Sara declared her rum punch to be the best she had ever had, a compliment indeed.  We all tucked in to our home spun cocktails with the accompaniment of a half baked brie and camembert, the oven had done its usual trick of turning itself off, I really don’t know why it does that but it always has.  We followed it up with another of Bob’s favourites, spag bol washed down with the last of the summer wine (somebody had obviously sneaked into the fridge and drunk all the other ones when we hadn’t been looking).  A most pleasant evening around the saloon table with the incredibly sticky sticky mats which Sara decided would be absolutely ideal for putting the flowers on coffins to stop them slipping off.  A potential new enterprise.

We had a slow unhurried start in the morning, released the mooring ropes and gently puttered off.  The wind was proving exceedingly fickle, up and down like “a whore’s drawers” as the nautical _expression_ goes and swinging all over the place.  The autopilot was abandoned in favour of some old fashioned hand steering so we had a wonderful duet, me on the wheel and Bob on the main sheet and we had a wonderful sail following the wind rather than the course, making up to 8 knots at one moment and falling back to 4 knots as the wind fizzled.  It was lovely.

Marigot Bay is only just round the corner from the Pitons and we pottered in looking out for the red and green buoys that mark the channel (of which only three remain), picked up our boat boy, picked up a buoy in the mangrove swamp hurricane hole and settled to a tasty lunch using up the canard and wild boar pate from a huit a huit along the way.  After repelling as many vendors as we could, we ended up with a lot of fruit and coconut tree baskets from one Eddy Murphy look alike, sound alike and quick patter alike vendor, and a whole grandchildren load of stone turtles from Michael, we ended up appointing Michael as our tour guide for a quick run around St Lucia.

Getting ready for an expedition is paramount.  Each bottle of water was carefully labelled using bracelets to identify each and everyone’s particular tipple, so important.  Our tour included: a cassava cake (cinnamon, actually quite tasty but heavy as cassava cakes tends to be), Anse le Raie, Michaels’ one day old grand daughter, stroking a boa constrictor called Patrick, (yes really), Soufriere the town, the amazing and never ceases to thrill me drive in volcano, the splurging, popping pools of hot hot water, the stink of sulphur dioxide and the “very good for your skin” clay body mask and very hot indeed bath.  In all Michael was very sweet and dear but his understanding of local folklore, flora and fauna is very limited.  I have to say that overall, in terms of local knowledge guides, Bozo wins the prize (sorry Fran!!!) .  However, on the way back we had fun reenacting an old game called “All Change” whereby at a traffic light, or other stop, someone yells “All Change”  and we all swap places in the car.  Michael showed absolute delight when Sara dared me to All Change into the drivers seat when he wandered off to do some shopping.  Mwah ha ha.  Meanwhile back at the boat, Bob had done an enormous number of jobs, including booking dinner at the Rainforest Hideaway, hooray, and had a very quiet and peaceful afternoon, until we got back!  A swift round of cocktails and we were ready to go out.  So looking forward to the Rainforest