We are sitting in the house once more but this time on someone else’s furniture! Our new tenants for the north house are Nick and Kaye and we are delighted that they are taking the house for at least a year. They are providing their own furniture and are therefore renting from us unfurnished. They run a business taking charter guests sailing on Jabberwocky and will therefore be pleased to use the jetty which goes with the house. Altogether an idyllic life although charter guests can be quite tiring sometimes!

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The last piece of the houses to be constructed is happening now. The new jetty is nearly in place for Vic and Lizzie in the south house and should be finished next week.

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Next week we depart for the ABC islands and the continuation of our voyage around the world. We have heard of various difficulties on our trip, such as a six week wait for the Panama Canal and no fuel for foreigners to Ecuador, but no doubt we will meet these problems when we come to them. We have also heard that Colon at the mouth of the Panama Canal lives up to its intestinal description! But we will see. Our route, leaving on Wednesday night will be directly to the ABC islands about 500 miles southwest of here. Hopefully we will see Cor there. He will have just finished running a major Optimist Championship and could probably do without Atlantia dropping in on him! After the ABC Islands (Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao) which are Dutch, we intend to go to Cartagena. Drake sacked the city a long time ago and apparently its Spanish defences are still in place and formidable. We look forward to showing you the pictures when we get there.

We had intended carrying on our travels after the Rum Cruise, but somehow it has taken an extra month to legally separate the houses, and to put in new, separate, meters for the electricity and water. This was done very efficiently by the Jolly Harbour maintenance team. A joy to be on the receiving end! Below is a photo of a night heron on our forestay:

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The Rum Cruise was wonderful and we were very sorry that none of our friends from Europe or the United States wanted to join us! Four boats departed from Jolly Harbour at the beginning of May. Atlantia, two Beneteaus and a beautiful Island Packet.

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There were ten crew in all and very smart we looked in our matching t-shirts.

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The close reach to Guadeloupe was most exhilarating with a sparkling sea and many flying fish scattering on either side as our bow crashed into the wave in front. We met up with the dashing Lady Commodore of the Antigua Yacht Club at Deshais on the North end of Guadeloupe for a lobster meal at a cliff edge restaurant overlooking the anchorage.

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Paul and Marguerite Jackson in their yacht Mackenzi led us off the following day to a superb snorkelling site at pigeon island.

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This is the Cousteau National underwater park and the underwater scenery is beautiful. Will saw an octopus that crawled back into the tiniest hole under a rock. It really squeezed itself into a hole about an eighth the size of that which the octopus looked capable of reducing into! Amazing animals octopi. Tests have shown that they have a degree of intelligence and their chameleon like skin changes, mean they can be all colours of the rainbow when required. Will’s octopus stayed brown however, the colour of the sand and surrounding rocks.

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From there we went south to the Isles Des Saintes and Marguerite caught a 30 lb Dorado en route. This fish is also called a Mahi Mahi or Dolphin fish and really is very good to eat. The crew of Mackenzi tried to sell the fish to some restaurants at our anchorage but regrettably they were full of fish since there was a fishing competition on at the time!

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After a good wander around the streets of the main town of the Saintes the next day we enjoyed a Ti punch at a small restaurant. You are right we helped Mackenzi eat the first of a number of meals of various parts of the Dorado. The standard of cuisine from Kathy and Marguerite in Mackenzi was so good that it cured Will of a slight aversion to fish which has crept in over the last couple of years. The rum probably helps as well.

A Ti Punch? You cry! Rum! To be more exact:- One fifth of sucre de canne ( sugar cane syrup), four fifths Rum Blanc Agricole (as rough as you can get but not more than 80% proof!) and the juice of half a lime together with all the bits of lime pulp. The important part is to mix it all together with your swizzle stick. We bought one just to show you how exactly to aerate your ti punch. The ‘ti’ is actually short for Petite, but since Hans and Will made them rather large this seems somewhat of a misnomer.

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The following day we motored upwind to Marie Gallant to a beautiful palm tree lined white beach. Possibly the epitome of the Caribbean shoreline.

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The object of our trip to Marie Gallant was the distillery at Bellevue. We reached the distillery on hired scooters, which are eminently suitable for travel out here as long as you don’t encounter a load coming the other way which takes up the whole road! One such load that nearly side swiped Will was a very wide piece of welded steel mesh to be used on a building site. It would have been rather ironic had such a load put him out of action.

