Going ashore (finally). Credit: Seamus Breen on the pilot boat

“You’re not stopping in Bermuda? Or the Azores?”

It was something people had trouble processing – to sail directly from Sint Maarten in the Caribbean, directly to Ireland.

“But that’s, what? Four thousand miles?”

“About 3,500, actually. It’s what I do. I sail long voyages and write about it.”

It’s true. There are three “Voyage” books. The fourth – Torquay to Grenada, is finished, and I planned to get the final edit done at the same time as writing the fifth (Sint Maarten to Ireland).

All I had to do was sail the 3,500 miles (3,603 as it turned out, in 39 ¼ days) and sit down with the laptop every few hours and write about the minutiae of daily life on a small boat in the middle of a big ocean – the weather, the meals, the hunt for the last packet of pistachios, why I hadn’t brought enough sultanas, books, Netflix downloads expiring. Should I waste Starlink Data updating Spotify so I could learn Tequila on the clarinet… and the dreams, of course …what happened to the dreams?

It was all going rather well as Samsara skipped north with the trade wind on the beam, the sun shining, the spray flying – and stuff happening. The induction hob went on the blink. I can get 2,000 words out of the induction hob going on the blink – can I bear six weeks of cold food? No coffee; no redbush tea! How much fuel did I have for the little alcohol stove? I’d never used it at sea. Would it spill burning alcohol and burn down the boat?

Make that 3,000 words – and another 3,000 sailing back to St Martin (the French side) to buy another hob … but then fixing the broken connector halfway…

And this was just as well because, when I embarked on this life, I was only mildly concerned about how I was going to pay for it. I am a great believer in Mr Micawber’s philosophy: “Something will turn up”.

It wasn’t always like this – anyone who has read Old Man Sailing or, more particularly, my autobiography Faster, Louder, Riskier, Sexier will know the story.

And sure enough, something did turn up – the first book was a success “A word-of-mouth bestseller”, said Yachting Monthly.

But, like all bestsellers, sales dwindled over the years – how many people go into Waterstones today, looking for The DaVinci Code?

The answer, of course, was to write more books. Look at my old classmate Peter James – he’s written more than 50 (and sold 24million).

My output so far totals nine. I’m only just getting started, but the Horse Latitudes helped.

Every sailor knows about the Horse Latitudes. Every sailor since Columbus. This meteorological phenomenon sits between the Trade Winds and the Westerlies:  “an area of light and variable winds”. No problem for a boat like Samsara with her big, light headsail, the Super Zero, and her Hydrovane self-steering, which copes with light weather much better than the old Aries. We might only make 20 miles some days, but we do make progress.

Until we didn’t. On May 18, we came to a complete standstill. The sails hung like washing in a utility room. The wind charger didn’t stir. The only thing that moved was the ocean swell – and every jar and bottle in the galley (in a concert of chinking and clinking as the boat rolled and rolled again as if this might go on forever.)

Of course, I knew it wouldn’t. I have Starlink. I have the Windy App. I knew the wind would return in the early hours. Meanwhile, I could amuse myself with my phone. I recorded a “Welcome to the Horse Latitudes” video. How did they get their name? (Ships short of water would throw the horses over the side. Not very nice.) I uploaded it to Instagram. I could spare that much data. It was only a minute and nine seconds.

They were one minute and nine seconds that changed my life.

It was only an hour or two later that Instagram sent me a notification: 50 people had “liked” my video. That was odd. I’d never had one of those before. The children once told me I had 11,000 followers. I had never worked out where they came from. Next thing you know, I had 20,000 likes… then 50,000…

And that’s just “likes”. Would you believe these little videos have received 3.9million vierws?

Today, as I write this in Power’s Bar in Ireland’s Dunmore East, it appears that 93,200 people have taken the trouble to “follow” me – and another 19,376 on Facebook. The YouTube score is 5,660… Then there’s TikTok – a mere 2,089 (but I’ve only just learned about TikTok).

And just as I am adding up the figures (120,325), I discover what this means: Every day, I get about a hundred messages and comments from all these people (all over the world) who feel they know me. They write as if we’re in the middle of a conversation (which I suppose we are): “I’ll stand you a pint.”

