There, I never thought I would write that as a headline. I hate motoring. It’s noisy and smelly. It’s expensive – also, it’s an admission of defeat. For the sailor to resort to the “iron topsail” just because the wind doesn’t agree to his plans is, somehow, a failure as great as not backing down the anchor or having the headsail fall over the side because you didn’t mouse the shackles on the furling gear.

But here I am, sitting on the port berth – normally, I would say the “leeward berth” but just at the moment there isn’t any leeward (or windward) for the very good reason that there isn’t any wind. But I’m not complaining. I am, indeed, unexpectedly happy with the situation.

I am in Cardigan Bay, on my way from Conwy, where Tony Jones of TJ Rigging replaced the forestay which broke at the end of the transatlantic crossing, to Falmouth where the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club is holding a reunion for the 50^th anniversary of the Azores and Back Race. I competed in Largo in 1987 and again in 1991. I won a decanter. I’ve still got it somewhere…

But the Windy app says that if I sit here and wait for the predicted easterly, I will be waiting for a full 24 hours and miss the “before” party on Friday night.

So, when I awoke at 0700 to a blue sky through the central hatch and the sound of the mainsheet traveller shooting from side to side as the boat rolled in one of those calms so total that you can look over the side and see small and unlikely creatures skipping about on the surface, I had a decision to make.

Samsara carries 55 litres of fuel, and the tank was two-thirds full. The little Nanni 21hp sips about half a litre an hour at just under four knots. The wind is due to come back in 24 hours anyway. It’s no worse than buying a couple of rounds to go with the seafood linguine I ordered from the RCYC booking site.

To my surprise, I don’t mind at all. For a start, motoring makes the boat more stable – something to do with the flow of water over the keel, so this meant a proper breakfast.

Breakfasts are a bit of a thing at the moment, now that I’ve got a real pop-up toaster and enough Lithium to do one slice at a time and not worry about wasting the heat on the other side. This morning it was toast and the new vegan Marmite with smashed avocado, fried tomatoes and a Burford Brown egg – and then another slice of fresh hot toast to go with an enormous helping of Bonne Maman apricot jam.

Now add Colombian coffee (from Colombia) fresh-ground in the new 230volt coffee grinder!

See what I mean? By the time I rose from the saloon table, I’d forgotten we were motoring at all. Maybe the engine is quieter once it’s warmed up – maybe the problem is that I never let it run for long enough.

So then I replaced the length of Dyneema on the end of the topping lift with a soft shackle because the new line is the right length at last – whipped proper markers onto the main halyard in place of the pieces of tape. This was a hangover from having to end-for-end the halyard off the Grand Banks because it was about to chafe through where it passed over the sheave.

It was all going so frightfully well that I thought there might be a blog post in it, and came down to write this. The next thing you know it’s lunchtime and time for tea – which is when I noticed the batteries were back at 74%, where they had been before breakfast – not bad, given that the brilliant sun of early morning had given way to a high-pressure haze.

It was wondering about this that made me realise the wind charger had 12kts to play with – and since there was a one-and-a-half knot tide against us, that meant actually, we were going nowhere… which, in turn, meant that there really was 12kts of wind.

In which case, why wasn’t I sailing?

Well, I am now – doing a good three knots into the bay to get out of the tide. I should pick up a mobile signal, too.

And it went on like this for four days. I motored a bit to catch the tide off Land’s End – and then again to get out of it in Mount’s Bay. The Bristol Channel, as always when heading south, was wonderful with clear blue skies and a beam reach (which I should have used to put me up-tide at the end – see above).

In fact, it was all going swimmingly as I jogged past The Manacles and up to Black Rock, bang on schedule to walk through the town and arrive at the Royal Cornwall for a six o’clock drink with…

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? Who would remember me from 1987? Who would I recognise? I turned the switch one last time to drop the main and come into the Haven Marina.

The engine stopped.

As if to say: “You think you can just use me when you feel like it – get a blog post out of a once-in-a-lifetime moment of appreciation, would you? Well, I know what you really think of engines…”

…and it was right. I said a very rude word. This was going to ruin everything. I would have to anchor off Trefusis Point – chase the blockage back from the injectors. I did think of leaving it ‘til the morning and blowing up the dinghy – but that would put me behind for packaging up the eBay parcels and getting to the Post Office before the opening event at 10.00 a.m – and there was coffee and mingling from 9.45.