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The distillery was wonderful, although not working at the time of our visit. The primary source of power is a very large single cylinder steam engine.

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The boiler, which produces steam for the distillation, as well as for the engine, is fired using crushed sugar cane. The crushed cane is the product after all the juice has been squeezed out to make the fermented potage which is then distilled into rum. A very energy efficient system. The sample room was however open and although only a very small libation was taken, it was extremely good.

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Unfortunately later that day, Christine from the island packet fell and broke her leg, and although the local hospital was very good, nevertheless Marx took Christine and the island packet back to Antigua the next day, with the expert help of Hans, who deserted Mackenzi for the day, to rejoin her in Dominica. Although one might expect a few thrills and spills on a rum cruise we can assure you that rum played no part at all in Christine’s bad luck Indeed, being deprived of Marx and Christine’s company for the rest of the cruise was bad luck for all of us!

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In Dominica, which was our next island, we had an excellent dive on a reef which had some beautiful coloured corals

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We were also expertly driven round the island by Paul, after hiring a minibus and visited the Macoucherie distillery. A very agricultural affair after the swish distillery in Marie Gallant. This distillery was again not in operation but, had it been so, we would have watched the undershot waterwheel whizzing around to produce the power for the massive wheels of the cane crusher.

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They were trying to mend the crusher when we were there as well as the boiler. They do however produce very good rum when they get their act together. We sampled quite a lot of it!

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On the way back we picked up freshly fallen mangos, had a paddle in the river and saw a snake, which we couldn’t identify although it looked dangerous!

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During Paul’s guided tour we swam up a gorge high in the mountains to a waterfall, and then showered under a hot natural spring when we had stopped playing with the rushing water. The whole place smelt slightly of sulphur which is perhaps why the people in Dominica live to the ripe old age of 120 or so.

If you come to the Caribbean you must go to Martinique and the distillery at Depaz. Although it was only started in 1920, after a catastrophic volcanic eruption that killed 30,000 people in 3 minutes in 1902, the distillery is a model of both managerial and energy efficiency.

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The steam engine that runs the place is magnificent. With a great whooshing sound the single cylinder drives an enormous flywheel, which in turn drives four cutters and crushers and then a generator at the end of the line which in turn can drive the conveyor belts and pumps for the cane syrup.

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One is directed to follow the red road which takes you past the overshot water wheel that used to power the plant,

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And gives you very good views of the chateau, elevated above the distillery, which used to house Monsieur Depaz and his 12 children.

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At the end of our tour we were fortunate to meet Christine, the marketing director, who came to lunch with us and then gave us a tour of the chateau. The chateau is used for weddings and the original period dresses on the various manikins around the chateau give the house a lived in feeling.

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St Lucia was our next distillery. This distillery has just been taken over by Angostura from Jamaica. Although we were taken from Marigot Bay Marina (an excellent base) by a very cheerful and economic taxi driver, we were slightly disappointed by the distillery despite their pot still for special batches.

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The molasses which is fermented and then distilled into rum, was imported. They also exported some of the refined but unmixed liquor, direct to Tesco in Britain, where they do their own mixing and matching. More a distillery of expediency than the honest start to finish product of Depaz in Martinique. What a variety, however, of some very fine rums and what a delightful set of people to travel with!

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We haven’t mentioned Brian and Pippa from the other beneteau who were also part of the ‘team’ .Brian has been the Commodore of the Jolly Harbour Yacht Club for the past two years and has set up a very successful youth training scheme for the local youngsters. This has been a great success and hopefully will introduce sailing to many more people than were able to sail previously. It was an honour to travel with him even if he did drink more vodka than Rum! His one saving grace was that Pippa, his partner and crew, spoke nearly fluent French, which was very useful for all of us!!

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Christine came with the cruise to St Lucia and then came back on Atlantia to Martinique.

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She kindly hosted us to an excellent dinner in her house next to the chateau and introduced us to her companion, a rotweiler called Brownie, who had a very nice character, when you got to know him!

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Our cruise finished back at the Iles Des Saintes with a dinner together with our old friends Jill and Mike from Altair, who were sailing down south to leave their boat in Trinidad for the summer. It was great to see them again.

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We hope you like the pics.

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Love from Atlantia.