And so we embark on our last and final journey.   For our very last trip, we head north to St Thomas where Windy will hitch a ride on a large ship and head for the Hamble to go up on the hard with a For Sale notice round her neck.  This means that we ourselves fly back from St Thomas and because of the vagaries of airlines and the way they charge for flights, it was so much cheaper to book a return journey than two single flights.  After a lot of googling, we worked out that our best route was via Antigua using the infamous LIAT for the short hops.  We duly booked our flights (treating ourselves with our accumulated Virgin air miles to a sneaky little upgrade to Upper Class) to and from Antigua.

We set off from Gatwick, embarked on our plane and settled to the comforts of turning left.  As announcements were made by the crew it became apparent that the plane was going to St Lucia and then after a short wait on the ground, on to Antigua.  This was the very first time that we had any inkling of this fact.  Unfortunately with our booking, and luggage, through to Antigua the Virgin people would not let us alight at the first stop.  On arrival at Henaworra I snuck off to find a nice ground crew person who seemed to be far more amenable to my suggestion but my cunningness was foiled when she simply referred it back to the crew.  Damn it.  We had to fly to Antigua (nice views of the string of islands that we will sail past on our way north), disembark, go through customs and immigration (“Where are you in transit too?” “St Lucia” “But you just came from there (crazy people)”.  We then collected our luggage, went round to the LIAT check in desk, checked in our luggage and hung around awaiting our flight.  Eventually it was called but it was tricky to find which gate to go through, it was labelled to Trinidad, and then were told to follow everyone else to the aircraft, which one was not so clear.  We clambered aboard (checking carefully that it was going to St Lucia), went to our appointed seats, occupied, so picked an empty pair and settled for the flight in reverse with nice views of the same string of islands.  We were very pleased when we arrived at Castries that our luggage had come too, an unusual occurrence with LIAT, and that Chris was waiting for us to whisk us to Rodney Bay.  It had been a long day going all the way there and back and after stowing all our gear, a very light supper (far too much eaten on the flight), Bob was asleep before his head hit the Kindle. 

Today we have been busy, busy.  We have been to the local supermarket to stock up on beer, water, ice and tonics.  Bob has mended the water pump, checked the generator and the engine.  We have bought fruit and veg and, of course, Basil IV for the trip, from the fruit and veg man whose boat is barely afloat these days.  We have been across to the big supermarket and stocked up with supplies.  We have topped up with ECs at the ATM (the one that does work).  We have checked out.  We have told the Marina office that we are leaving and said fond farewells to the lovely Nathalie.  We have visited Ulrich and told him our plans and said fond goodbyes to him and the lovely Samantha.  We are ready for an early off in the morning. The first gin and tonics have been mixed and we are relaxing in the cockpit listening to the cacophony of birds as they settle into their roosting trees and the occasional plop as the huge fish leap out and fall back.  Should we be sad to be leaving?  Funnily enough not really, just looking forward to a really, really good last sail.