I have always believed that every cloud has a silver lining – but only if you look for it. It has taken me two weeks to find the best thing about hitting the rock.

You may have read about the rock. I am pleased to say the damage is all fixed now and Samsara is back in the water. However, I did end up with a bill for $2,525 (£1,955) even if it does mean I now have a nice smooth bottom to the keel as well.

This has meant an adjustment to this month’s budget and definitely no tailor-made awning – here’s the one I made for $15. It does the job just as well.

And then I thought: How can I make up that money really quickly? Well, of course, there’s always a way. If you have read the “Desperation” chapter in my new book Faster, Louder, Riskier, Sexier (link at the end) or, more particularly the next chapter, “Luck”, you will know all about this.

So, I have given myself a month to make up that deficit. I have posted the following on Facebook:

“Who wants to make a quick £1,000? You will need a smartphone and a UK bank account in your name to receive the money on August 21st. Apply now with your name, occupation and UK phone number to john@oldmansailing.com. Enter £1,000 in the subject field. It worked for me. What have you got to lose?”

Of course, if any followers of the blog would like to apply, you would be most welcome. That way, we can both earn £1,000 in double quick time.

Meanwhile, if you would like to buy a book, it wouldn’t do any harm.

… and please leave it some stars. Stars are so important.

 https://amzn.eu/d/a7j8Re8

It’s raining in North Wales.

I know this because I just spoke to Dave Jones about my battery installation (I’m biting the bullet and getting Lithium). Dave was happy to talk. It meant he could stay in his van in the dry. Also, It was 14°C outside (feels like 12 says the BBC).

I mention all this because I’ve been moaning about it being 39°C in the cabin here in Trinidad – and coupled with 68% humidity, it’s been pretty unpleasant.

 Of course, this wouldn’t matter if I was anchored out in the bay with a breeze blowing down the hatch – or even on my way back to Grenada with 15kts on the beam. But, as you may be aware, I hit a rock last week and I’ve been on the hard while “Cow” (that’s his name) fixes the damage.

Also, they’ve parked me right next to the pilot boats’ shed where somebody leaves the lights on all night and as soon as it gets dark, every mosquito in Trinidad & Tobago comes to party on my doorstep.

I arrived on Tuesday. By Thursday I had learned that shutting both the companionway and the forehatch and fitting my one fly-screen to the skylight was not the answer. With sleep impossible, I took to getting up at 3.00 a.m. and making tea – until I discovered that that just made it hotter still. Since it would cost £102 to buy a special plug to fit the boatyard’s 220V socket, the batteries were precariously low and I’d turned off both fridges – so the beer was in the high twenties too.

But there’s always rum…

I do realise that drinking rum at 3.00 a.m. while watching old romcoms on Netflix is not really “living the dream”.

So, it was a significant moment on Saturday afternoon when Rob came by. I didn’t know Rob but I had met Anne in the laundry when I was depositing the last copy of Trident* and they have a Rival 38.

Rob climbed up the ladder for a cup of tea in the cockpit – the rest of the family were at the water park. He was astonished to discover I didn’t have air conditioning.

Air conditioning in a Rival 32…

“Not built-in air-conditioning. You can rent a mobile unit for $5 a day: A guy comes round and plumbs it into your hatch and bingo…”

Just my luck to discover this on a Saturday night.

I endured the Saturday night (John Thaw in “Bomber Harris” with Antigua Gold – a refined and mellow rum). Then on Sunday night, I moved into the West Palm Hotel. This was an extravagance I know, but it was only for one night and the air conditioner over the door was set to 17°C.

Now I’m back aboard and the cabin temperature is a pleasant 27°C (it’s 41°C in the shade outside). Another benefit of air conditioning is that the pressure of the cold air being pumped into the boat gets forced out of the cracks around the companion, so the bugs just get blown back where they came from.

If there’s any justice, it will have stopped raining in North Wales too…

*Trident in the laundry: This is the novel I wrote in 1983 and finally published on Amazon when its theme of Russia meddling in other countries’ elections, an “America First” President in the White House and a Corbyn-like figure installed in Downing Street suddenly seemed more credible.