“Why aren’t you wearing a harness?”,

“Put a slug of rum in that tea!”

“Why aren’t you wearing a harness?”

“If you need a lift…”

“Why aren’t you wearing a harness?”

Somebody wrote that they were coming specially to meet me.

I’m not used to this. Oh, there might be a reader who sees the “oldmansailing.com” on the sailcover and comes alongside in their dinghy when they’re on their way ashore. One even brought a book to be signed!

But this latest attention is completely outside my experience – and, frankly, it spooked me. For 36 hours, I stayed cooped up at anchor (the weather helped). Besides, I still hadn’t finished The Voyage #5. I was three days behind. When I reached the end, I found I had only 32,629 words. I need 100,000, so I can chuck out the boring bits. This one’s never going to see the light of day.

But then, does it need to? Already, book sales on Amazon have more than doubled – if this goes on, every month is going to be like Christmas. My daughter, Lottie, WhatsApped from Australia: When am I going to start selling “Merch” on the blog?

Quick, log onto UpWork and get a guy in Pakistan to design an “oldmansailing” hat. Then  I have to learn how “dropshipping” works.

I can become an Amazon Associate. Does that mean I make another 4% from dropshipping my own books?

Apparently, I am a “mid-level influencer”. But, because the videos are less than two minutes long, the “retention rate” is close to 100%. The algorithm loves this. The videos pop up in feeds from The Philippines to Paraguay.

Then an email from the USA: A developer has a contract to pre-load his “Sliides” app onto every android device sold in The States. He needs to add “content” to demonstrate it. Can he add mine?

At 45-50million new Android devices a year? Sure, why not?

I’m living in a bubble, rolling through 50° every two seconds. I must go ashore.

What happens?

The pilot boat goes past. A crewman comes out and takes a picture of me in the dinghy – posts it: “He’s arrived.”

I go for breakfast in the Bay Café: Gary and Aileesh are in the ice cream shop next door. They have a Rival in New Ross boatyard. They buy me a coffee. A man called Eddy comes by – in full cycling gear: “I’ve been following you.” Gary and Aileesh take my washing to the laundry. Later, I discovered they paid for it, too.

I still have to get up the river tomorrow. It’s 18 miles, the current runs at 2 ½ kts, and still don’t know if I can count on the engine. But Steve sends a message: “I’ll be going back to New Ross on Sunday (bright yellow Van de Stadt 30). Happy to ride shotgun.

An old friend tells me I’m famous.

I might not be used to it. But I think I can live with it.

Motoring up the river with no wind and a dodgy engine – you don’t want it to stop suddenly when you have neighbours like this. Thanks to Steve and Jason for “riding shotgun”.

Nobody is more surprised than me.

The oldmansailing Instagram account is now closing in on 90,000 followers. Across all social media platforms, the short videos I have been posting have encouraged well over 100,000 people to follow oldmansailing in one form or another.

Who would have thought…

The trouble is, I have always been rather disparaging of sailing YouTubers, particularly the young and attractive ones who never seem to wear many clothes. I’m probably jealous.

Also, isn’t there something rather odd about people who can’t pull up an anchor without getting out the GoPro and filming themselves doing it?

And now I’m one of them.

So, I had better explain how it came about: A couple of months ago, after flying from Grenada to Salzburg for the family skiing holiday, I flew back with my son Hugo for three weeks of champagne cruising around the Grenadines – champagne referring not to the wine, but the sparking spray as we thrashed up and down the islands with the trade wind on the beam and the water temperature never dropping below 29°C.

One day, I got out the GoPro and asked Hugo, “Can you show me how to use this thing?”

When he was about 13, he used to ski with an early model stuck on top of his helmet. Now he’s 23 and couldn’t believe how much technology had moved on.

Painstakingly, he taught me about “Quick Capture” and “Frame rate”. Together, we examined the 101 attachments that came with the kit (head, chest, adhesive, flexible…)

We filmed each other, the sails, the waves, my feet – that was by accident. I have promised never to do it again. But gradually, I learned.

While all this was going on – in fact, for the best part of a year – I had noticed a niggling worry about money.

When I embarked on this life back in 2017, I was not entirely sure how I was going to pay for it. I had a fair bit coming in, but also, I had a family. Indeed, at that stage, four children who were still far from independent.

