Working from boat.

It turns out that the sea dawg needs a face-lift. She's been having problems with infections in her right eye for ages and it seems to be steadily worsening. The vet doesn't have much to offer other than eye drops which only work for a few days, so he referred us to an animal opthamologist. By coincidence, the nearest one is in Emsworth. That's 'andy.

So we headed off down to Chichester on Thursday evening for a change. Missy sensibly booked the appointment for Friday afternoon, so we made use of the (disappointingly flakey) marina wifi and worked off the back of the boat on Friday. I'm not sure how much productive work I got done, with VPN problems taking much of the day, but it certainly beat sitting staring at a car park in Bracknell.

Anyway, the opthamologist confirmed that her lower eyelids are too long and she'll need surgery to shorten them. We were amused to find that the procedure involves taking a small amount of skin from the side of her face and pulling it tight, so she's going to be facelifted. I'm sure she'll look lovely. Sadly, he said that, no, he can't give her botox to get rid of the wrinkles while he's at it.

We had a lovely weekend, making the short trip down to Bembridge. *Again* we were out early, being one of the first boats out as free-flow started. We motored down to East Head and got the sails up as we passed North Winner buoy. The wind was a bit variable to start with but as we rounded the new West Pole marker, we had a nice angle for a close reach pointing pretty much at St Catherine's Head. Not quite a straight line to Bembridge, but we only needed a couple of tacks to get us heading to the harbour entrance.

I thought we'd be early enough to get a decent berth on the Duver pontoon, but everybody on the South Coast seemed to have had the same idea as us and it was already rafted four or five deep on the outside of the pontoon. We were slightly surprised that we were directed onto the inside. I always thought it was a bit shallow there.

I was wrong - it's a lot shallow! Here's the picture at low tide on Sunday morning. We were sitting in about 18" of water with the keel and rudder sunk into the soft mud.

To be fair, nobody was going to be going anywhere for another three hours or so, because the harbour entrance is roughly the same depth.

So, nothing for it but to go and get a newspaper, get the kettle on and sit and drink coffee before heading off for a walk on the beach. Can't beat it for a relaxing Sunday.

Once we had enough water we headed off back to Chichester. The wind was perfect, a pleasant South-Easterly that gave us a beam reach all the way back to Chichester. It swung round a little towards the end, but we were able to sail serenely back as far as Itchenor (it was on the nose by then, and I didn't fancy tacking up the channel) before firing up the engine and cruising home.

Sumer is icumen in?

At last, at the end of May we finally had some reasonable weather to go sailing, so man and his finely-honed sea dawg were able to head over to the Folly for the weekend. To be frank, the weather wasn't great, but it was good enough. A little sun, a little wind and the only rain overnight.

Knowing that we're useless at heading off early from home on a Saturday morning, we went down on Friday evening, were up at an outlandish hour. (The alarm was set for 6am), and were one of the first boats out of the marina as the depth in the channel filled in to a decent level. It makes a change for us to be so organised.

Not much to report on the trip over to Cowes, although while we were to listening to the coastguard directing Whisky Bravo to a medical emergency on a yacht off Calshot, we were almost surprised by this monster coming up behind us. I wondered why the Southampton harbour launch was hanging around in the vicinity!

We arrived at the Folly while the lunch crowd were still hanging about, so we had to shift Moonshine twice before we got properly settled. For the first time, though, we were on the inside of the visitors pontoon. It's a nicer spot to be and feels less like being in a marine car park.

We were early all weekend for some reason, and were fed, watered (actually probably too much watered by the time we'd finished) and back on the boat by about 9:30.

We were able to have a lazy Sunday because of the tides. With low tide at Chichester at about 3pm, we had the option of getting up and away by 8:00am, or hanging around until about 11:00 and idling our way back. Not surprisingly we chose the latter, having a leasurely breakfast and a walk down to Island Harbour before heading to the fuel dock opposite East Cowes Marina (red diesel up from 45p a litre to 77p a litre since the last time we re-fueled!!!) We had just enough wind to sail, but it took until around 1pm for the tide to turn and we started to make a decent speed back to Chichester. For about the first time ever, we got into a decent position to get through the small craft channel in the submarine barrier off Portsmouth, so we didn't have to fire up the engine to get through.

