meanwhile Bob pondered the problems with the electrics and I added fuel to the fire by announcing that the fridge had stopped working. Bob ran the generator to see if the fridge would work better on AC and to give the batteries a charge and discovered that the generator wasn’t actually charging anything at all.  It must have been at this point that he really started tearing his hair out.  Actually, he tore his hair out even more when attempting to bring in the mainsail threw up the answer to the jamming outhaul problem.  To cool the bow thruster battery all the sails had been placed from their locker on to the deck.  Sod’s Law prevailed and the outhaul  had dragged a bit of a sail bag through the block.  Bob had to cut it out with a knife and managed to cut himself as well.  Another case of solutions causing problems themselves! The day could only get better.

We arrived at our chosen destination, The Saints, a beautifully scenic spot with great blobs of islands dumped in the sea to form great mounds, approached with care as what look like passages between the islands hide great teeth of rock just under the surface.

Bob’s jobs had been building up all day so Francesca and I were despatched to town, firstly to buy antihistamine to relieve Francesca’s mossie bites, secondly to clear at Customs and Immigration, thirdly to dispose of a pile of rubbish bags and fourthly just to have a stroll around and see what we could see.  This meant that our regular dinghy driver was not available so Francesca was given a crash course in dinghy driving.  Do you remember the first time your children ever drove a car?  It was a bit like that but fortunately the dinghy is made of rubber so bounces off obstructions, such as other boats and the pontoon, quite efficiently and with no harm done.  We got there safely but full of giggles.

Terre de Haut is a lovely town where Americans and straight from Paris French people considerably outnumber the usual residents of these islands.  There are more restaurants than you can shake a stick at.

Francesca and I returned, even more giggles, to find Bob anxiously awaiting our arrival to get hold of Ulrich’s phone number to sort out the latest problem, namely that the domestic batteries did not seem to have been charged at all and were completely drained to the very last drop.  How were we ever going to get to Nevis for Christmas?  Fortunately Ulrich and Bob were able to at least solve some of the problems and we are now charging the domestic batteries from the engine before going to find a really good restaurant.  Francesca and I have found one that serves banana flambe, a real favourite of Bob’s, because we think he needs cheering up.