I accepted that tonight it wasn’t going to be seafood linguine but a tin of beans – and no fresh vegetables because I wasn’t going to need them once I got here, was I?

So, I established that the main fuel filter was only half full – the pre-filter definitely needed changing – but there was nothing flowing from the breather when I slacked off the nut. We were back to Grenada and Nelson’s Dockyard, and https://www.oldmansailing.com/diesel/

I took the inlet pipe off the filter – nothing. So, the muck in the tank had blocked the outlet again. There is one way to clear that: Blow.

And so it was that with the taste of diesel still in my mouth, I let the engine run for a full 15 minutes while I cleared up, then puttered over to The Haven and rafted up alongside a French Halberg Rassey (always pick a French boat – you can give them a leaflet for the French translation of the book).

It was fully eight o’clock by the time I found three old AZAB competitors round a table on the RCYC’s Upper Deck. I didn’t recognise any of them.

But that’s the thing – they didn’t recognise me either. It’s been forty years. Now we’re just a bunch of old men.

But would you believe it: The 90-year-old who had left his walking stick on the table just where I was going to sit was Peter Phillips (Google: https://policesailing.uk/reports/ostar/ostar.htm)

There was Roy Hart, who went on to lead a sailing expedition to the North Pole – and blamed me for getting him into the 1988 OSTAR (I blamed him).

Brian Dale sailed the other Barracuda 35 – you’ll remember them if you remember the 1980s TV sailing soap opera Howard’s Way.

What a time we had with almost half a century of adventures to catch up on…

… and I had two puddings because I ordered a brandy and got a brownie. I’ve always wanted to order two puddings.

Four old men (L-R: Peter Phillips, self, Brian Dale, Roy Hart)

It was 5,133 miles – 47 days. It was my longest passage yet, from Linton Bay in Panama to Douglas, Isle of Man.

Without stopping.

And it was fairly eventful – which is why, a full two weeks after arriving, I am only just now sitting down to write this.

But then the whole trip happened in a bit of a rush: I was just back from the family skiing holiday in Italy where, sitting at a mountain restaurant at the foot of the Matterhorn, I had reminded everyone about the plan to meet up again in the Azores in July.

“Oh no,” said Tamsin. She couldn’t. She was going to Vietnam in June to visit Lottie (Lottie is teaching English to little Vietnamese children). Tamsin wouldn’t have enough holiday from her new job to spend a week in the Azores.

Thinking on my feet, I came up with: “How about a weekend in Dublin?” There were people round the table who had never been to Dublin. Dublin sounded great – so Dublin it is, sometime in August, maybe…

We settled to ordering Tartiflette and Fonduta Valdostana,

It was only when I got back to Panama and Ramón, the taxi driver, had negotiated the final two miles of dirt tracks to the little French enclave of Panamarina (really – they all speak French and there is a proper French restaurant) that I began to think of the logistics.

I had plenty of time – it was only early April after all. But Donald Trump was talking about “taking back” the Panama Canal, and it would be just my luck to get stuck there with a State of Emergency. Also, if I were to sail all the way without stopping, it would be good material for another “Voyage” book – and I needed one: Old Man Sailing had sold 13,000 copies since I published it on Amazon in 2021. But sales were tailing off and, quite frankly, I needed the money.

The “Voyage” books were a success, but there were only two of them, and you can’t decently have a series with less than three. The more I looked at it, the longer I spent poring over the Navionics chart and the relative benefits of the windward and leeward passages around Cuba, the more the idea started to become a reality – and the thing with reality is that you want it to get on and become one as soon as possible.

And then, for some reason I can’t quite pin down, I thought of sailing straight to the Isle of Man for the TT. I tried to get there years ago – I once had a BSA Bantam (and nearly killed myself on Streatham High Road). I wouldn’t dream of riding a motorcycle now. But I do love to see them – and hear them. Hearing them between rain squalls while anchored in Ramsey Bay was all I managed last time. But if I were to leave now – well, as soon as possible – I might just make it for the last weekend. It would be a challenge (which would add a frisson of excitement to the narrative). All I had to do was sail 100 miles a day for 50 days.

I left on Wednesday, April 17^th – it would have been the 16^th, but Fausto, the immigration man, had to go to Panama City to get me my Zarpe – the essential exit permit.

And so, with a bilge full of beer, several dozen tins of beans and, by oversight, only six sheets of kitchen roll, I set off into a northeasterly Force 4-5 with a “Distance to Destination” of 5,166 miles.