I formatted it myself and very amateurish it looked. I’ve since had this done professionally and the book sells steadily to people who want to test Tamsin’s theory that I can’t write fiction because I’m not interested in other people (but you’re good when you’re writing about yourself).

Then, a few months ago, I found five copies of the original edition mouldering under one of the forward berths and decided on this idea of leaving them in marina laundries. I write a message on the fly-leaf asking people to leave the book in another laundry when they’d finished with it – and would they like to contact me and tell me where it’s got to? It’s like sending out messages in bottles.

By Sunday, Anne’s bookworm son, Sampson, had snaffled it and read it cover to cover – and, moreover, declared that he liked it.

Since I never waste an opportunity to plug a book, here it is: https://a.co/d/079DQuMq

 Hurricane Beryl had just crashed through Carriacou and taken a side-swipe at the Grenadines as she passed. I was in Trinidad’s Scotland Bay a hundred miles to the south watching it all on YouTube.

I had joined the exodus and was feeling exceptionally pleased with myself.

Here’s a tip: Never feel too pleased with yourself.

The next morning, I puttered back to Chaguaramas to complete Trinidad and Tobago’s byzantine customs and immigration process (How many people have died on the voyage other than as the result of an accident?)

I knew the way – just round the corner, round Delgado Point where the buoy’s missing, and someone has helpfully posted the fact on the Navionics Chart. Two miles round the corner was no trouble. I had just dodged a hurricane…

That was when I hit the rock. The rock that is clearly marked on the chart. The chart that I was not looking at because I’ve just got Starlink and had flicked over to Facebook to look at pictures of all the boats piled up like spilikins on the hard at Tyrrell Bay.

In other words, I wasn’t paying attention to the job in hand. It’s something I do a lot – have done all my life. People called me a dreamer (one of the kinder explanations).

What I say to myself when I knock a chunk out of a boat has not always been so forgiving. Hitting a rock at four knots is just the sort of thing I would beat myself up about for days. Samsara certainly didn’t deserve to lose a great scrape of gelcoat from the leading edge of the keel. Now she’ll have to come out for repair – more expense.

More reason to berate myself for the fool that I am.

Except I don’t do that anymore.

Now I know there is a reason for it – this not paying attention, these temporary absences from real life. This is classic ADHD.

Get over it.

If you would like to read about the other absurdities (and hilarities) that I lay at the door of this ridiculous mental kink. I have written my life story – now that I understand it. You can find it on Amazon. It’s called Faster, Louder, Riskier Sexier – Learning to love ADHD.

And if I do say so myself, it’s a cracking read.

But then I would say that, wouldn’t I? So, don’t take it from me. Take it from the first couple of reviewers.

One says: “I’ve read a few of John’s books and I read his blog, this book is his best work yet – in my opinion! “

Another writes: “This is a wonderful memoir and a great read… John writes with the style of a top journalist and the honesty of a great memoirist.”

https://amzn.eu/d/00WelhNb

The Great Escape from Grenada to Trinidad

Three days ago I left Dominica because there was a tropical disturbance 1,500 miles away. Now I’m approaching Trinidad where the weather forecast for tomorrow is “a gentle breeze”.

For the Grenadines – just 100 miles to the north – it is: “Hurricane Beryl will develop into a Major Category 3 Hurricane with life-threatening winds of 150km/hr and higher gusts. Major storm surge likely…”

Oh look, in the time it’s taken me to write that, Beryl has graduated to “Extremely dangerous Category 4 Hurricane” with wind speeds of 209-251 km/hr.

Jogging along against the Equatorial current so that I’m really only making two knots towards my destination, I know all this stuff because I have Starlink.

Starlink, if you’re not familiar with it, is the satellite communications system that is the practical by-product of Elon Musk firing off all those rockets.

