We had a lovely and very relaxed evening at the Admiral’s Inn last night with delicious ceviche, crab and wahoo all round washed down with a rather tart sauvignon blanc.  We spent a gentle night in the quietly sheltered harbour, interrupted only the once by a fierce storm that had us all leaping about closing the hatches and then sweating in the heat with all the windows closed. 

Katie woke up this morning with a giant ankle.  Had she contracted elephantiasis?  Was it a bite?  The two medics conferred and decided that it was definitely infected, in fact Pop was keen to draw a line around the spreading red patch to monitor what it did and cellulitis was muttered with hushed tones.  Antibiotics were definitely recommended by the two doctors to be.  We went ashore and headed for Hothothot to find the lovely Gay, the proprietor, who  very sweetly tried various medicos taking Katie and Bob to see if the one down the road was open and then her partner taking her to another medical centre where they diagnosed a yellow spider bite, lanced it and prescribed some antibiotic potions with a recommendation to sit with her feet up all day, a difficult bit of advice to follow in this glorious climate.  Bob, Katie and I returned to the boat and I went mad with the bug spray in every orifice. It killed off the Montserrat flies that had hitched a ride with us, sort shrift for illegal immigrants, hopefully polished off any yellow spiders lurking in the upholstery and had the human beings spluttering and choking.  It had to be doing some good.

Meanwhile the girls visited the museum and pottered around the attractions of English Harbour, walking along to the fort and choosing to eat Caribbean specialities such as conch chowder, roti, chicken stew and salted cod with cinnamon dumplings (ducana).  Yummy apparently.

On the girls return, there ensued a gentle game of Scrabble on the sun deck, won by Francesca and we pottered downstairs whereupon a bottle of champagne magically appeared from the fridge to celebrate the year’s anniversary of our crossing to this place.  How kind and very delicious.  Its the best cure for yellow spider bites that I can imagine.