The fact that I shaved off 33 of them had something to do with ignoring the advice to stay 130 miles off the coast of Nicaragua because the fishermen are now so hard up, they’re not averse to a little amateur piracy. On April 17^th, I was 66 miles off Cabo Gracias a Dios in only 12 metres. I blame some idiotic competitive spirit.

The whole point in choosing the leeward passage – going between Cuba and the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico – is to ride the Gulf Stream through the Florida Strait. The downside is that it’s a beat all the way, and if the Tradewind is blowing at its full Force 5-6, that’s 350 miles of wind over tide. I’m ashamed to say, I revelled in every cable of it – there is something ineffably wonderful about looking at your track on the screen and seeing that you’ve been tacking through an obtuse angle (check it at https://www.polarsteps.com/JohnPassmore/15574045-2025).

But if I thought that was pretty exciting, wait ‘til I got to the east coast of Florida. Somewhere off West Palm Beach. I sat at the chart table filming the plotter as the “speed over the ground” hovered around ten knots and once, for a memorable second or two, flicked up to 12.1! I could get used to this…

And that’s the trouble. Once you get into the Gulf Stream, it’s hard to leave. Why would you want to? Sea that really is aquamarine, sky the very definition of sky blue, and a screaming beam reach – it’s sailing straight out of the charter company brochures. I recorded no fewer than three 150-mile days – that’s an average of 6.25kts. In all, I was to have 27 days when I clocked more than 100 miles over the 24 hours. At one point, the average was 123.9.

And this included one inexplicable day of total calm, 60 miles off Cape Canaveral. Actually, this was no bad thing: One of the reasons for getting the Remigo electric outboard is because I plan to get a bracket made for the stern. The company website features a 23-footer powering along with one on the back. I reckon it could keep Samsara going at a knot or two, and that’s all you need to keep water flowing over the keel and stop the awful rolling as the ocean reminds you that it never sleeps – no matter what the wind might be doing.

But first, I had to establish that the 1,000W motor could push a 32-footer. I inflated the dinghy, lashed it alongside and pressed the “forward” button of the remote control.

Silently, the motor began to push the Caribbean behind it. Another press of the button, and we were making progress.

I am pleased to say that I managed to record a speed of 1.7kts – hardly surprising since the Remigo has, in the short period I’ve had it, demonstrated five knots (I found it really quite frightening). However, lash it to five tonnes of becalmed yacht, and it tries to launch the dinghy into space – rather appropriate, given where we were – but not much use for progress through the water. Most of the thrust was directed downwards. I was glad when the wind came back.

And the wind took me racing all the way up the east coast of the United States – the Carolinas, Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey. On May 11^th,  Day 26, the daily average hit 123.9 miles. By then, we were just inside the tail of the Grand Banks.

The next day, I broke the Aries. This redoubtable mechanical self-steering gear, built in the 1980s – the same model I had on my old Rival Largo – I always considered to be indestructible. However, in trying to match old and new parts, I may have made a miscalculation. The servo-oar hit something, and the sacrificial sleeve didn’t break fast enough. The main shaft bent, and it wouldn’t work anymore.

I did wonder what it had hit – and how big and immovable that object must have been to do so much damage. Could it have been a small ice floe – a “growler”? The water temperature was down at 1°C – and what would that have done to the hull if the course had deviated just a few inches to starboard…

Anyway, I spent the best part of a day getting the gear aboard (it weighs nearly 23kg) and trying to fix it. When I put it all back, it just wanted to take us round in circles.

This left me with 1,899 miles still to go and having to rely on the electronic autopilot. I have written a lot about electronic autopilots in the past, and my very low opinion of them. But this was based on my experience with the cheap little tillerpilot, which has all its electronics out in the cockpit. Every time it rained, I had to pay £70 for a new circuit board.

When Samsara had her 50^th birthday refit in Conwy in 2023, Dave Jones of Advanced Tech Marine installed the much more sophisticated Raymarine Evolution system for me. It was very expensive, appeared to be most complicated, and its various components were secreted all around the boat, connected by miles of wire. But it steered faultlessly all the way home.

Well, there is a caveat with that. Because it has to “think”, the autopilot is not as quick to react as the Aries, which transmits the movement of the vane to the movement of the rudder instantly – all the forces being connected by aluminium castings and Dyneema line. Besides, once the autopilot’s electronic brain has done its “thinking”, the electric “muscle” of the steering ram has to grind its way across the cockpit. It all takes time – and, in a blow, it all takes far too long.