When I wrote The Voyage books (#1 & #2), part of the charm was supposed to be “No contact with the shore, no high-frequency radio or satphone. No weather forecasts, no texts from loved ones. No news…”

I had books on my Kindle, films downloaded onto Amazon Prime. I told the family when to expect me (but not to raise the alarm if I was late). As for weather forecasts: My view was always to get a good forecast before you leave and once you’re out there, you get the weather you get…

And this was fine before weather apps and hurricane trackers and Mr Weatherman on YouTube. But an iPhone needs the internet. Until now, this meant a SIM card – and in the Caribbean, a different SIM card for every island… and even when you’ve got one, it’s not going to work in the remote anchorages, so you end up in a beach bar trying to make WhatsApp calls in competition with wall-to-wall reggae.

Yet, for the same price (cheaper in many cases) you can get Starlink’s unlimited high-speed internet – blisteringly high-speed, actually. We’re talking 172mbps – and all you need is a stylish white box full of clever electronics and a dish the size of an airline tray table.

The Starlink dish (top right), with the solar panel and wind charger.

Chiefy in his perch on top of the Starlink router.

Starlink has been a revelation: As long as I have battery power, I can leave it switched on and people can call me whenever they like – even my son Owen at six o’clock in the morning because he’s buying his first house and forgot about the time difference. I can decide, on a whim, that Hollywood on Netflix is brilliant and download the whole series.

Admittedly, once away from shore, I do have to opt for the pay-as-you-go tariff – but even that is worth it for my daily fix of The News Agents podcast (so I can sit with my face in my hands, not daring to peek between my fingers in case Joe Biden’s geriatric mumbling turns out to be real…)

And I can follow Beryl in real time – from her tiny beginnings as a “tropical disturbance” to her blossoming into a genuine life-threatening Category 4 force of nature. If I’d known she was going to end up like this, I’d have been a lot more frightened in the first place – but I’m a hurricane virgin. The one thing I did know was “Go South” and “Go Now”.

Admittedly, I had a long conversation with an old hurricane hand at last autumn’s Ocean Cruising Club party in Gran Canaria. “Hurricane preparation” he explained, is a last resort when you’ve left it too late. Even then: “Don’t just take off every scrap of canvas, everything on deck, the boom, anything you can unscrew. Take down your halyards. Do you know how much windage there is in a halyard? Now count how many you’ve got…”

Yet on Facebook, someone was asking whether he should leave the canvas doors of his cockpit enclosure open for the wind to blow through…

Someone else was saying she wanted to get clear but her partner wouldn’t leave because they’d paid for a month’s mooring…

If you flick back a few posts to ”Barbuda” you can see what Hurricane Irma did to a brand-new beach hotel. Imagine what it’s going to do to the guy in Grenada Yacht Club Marina who asked if he should put out an anchor or extra lines to the dock…

Meanwhile, the AIS screen shows a stream of yachts heading for Trinidad’s Boca de Manos. North Coast Radio checks us in – breaking into my reverie with crackling Channel 16 updates. I’ll wait until I’m ten miles off. Yes, I filed my Float Plan online but no, I’ll need to dig out the printer for the Maritime Declaration of Health (Has anyone died on board otherwise than as the result of an accident?)

I’ll keep you posted.

The Great Escape from Grenada to Trinidad

This started as a particularly pedestrian blog post.

Now I’m writing it sitting on the leeward berth, the laptop sliding off my knees as we race south – and it is a race: Me and Samsara against the “tropical disturbance” which may or may not develop into a tropical storm or even a hurricane. One way and another, it is not to be trifled with.

But it is stomping across the Atlantic at 20 knots – straight for me.

I am relieved to report that the map shows it is still 1,500 miles away. But there is no doubt that it is coming and since I am rather new to sailing the Caribbean during the hurricane season, I have convinced myself that it is coming for me!

So, this is not going to be a post about how these delightful islands are becoming as familiar as my local high street. I was going to say that Instead of the Co-Op for Pringles and Timpson’s for more front door keys, it is St Lucia for the watermaker and Dominica for the Kindle repair. Actually, it was supposed to be Martinique for the watermaker repair but the company there was useless (never returned calls, didn’t acknowledge emails, had no idea when they might get round to it…)

So, as you might try the cycle shop if you can’t get what you want in the hardware store, I sailed over to St Lucia where Jon White of Regis Electronics fixed it in no time at all (and told me I was operating it all wrong).