We dawdled up the Itchenor channel, because we reckoned we'd be struggling for depth, but two hours after low water we had over a metre under the keel in the marina approach. It looks like the channel depth is actually more than they post.

So, back at 5pm and off home. At last, Moonshine actually went somewhere for the first time since October.

Spring sailing

Moonshine went back in the water while we were away, but it was a few weeks before I was able to get down to her. Last year, we had some of our best sailing in April, but this year the weather made it a complete wipe out. We got the sails back from being valeted and got them on, cleaned up the interior and sorted out the mast electrics, but we didn't get out on the water until late May. The bank holiday weekends were uniformly foul. Ugh. What a shock to the system.

50 Not Out - Day 12 & 13. Antigua and home.

We had a lovely couple of days in Antigua. It's quite a contrast to the BVI. English Harbour and close-by Falmouth Harbour are very yachtie and I dare say a lot of the Brits there are the same people as you'll meet in Cowes most weekends.

The Antiguans seem much less reserved than The BVI'ers, it was noticable how most people you pass in the street greet you, which is something we didn't find in the BVI. It's not that people are unfriendly on Tortola, it's just that they're less open. Anyway, it was very pleasant.

The mix of boat bums, millionaires and eccentric expats is quite an appealing mix, too. Hopefully we'll be lucky enough to be able to go back there again some day.

Anyway, after two days of mooching around the dockyard, admiring the boats and lazing on the beach, we headed off back to the airport for the BA flight back home. We arrived at the airport very early and were dismayed to find that the flight had been delayed by something like six hours after problems in London.

Still, we killed some time quite nicely, sitting in the evening sun at the Stanford cricket ground and then heading to the Sticky Wicket bar for something to eat and a few beers. It gave the holiday a nice symmetry to start and finish there.

I can't tell you much about the flight home. I was dozing before the plane finished taxi-ing to the runway, and didn't wake up again until after the cabin crew had served breakfast. Missy assures me it was pretty good, though.

So back to Easter in sunny England...and blizzards over the bank holiday!

Still, nothing can take away the memories from absolutely the best holiday ever. We had the most wonderful time.

50 Not Out - Day 11. Nanny Cay and English Harbour.

March 17th - the day we had to hand the boat back. There was no wind as we headed out of Cane Garden Bay, which was disappointing. We were resigned to motoring the whole way back but, as we headed round the southern tip of Tortola past Sopers Hole, the wind filled in nicely. We finished up having a lovely sail, tacking up and down between Tortola and St John, exchanging tacks with another boat going much the same way. The wind even got up to a level when I was wondering if we'd have to reef, but settled down at a nice 15-18 knots until we lowered the sails for the last time at the entrance to Nanny Cay.

So we refueled and re-watered the boat before calling Horizon to let them know we were back. At this point we handed over responsibility for Sunshine, as he reversed her from the fuel dock, around the marina and into her slip. There's always a smartarse.

After lunch at the Gennaker bar (best roti's, Red Stripes, burgers etc on the island - at least according to Devon, the waiter!) we caught the taxi back to the airport. After an interesting encounter with a guy from St Kitts and Nevis who, dressed in a rather scary checked shorts suit with matching hat, taught us some of the local phrases, we headed off on the LIAT flight to Antigua via St Maarten.

We arrived at English Harbour, on the South side of the island, some distance from the airport in the early evening. We'd booked a couple of nights at the Copper and Lumber Store Hotel in the old dockyard at English harbour. It's an amazing place, a restored 18th century naval storehouse with the rooms around an open central courtyard. The nicest thing was that it's air conditioned though!

Missy had wisely booked dinner ahead at Abracadabra, a very pleasant Italian restaurant, so we had the luxury of having a nice shower, before getting changed and walking the short distance down there. English Harbour is very, well, English. (Think Fulham-on-sea). It felt strange at first, being amongst so many English accents after a couple of weeks of largely either American or Caribbean ones.

50 Not Out - Day 10. across to Cane Garden Bay

OK, it's now mid-June, a full three months after we got back from the BVI. I think I ought to accelerate my posting a bit, before it overlaps with my 60th birthday report!

Since it's been left out for a while, here's the faithful little dinghy that trailed behind us for the whole two weeks. They're pretty cool little ribs, actually. Perhaps we should get one for zooming round Chichester Harbour or taking up and down the Thames.