And we did get a blow.

In fact, I had three full gales with wind speeds over 34kts. I never saw the dial at more than 38kts. But they were very useful for experimenting.

In the first one, I wanted to see if I could get the boat to heave-to and drift directly downwind. When I had tried it before, she had fore-reached and sailed out of the protective slick which Lin Pardey talks about in her storm management books. This time, I streamed the SeaBrake drogue from the bow, and it worked brilliantly. It held the bow up between 45° and 60° to the wind, to take the full force of the waves, and yes, we did drift sideways. However, I didn’t think much of the slick. If it had been as effective as Lin promised, there wouldn’t have been any breaking waves – maybe it had something to do with her boats having full keels and the Rival design only a long fin. Still, I sat there for 12 hours, reading, cooking, and sleeping in relative comfort.

Only later did I discover that I shouldn’t have led the line for the drogue through a fairlead. The force of those breaking waves bent the screws and split the teak toe-rail. The SeaBrake is supposed to collapse and “give” when a sudden strain comes on it. Obviously, not enough.

The second gale saw us lying to the drogue set on a bridle off the stern. This was not a huge success. The boat still needs to be steered, and the autopilot, with its limited range, couldn’t really handle it. This gale lasted well over twelve hours, and at the end of it, the circle of rigging wire which holds the drogue open (and distorts to allow it to collapse under strain) had been strained so much that it had broken. Also, the material had chafed through where it rubbed on the webbing bridle.

The third gale was a bit more awkward because we were coming up to the northwest coast of Ireland, and I didn’t want to get any closer. Fortunately, weather forecasts via Starlink suggested this was going to be short-lived, but even so, I had to sit in the cockpit for three-and-a-half hours and steer through it with waves crashing over me and filling the cockpit above the top of my boots.

You would think this would be enough for one passage, but look what happened when we got into the Traffic Separation Scheme: At half-past two in the morning, with a cruise ship coming up behind, there was an almighty bang and the headsail fell over the side. The forestay had parted at the top.

Of course, I didn’t know this at the time. I was too busy rigging the removable inner forestay before the mast fell down. This wire terminates at the masthead, and not only kept everything upright, but I could set a staysail and keep sailing. This was even more important because, among other setbacks, the engine wouldn’t run for more than five minutes without overheating.

So that’s why it’s taken me two weeks to get around to writing this – that and the broken pump for flushing the watermaker – and, of course, the TT: Believe me, until you have leaned over a wooden garden fence and experienced a motorbike flashing by virtually within touching distance, doing something over 160 miles an hour, you really don’t know what excitement is all about.

Well, this is a first (mind you, it took me 12 hours to find it!)

You can follow my track ‘2025’ at

https://www.polarsteps.com/JohnPassmore/15574045-2025?s=B45DE028-9CAF-4BD7-AA23-4771087DDD44

This is Arnold II.

RIP Arnold II.

I’m getting the hang of this now – although I can’t really take the credit. That must go to Niko Bolas who sent me two electronic mouse traps.

Absurdly, I was a bit miffed when they arrived because the parcel I really wanted (the one with the dinghy patches and windlass foot switches) has been delayed for another week.

But getting back from a couple of nights away in Cartagena and finding the carrot I left in the trap was still there (albeit somewhat desiccated from 39°C and all the hatches closed), I assumed that meant No More Rats.

Then, that first evening, sitting over a cup of coffee, a glass of Aruban rum and the Kindle after dinner, I was sure I heard a familiar scratching from behind the bookcase.

The sound that was unmistakable. It has haunted my evenings for the past month – and I never did work out how Arnold knew it was after dinner and I was sitting comfortably and this was the perfect moment to shake me out of my complacency with a little gnawing.

But since Arnold is no more, this must be his friend (or widow? Maybe a dozen fatherless children…)

Suddenly, the package with the electronic traps seemed very welcome indeed.

I couldn’t try them immediately because it turns out that having everything on the boat rechargeable does terrible things to the AA battery supply: Every single one of them was flat and most of them, thoroughly rusty.

Feeling cheated, I set the old-fashioned traps (and of course, in the morning, found them licked clean of peanut butter and no dead rat.)

Never mind, the next day, just as Niko had promised, the electronic variety worked first time. This really is an innovation. If you have unwanted guests, I really do recommend it.

I never knew these things existed: Essentially, an electronic trap is an oblong box, open at one end and with holes in the other so you can poke the bait inside and the smell of it can get out.