I stayed just long enough to give it a quick test in the marina and drink several bottles of Piton aboard a big boat called Stargazer with some lovely people called Andy, Jo and Jo’s sister Vicky. Jo had given Andy Old Man Sailing and now Andy gave me all the electronic charts for the whole world!

After that, it was time for a proper sea trial of the watermaker.

Also, the Kindle needed to go back to the repair shop in Dominica. They said they’d fixed it a month ago – and it packed up the very next day on the way to Antigua.

So now – by this somewhat circuitous route – I was back in Dominica, anchored off the fishermen’s shacks in Roseau and Maria at Compusol said to come back tomorrow.

Then the Hurricane Tracker app opened with a big red X. A red X means “seven-day cyclone chance greater than 60%”.

I turned to Facebook (when you don’t know what to do, turn to Facebook.)

The advice was as universal as only Facebook advice can be:

Get into the mangroves in Martinique.

Get into the mangroves in Antigua.

Wait and see.

Go south now.

Watch YouTube videos about hurricane preparation.

Pray.

“Go South” is the standard advice. Even I know that – but the predicted track for this disturbance covered the coast of Venezuela. There wasn’t any gap to “go south” into. Maybe I should go north instead – there was plenty of room to the north.  Come back when it’s all over… The Facebook seers didn’t even dignify this with a comment.

Meanwhile, I had to change the freshwater pump or I wouldn’t be able to flush the watermaker even if it was working. The pump is under the sink. Changing it took the whole afternoon. With the cabin temperature at 38°C, tropical disturbances didn’t seem so urgent.

But by five o’clock, a new Windy prediction showed the storm passing north of Grenada. Suddenly Trinidad was shown in blue which means “light winds”. Now it made perfect sense to go south.

This was on Thursday evening. The disturbance/storm/hurricane wouldn’t hit until Monday afternoon. That gave me three and a half days to do 300 miles. With a trade wind on the beam, I could average 100 miles a day, no trouble.

I did spend some time working out that if I left in the morning, I’d still have three days and that way I could stock up with beer and buy a 7mm spanner which, I had discovered during the water pump replacement, I am lacking.

You can just see the headlines, can’t you: “Sailing pensioner drowned in hurricane. Beer and spanner blamed.”

So, I left. Waving to the Frenchman anchored next door, I pulled up the anchor and the sails all at the same time and hastened south.

The Frenchman raised his glass. The French don’t worry about hurricanes. Why do you think nobody bothers to translate sang froid?

And so, as I say, here we are on target, tramping along at five knots with the super zero flying in nine knots apparent – 122 miles to the turning point at the bottom of Grenada. ETA Trinidad midday Sunday.

I wonder if I can buy a new Kindle in Trinidad?

And a spanner?

A big thank-you to Tom Fisher and Marco Schaal who, between them, cleared up all the errors in my new book The Voyage #2: Falmouth to Grenada.

Tom managed much of this while sailing from Bermuda to Nova Scotia.

Neither has accepted the offer of a refund, insisting instead that I put it towards the boat maintenance kitty (or the booze locker).

What this means is that, if you buy the book now, you get the new edition which includes all the words – it’s strange how many managed to get lost on the way.

And thank you also to the 37 people who have bought it already – and this is where I have a favour to ask. If you enjoyed the book, would you mind awfully opening up the orders page of your Amazon account and awarding it some stars (perhaps even writing a review)? These things are so important in getting a new book launched.