This pic was taken at Sandy Cay, where we stopped off for breakfast on our way over to CGB. We'd already had an eventful day by the time we arrived there.

As I made my way into the cockpit first thing, it was obvious that the scene wasn't quite as it should be. I'd paid attention to the boats to our right, because one of them, a largish Moorings cat was disconcertingly close to where I thought our anchor was. Only now it wasn't, it was about twenty yards back....and sliding slowly backwards towards Invictus 2! It was obvious that there was nobody awake on the boat, and it looked like it wasn't going to be long before there was an expensive coming together. I fired up the little yellow dinghy and headed across there. There was no response to me calling them from the dinghy, but battering on the sides of the hulls, soon had the skipper peering blearily out of a hatch. He did well to get everyone up and the boat stabilised before anything bad happened.

Since we were going to be heading away for breakfast anyhow, we upped anchor pretty much immediately and headed out of the harbour. We got lots of waves and blown kisses from Invictus as we left. I think they were appreciative that we'd saved them from damage. I'm sure it would have been covered by Moorings insurance, but they live on the boat, so the inconvenience would have been pretty irritating.

We arrived over at Sandy Cay after a short motor and anchored a short distance from this guy before getting the coffee going. We hadn't really got any plans for the morning, so we weren't in a rush to head off until some idiot came in at 90 degrees to the direction we were lying and stopped about 20 metres ahead of us before dropping a few metres of anchor chain in a heap. It was obvious that as he swung round, he'd broadside us but, before we could ask him to move, he got in his dinghy and headed off to shore.

We quickly upped anchor again and headed off to Cane Garden Bay, muttering darkly about charter companies not properly vetting their charterers.

The rest of the day improved quickly, although the weather was up and down, with sunshine and showers. We wandered over to Stanley's for the obligatory cheeseburger in paradise, although Missy broke ranks and had the honey stung chicken, which she's still raving about.

After lunch our plan was to head over to Bobby's to get a couple of bottles of the local Callwood's rum. We misremembered the route from the last trip, making a substantial detour in entirely the wrong direction, actually passing the distillery and this little guy making his presence felt as king of the hill. After re-traceing our steps back to Bobby's it turned out that they didn't actually have any of the rum, anyhow. We nipped back to Stanley's who said that they did have a shop at the distillery, although he wasn't sure if they'd be open on a Sunday afternoon.

We thought we'd take a chance on it, otherwise it would be an indefinite amount of time having to drink Mountgay rum on Moonshine. There's nothing wrong with Mountgay, but it fundamentally isn't Arundel rum, and somehow doesn't seem quite as right.

I'd visualised the distillery as a modern factory with gleaming stainless steel stills and guys in white coats. That's about as far as from this place as it could be possible to be. There were three teenage lads mooching around in the "shop", who were just about to leave for the day. They did have plenty of rum, though, and a dollar each bought us a tour of the facility.

The youngest of the three boys showed us around. He was very proud of the history of the place. The buildings are approaching 400 years old, and the Callwood family (he's a Callwood) have owned the distillery for 200 of them. The place is the most ramshackle thing imaginable, but utterly fascinating.

This is the drive leading up to the distillery. It's not quite as industrial as I'd imagined!












Through the gloom, you can just make out the glass demijohns, where the white rum is aged.












This is where it all starts: A field of sugar cane next to the distillery, complete with sign warning off miscreants.










The engine room of the whole operation: Underneath the corrugated iron roof is an ancient truck engine. A belt connects the engine to a medieval-looking crushing device. The juice is squeezed out of the canes and it runs into an old stone trough.














The cane is dried, and used as fuel to boil the cane-juice. The entrance to the furnace is the circular pipe in the wall.


The juice is then fermented for a period of time. It's then re-boiled before being run through this ancient old still -
not much sign of stainless steel or gleaming copper around here!

The resulting spirit is then aged for a while. The white rum is aged in the glass jars, while the dark rum is aged in old oak whisky casks, which give it it's darker colour and the hint of vanilla, which tastes so good sitting in the cockpit of Moonshine while staring at the night sky.

Sunset for our last evening on the boat (boo!) before we headed off to Antigua for a couple of days (hurray!) and then home (boo!) before easter at the parents' (hurray!).

We ate at Quito's on our last evening. More great seafood, and another great table at a restaurant, overlooking the bay.