Well, it’s been a few weeks, and so much has been happening. Some of our Canadian sailing friends arrived to take a holiday family aboard a commercial catamaran. This is something we decided to do about ten years ago. Now this lasts a week where you actually live aboard
waking in the sunshine to the most spectacular views of the Caribbean has to offer . Names such as Anguilla; St Barts and Sandy Island conjure up pictures in those holiday brochures that people just pore over and dream about. I’m sure you can conjure the picture in your mind. Well these are just a few names of the places the catamaran goes to. This commercial Catamaran (Cat for short) with holiday makers has at least four cabins all air conditioned and all meals are taken up on deck. It has a crew of two, a captain and a mate who do all the sailing, cooking, cleaning and making sure you have a fantastic time. In reality, it’s a dam hard job doing this and keeping all your guests happy. I think it’s a twenty four hour job. So anyway, off they all went, out of ST Maarten sailing into the blue.

Changing the subject totally for a couple of minutes; I understand that if you want to get
into other peoples photos; at that critical moment… just before the camera button
is pushed, you leap into their shot… and voila. You’re in their picture. My kids call it photo bombing . Giving the owner of the camera something else to see when they look at their photos. Back to the plot. So, over a couple of drinks with a second group of Canadians, who own a very fast Cat; decided to follow the first set of friends making sure we too were in all their pictures, but on our own Cat. For them, we may be called a Cat-voyeur, but for them we hoped it would not be a catastrophe so we’ve made up a word for it; how does cattrack sound?  ‘Gate Crash’ their holiday. Now isn't that a novel idea. I’ve heard of gate crashing a party. Yes. But a family’s holiday? The seed was sown. What a great idea. Don’t you think?

It didn’t take us long to pack a bag to go sailing for about a week or so. Hmmm! ... Yes.
Probably about ten minutes. I mean, after all, what do you really need. Swimming stuff; shirt; shorts and of course the obligatory hat and sun glasses. We’re ready! Now…. where have the first set of friends gone….. yes…. I know…. Their first port of call is either St Barts or a small caldera (an ancient volcano that has blown its top completely off and left an opening into the sea) In other words, something that from the top looks like a giant letter C with an
opening to the ocean . They’re usually vey sheltered and brilliant for mooring up in.

We pulled in.. SO far no other boats there. We’ll wait! And true to form, they sailed in about
an hour later and it was like a grand reunion with much laughing and happiness. Since it was such a beautiful day, and the sun would be setting within the hour, decided to explore the island. Please click on the pictures showing our arrival and the following morning.

We also arrived in Tintamare and Pinel Island ahead of them, (Please click on the pic
for the short video) and get some information about this beautiful island. Then off around Anguilla. And when I mean around Anguilla, I really mean around. Cool Cat, (the catamaran was flying in the stiff breeze), and instead of stopping at Sandy Island, continued on to the Eastern section to moor at Scrub Island. And it was here we saw something I’ve ever only seen in one of those wild life nature films on TV.

On the completely deserted beach we came across freshly made and totally pristine mother turtle tracks leading up from the azure water to a high point on the beach where she
hollowed out a small area, laid her eggs; covered them up with sand and then departed, leaving them to their fate . And that’s nature. Please click on the pictures for the videos. So all in all, a monumental sailing five days. Brilliant.

A few days later we were taking friends who were leaving the island permanently for a
lagoon trip in our little dinghy. Everything was going so well. And I really should have known; that when stuff is going so well, something is just bound to happen. Now! What can happen that can really spoil your day? Hmmmm…. We could it something in the water for me to hit?... No…. I could lose a passenger overboard… and not notice it?... No ……Someone aboard could be violently sea-sick?... No…. And then something happened that came totally of the blue.
Something that nobodys ever going to think is EVER going to happen to them. An event that will really and I mean really, really spoil your day! While under full power and with the boat flying through the small waves with four of us on board….. the damn engine fell right off the back of the boat with a huge BANG! And we came to a rapid stop!

I can’t print the words that came rapidly to mind, but they were quite choice… . And definitely NOT for the faint hearted. Now what! There’s nobody around except a lonely windsurfer. A lot of help he’ll be; I don’t think! Emergency actions…. 1) shut of the electricity from the battery. We definitely do not want an electrical fire. 2) Make sure everyone is safe, and still on board. 3) Secure the boat so we do not drift on to rocks and then the situation will definitely and quite unequivocally go from a drama into a full blown crisis! With the anchor holding us steady, what else may possibly go wrong? Yes! And then the heavens opened and it started raining….. and within a couple of minutes I can only described as a rainstorm of biblical proportion. Something akin to Noah and the Ark story. Remember that one? We were all now totally drenched and looking like drowned rats!

Use the boat radio! Mayday….. Mayday….. No response. Hmmm! That’s interesting… nobody out there?   Mayday… Mayday…. And a crackle
on the radio, “I hear you, what’s the problem.” Another French boater . After a hurried conversation describing our predicament, “I can get to you tomorrow.”

Tomorrow?.....  Tomorrow? What f---ing use is that! Tomorrow! I ask you! “Don’t worry.”

Ah! A boat approaching in response to our frantic waving! He pulled alongside and could
see the problem instantly. The long and the short of it was that he towed us slowly to the nearest landing. I was able to get hold of a friend with a boat who arrived an hour later to tow us back to a large ship chandlery who has now repaired all that was wrong with the exception
of one part that will be arriving on island on Monday. So all’s well that ends well; except for the man across the lagoon directly in front of our apartment.

His large boat was moored to the dock while he was personally doing some renovation work
on it. One of the things he was doing was replacing the fuel tank. So he cut a hole in the decking on order to remove the old one . Everything going well so far. Before lifting it out the boat started transferring the fuel out of the old tank and into another container. And
this is where things started to go horribly wrong! 
Some might call it a spark while other may call it an open flame. The long and the short of it… No;… there was nothing long about it at all. Somehow, it caught on fire. A woman started screaming from the other side of the lagoon so loudly, we could hear it all. FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! And by this time the flames were licking onto the underside of a canopy. You’re ahead of me I know. And then that was suddenly burning as well with a stiff breeze fanning the flames into what can only be called a roaring fire. Black acrid smoke billowing and rising up hundreds of feet; like a column of pollutant into the crystal clear air. Suddenly more really bad news… the large catamaran alongside on the left started burning then the high power speed boat on the right as well. Now we had three large boats all burning well. Fuel tanks exploding! Not quite like they seem to do in Hollywood with a huge flare rising hundreds of feet up, but with a loud bang. Everyone in the area took cover. There was literally nothing that could be done. The fire brigade arrived amidst much WAAAAH WAAAAAH siren noise and all they could do was to try containing it so that more boats would not catch fire. Really exciting to watch; except if you were one of the owners, or, if you were the culprit.

 Makes our incident seem quite tame and puny in comparison. Hope you like the videos.