I now have seven on Amazon. In particular, I would recommend my autobiography Faster, Louder, Riskier, Sexier: Learning to love ADHD. I really believe this is the best of the lot (it’s certainly fat enough). I’ll put a link below, just to be helpful…

 https://amzn.eu/d/a7j8Re8

Barbuda’s Nobu beach bar is more of a resort really, with wooden walkways in the sand and piped music among the trees, secluded sunbeds, outdoor bars…

They have an indoor bar as well – although nothing’s really indoors except for the five-star loos…

Nobu – walkways in the sand and piped music

…and a shady veranda

I had walked all the way up the beach specifically for a Nobu cocktail. In all the time I’ve been in the Caribbean this year, I still haven’t had my bushwhacker. I thought everyone knew how to make a bushwhacker (Rum, Kahlua, Amaretto, Baileys, Crème de cacao, Triple Sec & Nutmeg). But when I got there, I had to put up with something which consisted of white rum, chilli, lemon juice and 90% ice – for $25 – and that’s US dollars, not the East Caribbean ones as in “EC come, EC go…”

I wouldn’t complain because at least $15 of that was for the veranda furniture and the glass that came with the bottle of Carib (that was a first…)

No, what upset me was that I left my hat behind and didn’t realise until I was back on the boat. Nobu closed early on Sunday and would not be opening again until Wednesday.

Of course, I could abandon the hat and return to Antigua for customs check-out before going back to Dominica to take the not-mended Kindle back to the electronics shop. But this was no ordinary hat. I had ordered it online and had it delivered to the Heathrow hotel when overnighting on the way back from the family skiing holiday. A lot of logistics had gone into that hat. Also, it wasn’t cheap, and I find I’ve become very parsimonious since losing £352,600 by being just plain stupid.

(If that figure made you to go back and read it again, it’s not a mistake – well the numbers are correct – losing that much money certainly was a mistake. (The full story is in my autobiography Faster, Louder, Riskier, Sexier https://amzn.eu/d/a7j8Re8)

So, I certainly wasn’t about to lose my hat as well. All I had to do was hang around until Wednesday…

Princess Diana might have been content to spend several days on the Princess Diana Beach (well, you’d feel obliged to if they named it after you), I decided to kill the time by going up to Codrington – or “the village” as the locals call it. I could check out there instead of stopping again in Antigua. Also, they don’t charge if you to do it in Codrington which would go some way towards the cost of the ice cocktail.

There’s a good reason it’s free: Much of the water around Barbuda was last surveyed in 1848 (HMS Thunder, Capt. E. Barnett)ß. The Cruising Guide claimed to have the most up-to-date chart – although my 2018 edition was still at the printers when Hurricane Irma came barrelling up the islands and punched a hole through the lagoon’s defences.

Even the Navionics chart includes notes such as: “This area is encumbered with numerous coral heads… put a man in the rigging and eyeball…”

Eyeballing requires strong sunlight above and behind the man in the rigging so that the deep water shows up as dark blue, the sand as pale green and the coral heads in sharp relief. I compromised by standing up on the cockpit seat and going very, very slowly.

The best thing about modern electronic charts is that mariners can contribute, and somebody had helpfully plotted a line of depth readings all the way along between the lagoon and the reef, right up to the anchorage just off the wrecked Lighthouse Bay Hotel.

This was truly spectacular. I had seen plenty of houses with their roofs blown off by Irma, but a hotel which falls flat on its face because the land underneath it gets washed away is enough to make anyone throw out an extra handful of chain before going ashore.

This was not as straightforward at Codrington as it had been on the Princess Diana Beach. Admittedly, thanks to Irma, I didn’t have to drag the dinghy over the spit and into the lagoon. Another note explains: “As a result of two hurricanes in 2017, a new pass has opened up between the sea and Codrington… wide and deep enough for RIBs and other dinghies to pass into the lagoon.”

The only tiny detail omitted is that it is a full two miles from the anchorage to the village and the Trade Wind was blowing its usual 12-15kts.

And I still don’t have an outboard.

Of course, I could call on VHF for a water taxi ($40 US at 2018 prices).

Or I could row.

I once rowed one-and-a-half miles each way across the Sint Maarten lagoon (from the Dutch side to the French side because I had a French SIM card and they had some way of restricting coverage to comply exactly with the border). But that was without taking the wind into consideration. My usual two-knot rowing average could be seriously affected by a brisk headwind. I WhatsApped the Customs Officer and said it would take me an hour-and-a-half. He said he closed at four o’clock.

