Getting our hands on anything at all was quite a struggle on our so called celebration of New Year’s Eve.  Even though we had booked into the newly managed Last Resort in November, the stony faced maitre d, a scarily Amazon black woman, declared that there was no table, we would have to sit outside.  Bob was astonishingly forthright in his response, for Bob this is extraordinary, and we were magically shown to a table.  We were then totally ignored so Bob went to the bar to get our beers while we studied the menu that included absolutely nothing that could vaguely have any Caribbean roots at all but did include Cottage Pie made from ground turkey and vegetables.  Yes, it was yet another American menu again.  Please never mention that I was once complaining about too much rice and peas.  After a further half an hour, a terrified waitress came and asked if anyone had taken our order, but before we could open our mouths the scary Amazon maitre d had premontorily chased her away to a different table.  Eventually the Amazon herself descended and looming over us, asked us if we were ready to order.  Rather!  “The seafood pancakes for me” I asked as cheerfully as I could through clenched teeth.  “There aren’t any”, declared the Amazon.  I settled for steak, rare, and Bob for pizza.  The steak and the pizza competed to be the most like leather and most overcooked and we chewed our way through it mournfully, Bob taking a break to go and get more beers.  A whole raft of staff ran around chaotically but never seemed to do anything.  We were never offered pudding so decided to celebrate New Year at English time and returned to Windy.  Happy New Year? I think not! 

We set off this morning, relieved to escape from the packed pen that is Trellis Bay, and puttered all the way round Beef Island to head for Nanny Cay and the hope of rescue from our autopilot plight.  Bob rang the marina as arranged at 12 noon, on the dot.  They still had no idea whether they had a berth for us, we were to call again at 1pm.  Bob did.  “Full up” was the reply, simply that, no sugar coating, so we diverted to Road Town just a mile away.  We anchored in a quiet corner of the big, open to the elements bay and have been bobbling up and down very energetically ever since but are delighted to be able to hear cockerels crowing instead of the dulcet tones of Americans.

Thinking that we ought to make the most of our visit, we dinghied in to a dingy corner behind Customs, where all the debris that is washed in chooses to accumulate, clambered on to the terribly tall dock and set off for our perambulation.  Road Town is a nice enough place but rather quiet on a bank holiday, in fact nothing at all seemed to be open despite there being two enormous cruise liners in town.  Missed opportunity we felt.

Back on WIndy, Bob has once again emptied out the Mary Poppins bag lazarette, stuck his bottom in the air, made a really rather nasty puncture wound in his finger, and retrieved the autohelm activator.  We now have two activators, neatly secured in bubble wrap, ready to take over to Nanny Cay by taxi tomorrow for their examination.  Bob then extracted the course computer, without further blood letting, and it is alongside the activators ready for the jolly outing tomorrow.

We looked in at the Pussers Inn on our way back from our town tour, they serve their speciality cocktail, Painkiller, Pusser’s rum based of course.  There are two there with our names on it for this evening.