Quite frankly, we are all absolutely knackered.  It was a long and uncomfortable night.  The wind continued to blow hard, the waves grew and dashed and dithered hither and thither.  Beating into a 25 knot plus wind, good old Windy ploughed on plunging into the waves, surfing over others and having to toss the really big ones over her shoulder resulting in a good soaking in the cockpit.  There was also the slight problem of Sanders Sails substandard stitching on the spray hood which meant that these great monsoons came powering straight through soaking everything and everyone in its path.  There was nowhere to hide.  On my watch both my Kindle and alarm clock were drowned and are no longer functioning and all of us have had change at least twice, it became too chilly hanging around in the constant wind in wet clothes.  We managed supper, and I persevered (with extreme caution) with the peas, so we all had a good hearty, hot bowl of cottage pie on deck, with lashings of Worcestershire sauce eaten with a runcible spoon.

All night we were circled by cruise ships with so many different coloured lights on them that you couldn’t tell whether they were coming or going.  It was a huge relief to have Matt on board so that he could take his watches, Bob and I would be dead tired, if not dead, without him.  It was difficult to sleep, as the whole boat kept slamming noisily into the waves and the motion was completely random.  Simple things like going to the loo required as much effort as climbing Ben Nevis, just not falling over was a challenge and we could have done with some crampons .

As the sun rose over Saba there was still no relief and we battled on all day under the same conditions.  Breakfast was hob nobs, perfect.  As the light became brighter, It soon became apparent that as well as the sofa cushions in a jumble all over the floor, we had great pools of water under the chart table and in our bathroom most probably from the sink that seemed to be determined to suction in as much of the sea as possible.  It turned out that the bilges were full to brimming, so full that the bilge pumps couldn’t cope and Bob and Matt had to use the manual pump kneeling amongst the lifted floor boards, not an entirely easy task when you are being bounced up and down.  Towels were used to mop up the worst of the mess (fortunately Suds laundry seem to provide us with a bonus one or two every time they do our laundry) and I was on way through to tackle the chart table lake when the door came off in my hands.  Quite a surprise and unwieldy when already unbalanced.  My prowess suggests that I too might prove to be good at body boarding.

We gave up trying for Nevis, we wouldn’t arrive until after dark and instead we’ve popped into Basse Terre, St Kitts.  The all day motion had made a cats cradle of the anchor chain so that it took a few drive bys before we could get finally get the chain untangled and the anchor down. 

What next?  We all had a well earned beer of course.  Then the great clear up began including the stack of washing up that we hadn’t been able to face last night, far too green around the gills, and discovered that the pump that drains the main sink wished to remain silent.  Bob had a cursory look but tomorrow is another day.  We all just want to shower, get our feet on terra firma and eat food from a real plate.  We will no doubt sleep like babies.  It is quite rolly but seems very still after the last few hours.  We’ve been joined by a few copy cats who obviously liked our spot.  Indeed we are now an Englishman, a Frenchman and an American.

By the way who was it who had the temerity to say to me that the blogs “were not nearly as funny as they used to be, nothing ever goes wrong”.  Hm.