Isn’t there a bit in The Riddle of the Sands when Davies and Carruthers are planning to row through the channels to creep up on the Germans and Davies says: “How far can you pull?”

The answer has always got to be: “As far as I have to.”

Rowing – with hat

I stopped only twice – once to take a close-up of the collapsed hotel and once to check on my phone if I was still going in the right direction (I wasn’t).

And it did take an hour-and-a-half – and the lagoon is sufficiently wide for a 12-15kt trade wind to kick up an appreciable chop – which then gets blown over the bow of the dinghy, soaking the oarsman from head to foot. But that’s OK because the water temperature is 29°C. By the time I’d walked a mile through the meandering streets of Codrington to find the Customs Office, I had pretty much dried off.

The Customs Officer had gone home. A woman on a bicycle told me where he lived. He came back, bringing the Immigration Officer with him.

We spent a pleasant twenty minutes filling in the forms (only five of them this time). I apologised for being late – I’d had to row across the lagoon.

They were incredulous – both of them: “You rowed across the lagoon?”

I don’t have an outboard motor.

“Nobody rows across the lagoon!”

This became obvious on the way back. Not only did I have the wind with me – so this time it only took 50 minutes and I didn’t even get wet. But a man in an enormous Boston Dory with three (yes, three) giant Suzukis on the back, drove over to ask if I was OK.

He came close enough and shut down his horsepower so that I could shout my usual response: “If I don’t do this I have to go to the gym!”

All the same, he wouldn’t leave until I had given him a definitive thumbs up.

And so, on the Wednesday morning, I carefully retraced my route inside the reef, round Nine Foot Bank and wriggled through the coral opposite the Nobu until I was just off the beach. I could see the people on their sun loungers and in the shade with their chopsticks and seared salmon karashi sumiso.

This time I was so close I didn’t have to bother with the dinghy at all. I swam ashore and presented myself, dripping, at the bar.

And yes, they had found my hat. The only thing I hadn’t planned on was swimming back wearing it.

And, if you meant to look up the book when you’d finished reading this, here it is again:  https://amzn.eu/d/a7j8Re8

It was always going to be about Barbuda.

Among these islands lumped together as a tropical paradise, Barbuda is special. It is the only one that is truly unspoilt.

Here, there are no sprawling hotel complexes, no condominiums or cruise liners. No charter flights through the night…

Barbuda, I learned from the Cruising Guide when I first arrived in the Caribbean in 2021, is pretty much as it’s always been. The blue-green sea dotted with coral and teeming with every kind of fish. Endless beaches of the palest pink sand that seem to be entirely deserted.

The island is half the size of Antigua and yet has a population of just 1,634. Mostly, it is left to nature with herds of donkeys, wild horses, deer and goats roaming free.

There is a rather unusual reason for this. The people were originally imported as slaves by the Codrington Family who leased the island from the Crown in 1685 (for an annual rent of one fat sheep). However, the Codringtons did not establish their usual sugar plantation but used Barbuda for growing crops and raising livestock for their workforce in Antigua. Also, the island made a convenient hunting estate (the locals still go out with dogs and guns after wild pigs).

Mostly, the owners left the people to their own devices. This meant that when Abolition came, the Barbudans carried on farming and hunting and fishing in much the same way they always had. Also, they agreed to hold the land communally – which meant that nobody could buy it…

With independence in 1981, the Island found itself amalgamated with Antigua (honestly, how can you have an independent nation of 1,634 people?) But Antigua is not like Barbuda. Antigua is particularly keen on development.

Mind you, the government didn’t have it all their own way: When a construction company spent all day putting up Portacabins ready to build a hotel on Spanish Point, the locals turned up en-masse after dark and pushed them off the cliff.

