This was the longest leg of the journey – over 50 miles to Rodney Bay in northern St. Lucia. Just time to grab a cup of coffee before hoisting the sails at 7:00 am. No squalls today. Blue skies … winds were a constant 20-25 knots… we had nothing to do! Watched the catamarans trying to deal with the big swells … dipping, wallowing and corkscrewing … bet there are some seasick passengers! Amy asked if anyone wanted to go out onto the bowsprit … 6 volunteers, 2 at a time. Glen was in the second group. Me? … I was happy to be photographer. Well somebody should do it.…

Leaving Kingstown Moritz thought we needed to practice some ‘wear ship’ (similar to jibing). No motor this morning – just sail power, and it worked brilliantly. All yards (booms) had to be hauled to the correct angle using the braces (twelve ropes) and secured … sails were unfurled and trimmed (more ropes) – these ones had to be ‘sweated’ … a complicated technique and well-named. Grabbing the rope at shoulder height you would thrust it seaward, then vigourously haul back and down as far possible, and while keeping it taught, push the rope down towards the pin while someone else pulled the line as tight as possible. This would be…

Who, you might be asking, are our fellow crew and passengers? Moritz, the Captain, is from Germany. An electrical engineer by trade but his passion is sailing. Eight years as captain of the Eye plus other tall ships.  He lives aboard and sails his own 59 foot yawl when at home in Germany. For this contract he brought the Eye over from Amsterdam but will be finishing up his current contract as our voyage ends and a new skipper takes over. Daniel, second in command and navigator is from Brasil (but with a Scottish accent!). He left Brasil at 18 and settled in Oban, Scotland. He can be seen most…

Patience folks, we can’t board until this evening. There’s no-one booked into the Guest House until tomorrow so they very kindly offered to keep our bags in the room and we can fetch them around 6:00 tonight. A trip to the botanical gardens seemed like a good idea – Bradley sent one of his minions (Jonavin) to pick us up. Six lush acres, waterfall and natural hot springs. Water tumbling down from the volcano changes colour depending the mineral of the day … today it was a light steel gray. Dodging the intermittent showers under convenient clumps of banana leaves, friendly Lesser Antillean Bullfinches kept us company … looking very…