However, as always, I stood with Mr Micawber: “Something will turn up.” I said. It always had.

Sure enough, the Old Man Sailing book came to the rescue. People liked it. They told their friends. Yachting Monthly called it a “Word of Mouth Bestseller” – well, it was Number One in the Amazon Sailing Books category.

But, over the years, sales declined. I suppose that’s always the way with Bestsellers. How many people today go into Waterstones for The DaVinci Code?

I wrote more books – that was the answer. My old classmate Peter James has written 38 books and sold 23million copies. That was all I needed to do.

I’ve managed nine so far.

Meanwhile, I discovered Skool.

If you haven’t come across this, it is an internet platform designed for people to turn their skill, their hobby, or just their passion into a course for other people with the same interest – and, like everything on the internet, there is the opportunity to “monetize” it. You charge for different levels of engagement.

In a blinding flash, I realised that I could transfer the blog to Skool. I could add a “paid” level for the GoPro videos. I can sit for hours and watch the sea. Surely other people would like to do that – or, more specifically, other people would pay to do that…

Painstakingly, I copied and pasted the entire nine years of this blog from WordPress to Skool – all the pictures, all the comments. It took forever. Finally, I launched it. I invited people to pay for the videos.

Nobody wanted to.

I offered a once-a-week video call (imagine that from the Southern Ocean!)

Nobody wanted to pay for that either (especially since I wasn’t actually in the Southern Ocean).

With my tail between my legs, I begged (and paid) the clever chaps at LCN.com to rescue the old site from their electronic dustbin.

And, while all this was going on, I was still playing with the GoPro, until one day, without really thinking about it, I posted a little video on Instagram.

Then, something that had never happened before: A notification. 25 people had “liked” my video. Then 50… 100.

That was on May 18^th. Today is June 13^th – not a month later, and those little videos – none of them more than two-and-a-half minutes long, most of them not much more than a minute – have racked up 4.4million views.

And that’s just Instagram. There are another 2.2million on Facebook. YouTube: 347,000. TikTok…

And the likes … thousands of likes. And comments. Fifty comments a day: “You’re an inspiration”,  “I want your life”, “I sold my boat because I thought I was too old. Now, I’m going to buy another” – and of course: “How do you sleep? ”, “Don’t  you get lonely?”

There was one from a man who noticed that around the cabin I had pictures of “beautiful women in bikinis” – Tamsin, back in the 90s.

The one that did probably more than any other to spark the algorithms was: “Where’s your harness?”

There’s nothing Instagram likes more than a post that encourages discussion (have you ever seen a fisherman in a harness?) Eventually, I made another video: “I used to wear a harness, but now I’m 77. Health & Safety doesn’t apply.” Besides, everybody had seen the photo of the steeplejacks building the Rockefeller Centre, sitting on the girder eating their lunch – well, think of me as one of them. If I fall off, it’s my own lookout.

It didn’t help. I just got deluged with people asking about those who would have to risk their lives looking for me (at considerable expense).

“Ah”, I fired back. “My next-of-kin have instructions to say I don’t want a Search & Rescue operation.”

“No good,” replied somebody who obviously had something to do with Search & Rescue. “How do they know your wife doesn’t want you dead?”

Good point. I have now written to HM Coastguard as follows:

I wonder whether there is any way you can keep on file my request that no search and rescue operation should be initiated if it is suspected that I have fallen overboard from my sailing yacht.

I should explain:

I am 77 years old and, a few years ago, I decided no longer to wear a harness at sea. I found it cumbersome and knew that if I were to fall over, it was unlikely I would have the strength to pull myself back aboard.

Also, now that I have well over 100,000 social media followers who watch my daily videos, I am sure I would face intense pressure to give up and put myself into a care home.

Frankly, I would rather spend my last moments treading water and watching my boat sail into the sunset.

On the other hand, if I should hit the proverbial container, sink, and activate my EPIRB, then yes, please do come and get me.

The reason for asking this now is that I had assumed that if there should be an emergency, you would contact my next-of-kin, and they are under instructions to request no search & rescue. However, someone made the point that you would still go ahead because you could not be sure my wife didn’t want me dead!