As the Guide’s celebrated author Chris Doyle puts it: “Many people would love to get their hands on Barbuda’s beachfront real estate, including, at the moment, Robert de Niro and his rich friends with the full connivance of the labor government. Some Barbudans object strongly. It is difficult to know how long they can resist McDonaldsization.”

Well, at least I was getting here first.

But that is the trouble with being a cheapskate.  My cruising guide was not even up to date in 2021. I bought it off another boat that was heading for Panama. It is actually dated 2018-2019. It doesn’t even cover 2017 when Hurricane Irma caused the entire population (all 1,634) to be evacuated to Antigua until basic services could be restored – and the government used this as an excuse to amend the communal land law.

So, when I turned up on Friday at Princess Diana Beach, expecting to find 16 miles of unblemished pink sand with just Enoch’s beach bar and lobster grill to break the monotony, I was a bit startled to find a construction site.

This wasn’t what I’d sailed 30 miles for. I turned hard a-port for a couple of miles until I could drop anchor opposite a deserted stretch of beach. Admittedly the boat did settle right on top of a coral head, but you can do that sort of thing when you only draw one-and-a-half metres.

I was just getting out a cold Carib when a helicopter came and landed right opposite – and then another one.

Half an hour after that, an enormous motor catamaran loaded with tourists from Antigua came and drove right up onto the beach, let down a ramp and disgorged its cargo of oiled flesh as if this was D-Day.

Clearly, things have changed a bit since Princess Diana was here in 1997. She chose it specifically because it was so darned difficult for the press to get to.

It wasn’t that easy for me, it being seven miles from the anchorage to Codrington, the capital – or “the village” as the locals call it. A taxi was $70 US return even at 2018 prices and I was still smarting from the engineer’s bill at English Harbour. I got out the bike.

I hadn’t ridden the bike since the Canary Islands, it had a flat tyre and the pump seemed to be broken. I took it anyway. There was a garage in town. Surely somebody would give me a lift.

His name was Chris and he was from Jamaica – an architect on the construction site. He reckoned that a little tasteful development for seriously high-end clients could only be good for the island – maybe they could build some decent roads.

He had a point: The reason a taxi costs so much is because a seven-mile return trip is going to take a while if the fastest you can go is 20mph and even then you’re going to wreck the suspension in the potholes.

Also, he had some bad news: The high-pressure pump at the garage was broken. The good news was that the dive shop could pump up my tyre with a SCUBA tank.

More bad news. The dive shop was closed. In the end, he left me at the General Store in the hope that they might stock a pump.

The General Store was closed because the proprietor had gone down the road. He would be back in fifteen minutes. This I learned from a tall young man with the biggest and whitest teeth I had ever seen. He said his name was Scuzzy and after a couple of beers from the Tummy Feast Restaurant two doors down, he found a SCUBA tank from somewhere and pumped up my tyre.

Then he chaired a Question Time debate among the other Tummy Feast customers gathered in the shade of the General Store (it now transpired that the store was closed because the proprietor was also the proprietor of the Tummy Feast – and that seemed to be more profitable just at the moment.)

The thing is that Barbuda is just getting left behind. It may be great to visit and sit on the beach, but you should try living here. Have you seen the hospital? Don’t fall off that bike…

You can’t stop progress – and it’s not as if there isn’t enough land. They’ve got more land than they know what to do with. Maybe letting a few rich people build a few fancy houses will get them some decent roads…

Yes, they may have a point there. I set off to see the Frigate Bird colony in the north of the Island. That would be another three-and-a-half miles down Route 1 with only the donkeys for company. I was about halfway when it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a single other vehicle and that if I did get a puncture from one of Route 1’s potholes, it was going to be a long walk back. If I fell right into the pothole and went over the handlebars… well, maybe better not to think about that…

In the end, I never did get to see the Frigate Birds because it turns out the only access is by water across the lagoon. The road takes you to Two Foot Bay – which was charming and ended in a scramble over huge volcanic boulders.

It was only later, sitting over a Carib in Enoch’s that I learned I had missed the Sink Hole too – 80ft deep with an entirely different eco-system at the bottom, all cool and dark and mysterious.

