Phew.  The lovely old French couple in St Pierre have retired not expired, so we were told by the new patrons of Le Tamaya.  They were very good friends apparently and the succession plan had been concocted some years ago but only finally and reluctantly executed this year with much humming and hee hawing from the retiring pair.  The new patrons have remained true to the Normandy roots of their predecessors and cooked us a delicious dinner as if we were in their home en France.  We both had the scallops dwarfed by their bulging rosy corals, Bob had the entrecote steak again declaring it perfect, I had the sole in saffron sauce every last bit of which was sopped from the plate with crunchy baguette all washed down with a crisp and flavoursome Muscadet sur Lie.  We concluded with quite a fight for possession over the shared tarte tatin.

Despite such over indulgence we still managed to weigh anchor at 7am this morning and continue heading northward on our quest.  An eager Windy bounded along urgently on another broad reach, the wind seems to be consistently piling in from the East, bashing through the waves and surfing down the other side to reach dizzying speeds of 10.6 knots as we charged along the open sea between Martinique and Dominica.  Unexpected, sudden enormous quantities of ready salted water splooshed on our heads.  We quite expected this wonderful strong wind to die in the lea of Dominica but it just kept going in fits and spurts with much easing of the main sheet to stop us being bowled over.  Another exhilarating sail.

As we neared our destination an absolutely fabulous double rainbow appeared arched over a rugged bay.  Unfortunately spectacular rainbows herald a spectacular amount of rain which followed in buckets with a complete drop in the wind and Bob dashed gallantly below to retrieve the cagoules.  We slopped our way along for the last 5 miles under motor, huddled up and trying to see through salt encrusted specs across the most enormous bay.  Fortunately Andrew met us in his pirogue, his improvised rain wear, more of a dustbin bag really, flapping like a Valkyrie in the wild weather and had us bound to a mooring buoy and booked up for a trip tomorrow before we could say nine pence.  We fended off the stoned looking guy paddling against all odds on an abandoned surfboard but Bob was guilted into buying a courtesy flag from Antonio who had clearly not run out of ideas after going through his repertoire of fruit, lobsters, garbage disposal etc.  He disappeared with his 30 EC and we really didn’t expect to see him again and settled down to “chores after a long sail” including bailing out the waterlogged dinghy and washing up.  To our astonishment Antonio reappeared with a rather grubby flag.  Hats off to the guy for enterprise and perseverance.

It has been blowing a hoolie since so thoughts of battling ashore have been put to bed and we are hunkered down in the saloon listening to Now This is Christmas, mesmerised by the changing colours of the naff Christmas tree with gin and tonic, Bob sized, in hand.  Sleep in heavenly peace.