What a disaster



It's quite amazing how, after all the times I’ve said "It’ll never happen to me," it actually does . I typed the next part of the blog, the one just before we were going to leave the island; the script was perfect and I was crunching down the pictures and video to go on it when...... the computer actually decided to have what our son calls 'a hissy fit’, but what I call a xxxxxxx disaster!!! It decided to crash and burn most, no, not most, but ALL of our data. And I’m no computer buff. I only know it works because I push the on button and the screen lights up. Yes! That’s the total amount of knowledge I have about how these things work. So I had to wait till London and Alex, our computer whizzkid was able to get it up and running again; with most of the data intact from the ‘external hard drive’!.... so here goes with the next couple of chapters of our travels.

Part 1. Still in St Maarten.      As we were about to leave the island for several months, friends of ours, Reg & Marianne decided to invite us out on their boat and take us to Gran Case on the French side for lunch . So after a trip of just over an hour we arrived, anchored just off the beach, dingied in and had a wonderful lunch. And for those who read the Sunday Times, Michael Winner eat your heart out..... this has got to be one of the most wonderful restaurants in the world. Please click on the video and just look at the location. It couldn’t be more perfect. Excellent food, a swimming pool, and a beach; what more could anyone wish for. So far, and absolutely perfect day. But as our children know; when it comes to travelling with us; ‘St Christopher’ the patron saint of travel does not always smile benignly on us to say the least. At about4:30 started our return journey and after about 25 minutes came across a speedboat stranded out in the Anguilla Chanel. Now the law of the sea says that any passing vessel should offer assistance to anyone broken down so we pulled alongside. We’d seen the boat about half an hour earlier with the two blokes tinkering with the engine and thought nothing of it at the time. Now though, it was different . It starts getting dark about 5:45 and is pitch black by 6:10. The occupants, both locals had also worked on the theory of It’ll never happen to us because... they had no torch... distress flares,.... life jackets,...... water or in fact a radio! Typical! So they threw us a line and we started towing them albeit at a slower pace than we’d been doing.

And then a sudden thought stuck me..... What if they were illegal aliens or, perhaps they were smuggling drugs under the pretence of being in trouble and having to be towed in to the island! What did I really know about them? For all I knew they could be people smugglers, or worse... what really was the truth? In fact all of the above may be the truth...... and all these crimes have very long mandatory jail sentences. And that was enough for me! We’ve been in riots in Greece and Israel! On flights that have suddenly changed direction and gone somewhere else other than the intended arrival destination; flown on Cubana into Havana as Cubans and had their secret police follow us around. But this was just one step too far as far as I was concerned. So we had a very quick discussion about what to do with them... and the plan was hatched! We’d tow them to the nearest harbour on the French side, (Port Louis Marina).Very close to the Gendarmerie; Reg would suddenly decelerate our big boat which would slow much quicker that the one we were towing; the line would suddenly go slack and at that precise point in time I was to slip the rope off and cast them adrift. Split timing was everything.... And as all these very ad-hoc quickly made up plans go... it worked perfectly. They were suddenly adrift at the mouth of the marina in sight of the Gendarmes with us motoring off literally into the sunset.

And that would have been all except Reg started having engine problems and had to stop to do what he called running repairs. And this slowed our vessel down again so we arrived back at his berth in nearly pitch darkness. And we had to get back to our own home in our little dingy. Our first foray into night driving on the lagoon. It’s amazing how black it can be when the clouds come over the moon... and then it begins to rain..... and visibility becomes less and less. So we had to proceed very slowly. Not only because of the weather conditions, but also because the buoy markers which should have flashing lights..... well, all I can say is that many of the lights decided either not to flash, or come on at all. And hitting one of these things in the dark can be quite catastrophic to say the least. But make it we did and were really pleased to be back in one piece.