I hope you can help in this. I hate to think of anyone getting involved in an expensive and, possibly hazardous operation to rescue someone who would prove so ungrateful.

Meanwhile, the Algorithm had gone into hyperdrive, and the book sales were skyrocketing. At every opportunity, I posted replies with little additions like: “As anyone who has read my autobiography Faster, Louder, Riskier, Sexier will be aware…” or “There’s a whole chapter on this in my first book Old Man Sailing…”

It was like Christmas. Every December, sales leap from 100 a month to 200 or 300. This month – and I’m writing this early in the morning of the 14^th – they stand at 141. That’s going to put me right back to where I was before I started worrying about money.

And it won’t be the end of it. In the Canaries, a few years ago, I met Steve and Judy from Sailing Fair Isle. They make a full-time living off YouTube – and that includes flying visits to the Annapolis Boat Show to be lauded for the “Episode of the Year”. Obviously, marine equipment suppliers beg them to test their latest products (there’s no need to return them).

But you need 4,000 watch hours before YouTube turns on the money. How long was it going to take me to get to 4,000 hours at 1.5 minutes at a time?

I had an idea. I put together a 20-minute video of “scenes from Samsara” – me in the cockpit tacking, the water going past. Me reading a book, the water going past. Me scampering about the deck (more controversy – no harness, of course). For the audio track, I read from the blog. The “watch hours” shot up – only 1,648 to go!

I will be able to buy a new mainsail – 100m of Cromos stainless steel anchor chain. I will be able to pay for all the meals and drinks on the skiing holiday without compromising the “self-insurance” fund.

But why was I reading from the blog? People could get that for nothing. The following Sunday, I read from Old Man Sailing, the book – just the first chapter. I called it The Oldmansailing Book Club.

And here’s the kicker: At the end, I explained that, next week, I would be reading the first chapter from The Good Stuff – and the week after that The Voyage #1. If you want to know what happens next, you’ll have to wait nine weeks for that title to come round again.

Or, of course, you could buy the book…

How long can this go on? I have no idea, but with the Francis Chichester 60^th Anniversary Challenge coming up, I think we can say that the next year is assured.

After that? Well, I’ll think about that tomorrow. Something will turn up…

Since the 1980s I had been a devotee of the Aries windvane self-steering. Tough as old boots, the worse the weather, the better it worked.

The trouble is that self steering is so important on a singlehanded yacht that you stop thinking about it logically. It becomes an emotional subject.

Then, I broke the rudder stock on the way to the Caribbean and ended up sailing 1,500 miles with it held together with string. If I’d had a Hydrovane with its own rudder, this wouldn’t have been necessary (in fact, the rudder stock would never have been under too much strain in the first place).

Finally, I backed the servo paddle of the Aries into an underwater obstruction in the slip at Varadero in Aruba, and later it broke in the middle of the North Atlantic on the way back.

Next, it got tangled up in Dutch customs – and the long and short of it was that I bit the bullet and bought a Hydrovane.

And I have not looked back.

I was so pleased, I made a list to send to the company:

Advantages of the Hydrovane over the Aries and other servo-paddle gears:

1. You have a permanently-installed emergency steering system instantly available in the event of primary steering failure.
2. The cockpit is clear of tiller lines
3. In fact, if you can lift up your tiller, the cockpit is completely clear.
4. The reins or “snaffle lines” can be adjusted to the smallest degree. The Aries required a sharp tug to alter course by 6° at a time – so to change by, say, 20° would require six tugs (providing the ratchet engaged every time, which it didn’t always).
5. The Aries ratchets needed a lot of maintenance. They would get clogged with salt. If sluicing with fresh water didn’t clear it, the whole apparatus had to be hauled inboard and dismantled, and the ratchet worked by hand with WD40 for half an hour.
6. The light air performance of the Hydrovane is immeasurably better than the Aries. If there is enough wind to move the boat, the Hydrovane can steer her. The reason for this is that the Hydrovane rudder is semi-balanced, so it takes hardly any effort to adjust. Better still, any flow of water over the leading edge helps it to turn. Servo-paddle gears have to overcome not only the resistance of the water, but the friction of two or three blocks on the steering lines, even before dealing with the inertia of the ship’s rudder. Consequently, servo-pendulum gears require a much faster flow of water.
7. In heavy weather, when it is sometimes necessary to apply weather helm on the main rudder, an electronic autopilot working in windvane mode can sense when this is needed.
8. There is no paddle sticking out to the side where it can get broken by passing flotsam or pick up a fishing buoy.
9. And no clamp on the tiller to work loose and fall off at awkward moments.
10. Finally, the Aries paddle has to be lifted out of the water at anchor; otherwise, the whole apparatus “clonks” all night with every ripple.
11. Mounting a Watt&Sea Hydrogenerator on the Hydrovane shaft gets the former lower in the water than would otherwise be possible. This means the Sargassum weed gets caught on the shaft, leaving the propeller free.

