Last night’s dinner was a cracker.  Actually a salad and not a cracker in sight but absolutely delicious.  We went to Le Salidiere where they serve, as their speciality, salads and quite perfectly delicious salads they are too.  We were greeted by the patroness and the patron, who was an artist, barefoot, bearded and cigarette in hand with the most delicious gravelly voice delivering French in the most stereotypical way imaginable.  We enjoyed his artworks that adorned the walls consisting of beachcombers treasures artfully put together in a cubist sort of way..   We were supremely lucky to get in as all the other tables were reserved and people who arrived just after us were turned away.  As too were a whole party of chic mesdames et mesdamoiselles with whom there seemed to be a bit of a problem with their reservation leading to an enormous amount of shoulder shrugging before it was finally sorted with much back slapping and jovial French squeakiness.   There are no starters, you just crack on with the main dish leaving a delightful sufficiency of space for the fabulous ice cream concoctions.  Bob had smoked duck salad followed by vanilla and chocolate ice cream with hot chocolate sauce and chantilly cream.  I had a mixed plate of fish ceviche followed by Caribbean sorbets with passion fruit liqueur.  Oh my, it was all superb.  We were on such a high that a gin and tonic night cap seemed to be the order of the day on our return to Windy.  Perhaps a step too far but it made for an exceedingly silly and jolly evening.

We set off later than planned, something to do with the g&t too far perhaps.  It was gloriously sunny as we puttered our way out of the Saints.  We put up the sails in anticipation of a good blow when we were out of the lee but it never came.  All day as we pottered along the Guadeloupe coast we were getting increasingly irritated as the wind rose a bit, just to get us excited and then died away again leaving us wallowing in a weedy sea (literally, there is a huge amount of weed about).  The wind was coming from the south west, up behind us, puffing from as little as 2 knots up to a peak of 10 to 12, so that we put in a few tacks in an attempt to keep the sails filled rather than flacidly flopping about, as well as Windy wanting to gybe every few minutes.  We watched a French  boat doing the very same thing but couldn’t be bothered to be competitive about their superior progress.  We were so laid back that we played “guess the time” and to my utter amazement I hit 12 noon absolutely spot on. In celebration of this mean feat, and because it was all very stable, I put together Bob’s most favourite lunch, waldorf slaw.

The driver was so mesmerised by the painfully slow progress that she nearly missed Deshaies.  We motored in and sought a suitable spot to anchor and were greeted by the amazing sight of a dolphin who escorted us in, somewhat distracting from  the job in hand as well as an equal distraction in the way of a “old enough to know better” woman paddling about topless.  Not a pretty sight.  We are parked alongside Judy and Ian’s boat.  Their current disguise is of a French couple who stare a lot.

We have heard from Peters and May that Windy is  most likely to be shipped soon after 19th May so we have carefully plotted our cunning plan for getting to St Thomas.  If today’s sailing is anything to go by, we are planning on short hops easily completed in a day.  We have the time and get to spend a few “days off” along the route particularly in Nevis because we do love it there. 

A most official looking mini gun boat has arrived in the harbour which has sent everyone scuttling for their courtesy flags, their Customs flags (Bob found ours eventually, probably a first time that it has been utilised) and anchor lights have been lit very smartly.  The whole harbour has turned out on their decks to watch the sun set, a beautiful and most wondrous sight as the distinctive ball slides down behind the sheet of sea.  No green flash.