We were parked only yards from our chosen restaurant but took the long route round to the dinghy deck to avoid wet trouser legs (always a dilemma, take shortest route to beach or get your legs eaten as you eat by hungry mosquitoes) but requiring a route march along a “path” across uneven ground avoiding the ropes of boats tied to the shore in random places.  The smell as we arrived at Mojito’s had our noses twitching, mainly ganga but delicious cooking smells hovering underneath.  For the first time in ages there were actually other people in the restaurant, a noisy arm waving bunch of French blokes who seemed to be determined to drink the place dry of mojitos.  We settled with our mojitos to drink, they had left some, and then tucked into delicious fish cakes followed by seafood curry for the girls, disappointingly lacking in flavour and missing the mango chutney (out of season) while Bob did better with the barbeque chicken declared moist (descriptive I’m sure but such a horrible word).  We declined pudding, discussed with Kenny our plan to leave at 6:30 am which he thought hilarious, mind you everything was hilarious to Kenny, he had smoked a hell of a lot of ganga,  and we returned the long way round back to the faithful Roxanne.

We did indeed set off at 6:30 am, no Kenny in sight but a an alternative was found, also puffing on a spliff and had probably been doing so all night.  He was close to a coma but still managed to untie the right rope from shore and set us free.   We headed out under a cloudy sky that we hoped we would escape once further off shore from St Vincent and attentively rubbed on our sunscreen waiting for the sunshine.  The sunshine never really happened.  Instead we drove through several storms that had all three girls huddled under the pram hood like sheep while brave Bob boldly sat it out and sat manfully soaked by rain and great big sploshes of waves.  The wind howled very impressively like a Hollywood sound effect at up to 32 knots and we were well heeled over however much of the main sheet Bob let out.  Visibility was zero and we kept losing sight of the other monohull that was travelling in convoy (although we were beating him hands down, this is Windy’s favourite weather).  I went below to the loo to find the grapefruits had jumped out of the fruit bowl in fright and were cowering on the sofa and all our suitcases had hit the floor, rather strangely leaving a neatly arranged pair of trousers and top neatly laid out on the bunk as if by a manservant.  It wasn’t much better on deck where the bananas ripening in the net under the solar panel had jumped ship.  It did calm down and when Bob went to change (into his Christmas present t shirt that says “I am the Captain.  Get over it”, thank you Katie) I took my usual place behind the wheel and with only one more little squally bit it was all quiet on the western front.  It was certainly calm enough to serve lunch and for everyone to feel like eating it.

We arrived at Marigot Bay, telephoned Michael, who led us to our booked buoy, put everything wet out to dry and put the cabins back to rights.  After a quick run ashore (and back again and then in again for Bob who had forgotten the vital blue bag needed to check in) and stocking up on goodies from the decent deli we are now chilling and working up our appetites for Fish Fry night at Anse la Raie.  This time we are definitely not taking Bozo, to Fran’s relief.