Advantages of the Aries over the Hydrovane:

1. It is easier to get the paddle out of the water when not in use – unless you happen to have a sugar scoop stern, which makes getting at the Hydrovane rudder a doddle. Anyway, you don’t need to get the Hydrovane out of the water because it doesn’t “clonk”.

…and if you’re wondering why I call it “Hawkins” – that’s after Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island. I like to think he’s grown up now, about 19, a fine strapping young man standing up at the wheel in all weathers, never resting – and too polite to question my habit of huddling below when things get unpleasant

Other people argue over politics or religion. Sailors argue over anchors.

When I started sailing back in the 1950s, my father taught me that the ultimate in anchors was the CQR. The makers wanted to call it the “Secure”, but the regulators wouldn’t allow a name that could be seen as some sort of guarantee. However “CQR” sounds a bit like “Secure”. So, the “CQR” it became.

It was a revelation to yachtsmen who had only known the Fisherman – a fine anchor in rock or kelp. But it used to drag through sand and mud at the speed of light. The CQR was a “plough” anchor. It used its curved flukes – taken from the design of the agricultural plough, to slow its passage through the substrate. After all, it took a team of draught horses to pull a plough. How much force could a 2 ½ ton yacht exert – and 2 ½ tons was about the size of an typical yacht in those days.

Of course, the 1950s yachtsman didn’t actually trust the CQR to be “secure”. He checked his transits regularly. In a blow, he might sit up in the cockpit with a pipe of Navy Cut and keep an anchor watch. Father always used to lie to a scope of 3:1 by the leadline – never more. And he never added anything for the height of the stemhead above the water (although, in a Folkboat, it wasn’t much.)

When I got my first boat – the little 18ft Caprice, she came with a “plough” (a CQR copy), five fathoms of 1/4in chain and plenty of rope. I never questioned it.

Largo had the same – but 3/8ths. I remember getting up one night off Pottery Pier in Poole and wondering why all the other boats were leaving.

They weren’t. I was going backwards.

By the time Lottie Warren came along in 1992, Simpson Lawrence had invented the first of the “new generation” of anchors – the Delta. You can still see them today on charter yachts: They’re cheap and charter crews aren’t going to anchor anyway. They go to marinas or pick up mooring buoys (at the third attempt).

Serious sailors give an absolutely absurd amount of thought to their anchors. Samsara came with a huge and rusty artefact on the foredeck which might once have been a 35lb CQR but there was so much play in the hinge that the geometry must all have been shot to hell. I bought a 20kg Rocna – but only after watching hours of underwater videos of anchors skidding across the seabed without digging in.

That Rocna served me well – not least in Alderney in a northwesterly gale when the swell hit the harbour wall and shot 60ft in the air.

But I had three problems with the Rocna.

1. It was so big (and the 20kg was one size up on the makers’ recommendation) that I couldn’t get it through the pulpit to bring it on deck when I needed to.

2. It presented so much surface area to the sea when the boat was punching to windward that once going up the North Sea, it jammed solid between the bow roller and the windlass and I had the devil of a job freeing it.

3. It gave me nightmares after I saw a YouTube video of a Rocna failing to reset after a sudden and violent 180° wind shift.

After number 3, I conducted my own test in the Summer Isles off the west coast of Scotland: I deliberately drove over it at about a knot and a half, simulating a wind shift. There was the jolt as it plucked out of the seabed. I waited for the second jolt as it dug in again.