Once the bait is in place (and not before), in go the batteries and switch on.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting but I woke as usual before dawn – once again disappointed that this was not to the sound of the big and terrifying rat trap snapping shut. But something was different…

Somewhere there was a green light flashing. Anyone who has had a bit of practice at sleeping on boats is always amazed at how many LED lights there are in cabins nowadays, but this was a flashing green one and Samsara doesn’t usually sport one of those. Somewhere in the subconscious, there floated a phrase from the instructions: “Flashing green: Rodent caught”.

And sure enough, so he was – stone cold dead (and with a slightly surprised look on his face.)

Arnold II turned out to be smaller than Arnold I (and most definitely male, I was pleased to see.)

In lieu of burial at sea – which did not seem very nice in the marina – I recycled him with the dozen or so starving cats living in the little wooden hut which is the marina rubbish dump.

I have no qualms about this, having long ago abandoned any attempt at a humane end for the surplus crew. Apart from anything else, I discover that not only did they chew through the plastic top of the peanut butter jar as well as a bottle of iced tea. Also, for some reason, they made a hole in a perfectly good and completely empty Tupperware. Honestly, what was the point in that? I thought they were supposed to be demonstrating their intelligence. On top of everything else,  look what they did to the panelling above my bunk. This was their front door to the nest behind the bookcase. I’m sure they could have used one of the many holes left behind by superseded electronics and defunct wiring. Did they really need to eat the boat?

Well, next time, it’s going to be a different story (and a shorter one).

The front door

RIP Arnold

Actually, Arnold was a rat – rats have hairless tails. It was the fact that his was brown not pink that confused me. A noble adversary…

It’s over. After two weeks, five mouse traps, one packet of rat poison, ten helpful suggestions and about a quarter of a jar of peanut butter, Arnold is dead.

And I feel awful about it.

As a vegetarian sailing a boat with a Buddhist name, we should have done better. But this is Colombia and, as I mentioned last time, the concept of a humane mousetrap simply does not translate into Latino Spanish.

Consequently, night after night, I would fall asleep listening to him behind the panelling, gnawing – and rose the next morning to find all the traps licked so clean they might have been through a dishwasher.

Admittedly, Arnold did nearly come to a sticky end (literally) after I took a taxi to HomeCenter – a superstore the size of one of South America’s smaller countries to buy a pair of sticky traps. The idea behind these is that the mouse puts his foot in the goo and can’t get it out. They hadn’t tried it on Arnold, though. He did put his foot in the goo – but then dragged the trap all over the fo’c’sle covering everything else in goo, before finally shaking it off in a Sainsbury’s bag-for-life (which now has a much shorter life). Anyway, he bolted.

Next, I mashed up a sort of Rouillard of rat poison and peanut butter, reasoning that he would be so busy licking it off and feeling smug that he would never realise he was eating the condemned mouse’s last meal.

I don’t know how he did it, but the entire dessert disappeared and Arnold did not. I can only think he spat out the blue bits and ate the brown. Anyway, as a savoury, he chewed the top off my clarinet reed. It was a Vandoren and I take it as a personal affront. Arnold was toying with me.

He made me feel like the put-upon Commandant in The Great Escape when Steve McQueen grins at him on the way to the cooler and says: “You’ll still be here when I get out?”

It’s my own fault. I underestimated him from the start. Because he joined in Aruba, I presumed he had jumped off one of the enormous cruise ships and would be easy prey. He had probably lived his life on smoked salmon and truffles.

Well, now the gloves were off. For one thing, I was being goaded by Niko Bolas, a regular on the blog who announced he was sending me two electronic devices. I looked them up. They made my hair stand on end. Any mouse putting a foot inside would get zapped with the full force of six AA batteries. But the Amazon delivery won’t get here until December 12^th.

It was time to man up. I spent a day in the Public Market – Santa Marta’s version of Camden with stalls selling everything including, tucked away behind the grilled sausages and the pineapples, mouse-sized mousetraps: Maybe Arnold wasn’t ready for the rat-sized one yet (although, the rate he was getting through peanut butter, it wouldn’t be long.).

I filed down the bars that spring the traps to make the mechanism more sensitive – a sort of hair-trigger, if you like. Now I felt like Edward Fox in The Day of The Jackal – a cold, calculating professional.

And, sure enough, on the second morning, there he was, hanging off the side of the navigator’s seat, his neck squished under the big trap’s mega-spring, his naughty little nose in a pool of blood. Of course, he’d polished off the other traps first.