I wouldn’t have known about this either if it hadn’t been for Ian who picked me up on the road back to the beach – yes, I did get a puncture in the end.

Ian works in construction too and invited me to join him and his friends for Happy Hour. That was when I discovered that in fact Messrs de Niro and di Caprio do not have it all their own way.

The PLH development (it stands for Peace, Love and Happiness) may have a paved road and a chain link fence and a cute little security lodge painted pink. But the law still states that no matter how many notices they might put up saying “Private”, the beach is public for six feet from the high-tide line.

…and that includes the island’s oldest residents: the donkeys. Every night, they walk in single file down the beach (sticking to the public part as if they know the rules). Then, under cover of darkness, they graze on the expensive landscaping so painstakingly planted and watered every day for the delight of the seriously high-end guests.

I think that’s a nice touch.

Green Island and the No See Ums (you can’t see them in the photo either)

Green Island gets a good press. The Cruising Guide calls it “charming” and goes on about the abundant birdlife and the snorkelling on the reefs. The Caribbean Compass calls it a “must-do” and puts it in the top-five Antigua destinations.

So, I was rather excited to get away from the ministrations of Jesse the mechanic at English Harbour and the Nanni diesel agent (who wasn’t) in Falmouth.

This was going to be wild cruising.

I anchored in Ricketts Bay. I blew up the dinghy. I went ashore to inspect the wildlife.

Have you met the No See Um? I thought they only had them in the Pacific – a sand fly that is so small as to be practically invisible (hence the name) but packs a bite which on a pain-to- weight ratio leaves the Scottish midge at the starting gate.

To begin with, I thought the wind had got up and was blowing the sand along the beach – remember how it used to sting at the seaside when the British bank holiday weather turned on the Monday afternoon?

But there was no great gale of wind – just the stinging sensation. Eventually I spotted the tiny black specs on my arm. Honestly, they’re smaller than grains of sand.

But ouch! This was agony.

I ran back to the dinghy. I rowed towards the boat.

But of course, the No See Ums went with me – still crawling, still biting.

I did think of diving over the side, but my little dinghy is so small and light that getting back into it from the water is virtually impossible. It turns over before you get halfway. In fact, I’ve only managed it once and that was at the Yacht Club dock in Sint Maarten when I was drunk (I’m not sure how much help that was because it follows that if I hadn’t been drunk, I wouldn’t have fallen in in the first place…)

Instead, I grabbed a T-shirt, dunked it in the water and sluiced myself down. When I reached the boat, the first thing I did was to dive over the side.

Never mind, I had a better idea: Opposite Green Island is Nonsuch Bay which the Guide calls a “gunkholer’s paradise”. In particular, there is Hughes Bay where the Harmony Hall resort welcomes yachties on the same terms as its regular guests – who have an inclusive deal. This means there is a set price for the buffet – effectively an “eat as much as you like” deal.

This would not normally seem so exciting since vegetarianism has yet to make much impression on the Caribbean. But breakfast: Now, that might be an option…

I went looking for Harmony Hall.

First, I found a private dock with two prominent notices to that effect.

Then, what appeared to be a hotel on the point with steps leading up from a little stone dock decorated with conch shells.

I walked up the steps. I walked all round the place – I couldn’t work it out: It seemed deserted but the swimming pool was still full (although somewhat neglected). There was a car in the garage, doors open and rubbish scattered about. It wasn’t until I got down to the end of the drive and the locked gates that it appeared this was not Harmony Hall but Cinnamon Point.

Across to the other side of the bay, then – there was another dock over there.

And a private beach. With rows of sun loungers on the sand which someone had carefully raked to remove any trace of guests.

There weren’t any – at least, not until I heard the sound of voices and followed them past the beach bar (closed), past rows of self-catering cabins (all shut up) until I came to the infinity pool and a solitary American family splashing about. Apparently, the resort has been sold and the new owners yet to take over. Anyway, no as-many-as-you-like pancakes…

Tomorrow I shall sail to Barbuda. Barbuda is open, I believe.