The second jolt never came. I puttered in stately fashion all the way across the anchorage until I was in danger of grounding on the other side – the Rocna dragged merrily all the way.

Now I have a Spade. I dig it in with the engine slow in reverse – gradually stretching out the chain until it’s bar-taught at full revs. The thing about the Spade is that it resets without breaking out. It keeps on digging – just in the opposite direction. Or so I’m told…

It’s called “The Octopus” because, you have to admit, it does look like one.

Also, like an octopus, it is very clever. For the cost of a single elastic band, it solves one of the oldest problems on a boat: What to do with all the bits of string.

Boats accumulate bits of string – and sailors are always needing bits of string (that’s why they never throw them away.)

But neither do they tidy them up – at least, not in a way which makes all those bits of string easily accessible next time they’re needed.

Instead, they tend to accumulate in the bottom of the cockpit cave locker, or at the back of the chart table. Aboard Largo, I used to loop them round the handholds on the inside of the companionway.

The Octopus is the solution. Any thin piece of line less than about a metre in length gets added to the Octopus – just push one end into the elastic band.

When you need a piece of line less than about a metre in length, hold up the Octopus in one hand, give it a shake, select your piece of string and pull.

You don’t need to coil it neatly again – just bundle it up and chuck it back where it came from. The next time you need it, just give it a shake.

I always thought the daftest thing on any boat was the three-piece washboard. I suppose it’s easy to stow. But have you tried putting in the pieces when there’s a socking great wave advancing like an express train and about to fill the cockpit up to your waist?

Maybe the designer who first thought it up was only pottering off to the pub and decided as an afterthought that he’d better lock up (great waves not being too much of an issue in the Twizzle).

But there are times when it can be quite a juggling act keeping track of the three pieces when you daren’t put any of them down in case the wave washes them away. In Largo, I used to tie them on with long pieces of 3mm line. It turned into wet knitting.

Short of rebuilding the whole aft end of the coachroof and installing a watertight hatch like a round-the-world racer, I was left with the one-piece option.

And it started off as just that – a great big piece of 17mm marine ply.

First, I gave it a RORC-approved catch – one of those gadgets which can be locked from either side (and just as important, opened from either side).

Then I gave it a pair of barrel bolts to hold it in place in case gravity stopped working (or started working from the opposite direction).

Two neat brass handles on the inside make it easy to hold and put in place from the cabin. But the really difficult part was a window. I really wanted to be able to see what was going on in the cockpit without sticking my head out – and this proved to be the major problem.

I approached any number of glaziers, asking for a small but incredibly thick piece of glass with rounded corners to fit the hole. Most refused to look at it. A new windscreen? No problem. Repair my patio doors? We’ll be round tomorrow morning. But a single piece of glass 195mm x 237mm x 17mm…

A company in Alaska quoted $600 (I was in Panama).

In the end, someone with a little glass business in Guernsey admitted: “I like problems” – and came up with a rather ugly solution which works very well – but in a totally unexpected way.

Because, you see, this isn’t just a washboard. In a boat less than 10m long, everything really ought to perform at least two functions if at all possible.

So, the one-piece companionway is also the cockpit table – and the piece of glass sits proud on the underside – leaving what is effectively a fiddle in the table for the salt, the beer can, whatever…

See that piece of wood screwed into the back of the cockpit above the rudder stock? The bottom of the companionway slots in there, is held in place by two metal pegs through holes which match up with holes in the companionway, and underneath the peg for the autopilot finds a hole which locks the tiller in place (while the tiller holds up the table).

So, in fact, this device performs three functions: It is also a tiller-lock.

And I must tell you, that there is nothing, absolutely nothing more rewarding than eating your breakfast off a table which you know performs two other functions…

…as a washboard

…and what it looks like from underneath

6th May 2026

Ben left yesterday. Ben is my grandson. He came for two weeks, and we did a circuit from Antigua to Montserrat, to Nevis, across to Barbuda and back to Antigua. He said we certainly had some adventures.

They started in Montserrat with picking up 20metres of fishing net. I wrote about that. Then, in Nevis, the engine started making a funny noise. In Barbuda, I put it in reverse to back down the anchor. There was a loud “clonk”, and the engine stopped.

