Explain to me the logic: I have a flight booked to join the family for a week’s skiing in Austria.

Actually, I have three flights booked – Grenada to Toronto with Air Canada (5hrs), Toronto to Frankfurt again with Air Canada (6hrs), Frankfurt to Salzburg  with Austrian Airlines/ Lufthansa (55 minutes). This is the sort of thing you get used to when you live on a boat four time zones away but still rather like your relatives.

But on the day before take-off, I receive an email: Lufthansa pilots are going on strike. My journey cannot now take place. All my flights have been cancelled. I am offered alternative arrangements via London Gatwick – departing and arriving one whole day later than originally planned.

This makes no sense at all: Just get me to Frankfurt and I’ll take the train to Salzburg (5hrs 48mins). I would miss dinner, but I would still be on the ski lift with everybody else by 9.30 on the first morning. Why wasn’t I given the choice?

“I’m sorry, but that’s not the way we do it,” explained the Expedia rep when I finally got through to a human being on the phone.

But yes, we had a wonderful time – for six days instead of seven, of course. But the weather was generally good. The snow was particularly good (and yes, I did record a “skiing on 77-year-old-knees” video but I’m not going to release it until I really am 77 in eleven days’ time.

The real trouble is that all this got me to thinking, as I made my way back to Prickly Bay – this time with my 23-year-old son Hugo – that maybe, at 77, anybody can get to be a “Grumpy Old Man”.

By this time, Samsara had been on the hard at Spice Island Marine Services for nearly three weeks. I had considered the estimate of $10,000 for an epoxy paint job (no thank you), inspected what was under the beautiful teak capping on the toe rail (about a hundred screw holes for securing the said beautiful teak capping, and the grotty aluminium extrusion before it), so it was no wonder she leaked going to windward in anything of a blow. I walked round the hull with the yard foreman and worked out where the CopperCoat needed to be touched up – especially the bottom of the keel and the Hydrovane rudder which hadn’t been painted at all.

They were going to do that while I was away.

Except they didn’t. When Hugo and I walked into the yard an hour late (delayed incoming flight) the bottom of the keel was still a scarred off-while from 53 years of stony groundings – and the hydrovane rudder was still the same black plastic as when it came out of the box last summer.

But this was Sunday evening – nobody to complain to – so we went for a beer in the One Love Bar (just in time for happy hour – two bottles of Carib for four East Caribbean dollars, about £2.25).

Then we had another two (why wouldn’t we?)

It was on the Monday morning that Nigel, the antifouling specialist, came round to check that I was happy with his extensive touching up – he wanted to make sure there were no white spots anywhere, so it seemed churlish to bang on about the big white spot under the keel – not to mention the uniform black of the Hydrovane Rudder. Besides, none of the rest had been sanded to “activate” it, so it wasn’t going to work anyway.

When they put us back in the water (“splashed” as they say over here), everybody was so understanding about the engine not starting, that we left the boat in the lifting dock and went back to the One Love while the little 7amp charger did battle with 110ah of totally dead AGM cells.

Yes, I will rig up a small solar panel to keep the engine-start battery topped up next time I go away – the 500watts all over the back of the boat charge the Lithium house bank.

Of course, it was happy hour again – but this time with a bunch of old friends (and some new ones) to share in the misery. It’s just that somehow it didn’t seem like misery anymore.

Now I’ve got a new engine-starting battery, and Hugo, who converted his van and is now thinking of moving up to a boat, made it fit and drilled out the terminals. So, we’ll only be a day late in setting out for Carriacou and then onward to Martinique.

Besides, if we can be bothered to blow up the dinghy, the West Indies Beer company is only ten minutes walk from the dock on the other side of the bay.