It seems that all the restaurants at St Anne have the very same recipe book.  They all offer accra and boudin as starters.  Accra are very salty, salt cod fish batter balls.  Boudin is the indescribably off putting black pudding that when a knife is plunged into it, oozes out like merde de chien.  Main course everywhere is langoustine, tasty, and you can choose whether to have rice or frites with that to create a bit of variety.  Martinique being a French department, one is required to hang on to ones cutlery for the whole meal.  At our restaurant of choice, in addition to as many boules as you chose of ice cream, there was banana flambe on the menu which was the reason we had plumped for this particular place.  Bob loves a good flambe.  It arrived at the table without any flamboyance, completely extinguished, a limp brown banana in a pool of brown stickiness.  Very disappointing.  We were very sleepy from our hard sail in the sun, and rain, Bob had overcooked his head and I had frazzled the exposed parts of my neck and ears, revealed for the first time in a long while by Heather’s hearty holiday haircut, so we turned in early for a good snore.

This morning we strolled along the long, long beach (the sand was the hard sort that doesn’t creep into Bob’s shoes so he was happy to do so after some gentle persuasion), had deux beers and strolled back.  Very pleasant.  We then strolled into the Huit a huit (that actually does open from 8 to 8 in St Anne) and made a beeline for our favourite duck pate, picked up a baguette and a couple of bottles of wine and scurried back to the boat for a delicious picnique typique.  This is the life.

Exhausted by our exertions, and soporific from the wine, we have spent one of those lovely afternoons pretending to read while managing to take a few surreptitious naps.  Bliss.

Bob then decided that he was sufficiently rested and relaxed to try starting up Gerry.  After his habitual little ahem once or twice, he started with a happy hum.  He hummed and he hummed for a whole hour without hesitation.  Bob made water (using the water maker just to be clear), charged up all the kit and the batteries before actually turning Gerry off quite deliberately and intentionally.  Hooray.  We are having a delicious glass of exceptionally chilled white wine to celebrate.  Salut!