We could go forwards – although that didn’t work out too well either – not since I had confused Enoch’s Beach Bar with Uncle Roddy’s Beach Bar. I remembered Enoch’s from two years ago – just down the Princess Diana Beach from Nobu. I certainly remembered Nobu. I had promised Ben a wildly expensive lunch at Nobu – last time, a cocktail set me back $12 – and that’s US dollars, not the East Caribbean kind (EC – as in EC come, EC go).

It seemed only fair: I had already promised my son Hugo a wildly expensive meal at Basil’s on Mustique when he came to join me in Grenada (actually, it turned out to be very reasonable, but maybe that was because Mick Jagger didn’t pop in for a Carib…)

Anyway, Ben and I had anchored within swimming distance of what I thought was Enoch’s – although inspecting it through binoculars, it seemed Enoch must have been doing particularly well with his charcoal-grilled lobsters, because gone was the rickety shack and the oil-drum barbecue. In its place stood a very permanent-looking two-storey building with upstairs dining under the stars and a terrace running down to the sand.

We had a couple of cold Caribs and established that this wasn’t Enoch’s at all, but Uncle Roddy’s and you couldn’t walk along the beach to Nobu because it was the other way and round the point where there wasn’t any beach, just rocks.

That was when I realised I had brought one of my sandals and one of Ben’s spare pair – both of them left-footed. I ended up hopping from rock to rock. When we got to Nobu, we felt we ought to add a brace of cocktails to the Caribs, but only if they would add a taxi to the bill to take us back to Roddy’s for dinner (and more Caribs and cocktails. Ben said Uncle Roddy did the best spicy margarita with ghost pepper he had ever tasted.)

So, you could hardly blame us for moving the boat the mile and a half down the coast to Nobu the following morning to avoid the rocks (even if I would have had a right foot).

But it wasn’t rocks that were the problem. If you look at the chart for Barbuda, you will see the legend: “Uncharted coral heads are liable to exist anywhere within these areas. Mariners are advised to exercise extreme caution.”

We hit one of them at three knots. The reason we were only doing three knots was because I thought we might hit one. It was a bit cloudy, and well before noon, so that we could walk to Cocoa Point to work up an appetite. You couldn’t see the colours in the water. Of course, not having any reverse, all we could do was wait for the wind to blow us off.

Then we hit another one. We were only doing two knots this time. Ben didn’t seem nearly so surprised.

If you’re heading that way. I marked them on the Navionics chart – but I have a suspicion they might not be the only ones. We took a detour out to sea after that.  Then I dived under the boat, but it was just a couple of scrapes – nothing that a touch-up on the antifouling wouldn’t fix.

Nobu did much more damage.

I suppose I should have done my research. I thought it was just a posh beach bar. In fact, I should have known better because I wrote about Robert de Niro’s Barbudan developments last time. Of course he was going to need a high-end restaurant – and de Niro’s Nobu chain is one of the most exclusive luxury brands in the world. Next year, he’ll have a hotel to go with it.

I couldn’t very well tell Ben he would have to do without his Princess Diana Rum Punch at $28 – and then it would have seemed odd if I baulked at Devil Killer Sake ($32).

After that, there was no holding us – and since Hugo’s inventory of my protein intake and the discovery that my vegetarian diet had left me woefully lacking, Ben recommended the Wagyu beef tacos ($65), and it all rather went downhill from there.

By the time we got to the end, and it was getting on for four o’clock, we finished with a couple of cigars and Hennessy (not the XO – be reasonable.)

Hugo and I had tried cigars in Bequia. I haven’t smoked since my 30s (when my pipe fell out of my mouth into the trough in the gents at the top bar of the Harrow in Fleet Street). It turns out it’s not like riding a bicycle, and Hugo and I just couldn’t keep them alight.

Nobu’s Chateau Fuerte Naturals worked much better. Maybe it helped that they were only half as long (but $50 each, all the same).

The bill, when it came (as they were getting ready to close), was just a smidgeon under $800.

I’ve stopped worrying what it’s going to cost to fix the engine.

Ben contemplates Nobu’s sushi

The bill for lunch for two (no, I can’t believe it either)