I suppose I shall see a lot of beaches in the years to come, but here, today, in Aruba, I really think I have found the best of them – at least, the best so far…

It is called Surfside Beach which is really a misnomer since the barrier reef turns this part of the Caribbean into an enormous, placid lagoon. The water is that particular shade of turquoise that comes only from zero pollution and the brightest white sand.

As beaches go, it’s right up there with the Princess Diana Beach in Barbuda. But Surfside has something special. Surfside has trees. Really: Trees growing right by the water – some of them actually in the water – and giving real shade too, unlike the thatched constructions the resorts put up because they’re too posh for umbrellas. Also, with a tree, your legs don’t stick out and get burned.

And I was ready for a beach.

On the boat, it’s 35°C in the cabin and the deck makes you wish your tired feet were fireproof, as the Drifters used to sing. Besides, I had spent the morning cycling 12 kilometres tracking down metalwork shops which didn’t stock the kind of aluminium pipe I need for the self-steering (get it from Amsterdam).

So, I packed a sandwich and a couple of beers into the cool bag and rowed ashore to stake my claim. It wasn’t hard. The beach is half a mile long. There’s a tree every ten metres and there can’t have been more than a dozen people.

Now, I don’t want you to think that my life is one long holiday: Along with the beer and the sandwich, I had my folding fisherman’s chair and the laptop. I would sit in the shade and write the daily chapter.

The Daily Chapter is set in stone (along with one from the Teach Yourself Spanish audiobook). I have worked out that if I write a chapter a day, I will have the next book finished by the time I leave for Cartagena and a month of language classes.

But it was hot work rowing the 400 metres to the beach, so first I had to cool off.

It seems that I was in the water for 90 minutes. Just floating like you do in a bath when you don’t have to be anywhere in particular – only, at Surfside, I didn’t have to keep reaching down to the other end to top up with hot water. It was 30°C and it stayed 30°C. When I came out, I looked like a prune. But staring up through the leaves and working out whether the deep blue of the sky is actually what they call “sky blue” does take time.

Besides, everyone else seemed to be doing the same: couples, mothers with children, dogs – all just lying in the shallows and letting the day pass.

But you can’t eat a sandwich in the water – or at least, you have to get out to fetch it and, afterwards, you tend to be a bit sticky and rather red from the beetroot, so you have to get back in, and there goes the rest of the afternoon…

But I am proud to say that I did, eventually fire up the laptop and I was sitting under the tree tapping away writing this when Henrik came by. Henrik is a Swedish sailor and a most interesting one. You wouldn’t believe it to look at him but he was born in 1975 which makes him 49 years old. 1975 was the Fall of Saigon – and Henrik was a Vietnamese orphan.

People of a certain age will remember this: The South Vietnamese capital was full of orphaned children, the offspring of American GIs and Vietnamese bar girls (think Miss Saigon). The rest of the world was terrified the Vietcong would murder them all.

Actually, Henrik has no American blood, but nobody knew that at the time. Nobody knew who his parents were, or even if he had a name. He was the youngest orphan to be airlifted out – just a few days old.

They sent him to Sweden where a factory worker and a kindergarten teacher adopted him and brought him up in a small town called Mariestad between Stockholm and Gothenburg. For most of his life, he worked for the council as a maintenance man. But something in his Southeast Asian genes was calling him to the sea.

Now he is in Aruba in an old boat painted up like a 1980s New York subway train, sailing along with the rest of us except he hasn’t got the money to go through the Panama Canal so he’s condemned to do another circuit of the Caribbean. Anyway, there he was walking back along the beach from his shopping trip, and he happened to have four cans of something called Balashi (born and brewed in Aruba).

To return the favour and to help with the Panama Canal kitty, I’m going to give him my old dinghy. I was planning to throw it in the Marina skip, but he swears he can sell it in Colombia.

Henrik and “Cordiellia”

One way and another, the laptop went back in the bag and as the sun dipped closer to the horizon, I began to wonder whether today might be the day I photograph the legendary green flash (I’ve only seen it once and that was before everybody had a smartphone in their pocket).

Once again, it didn’t happen, but I did get this shot of my neighbour from the next tree watching the same sunset from an even better vantage point.

And the Daily Chapter? Well, tomorrow is another day…

Thank you to Judy and Steve, superstars of the sailing Fair Isle YouTube channel for making me look so good in their latest episode

Hanging out in hurricane season | Ep124youtu.be