Since we had been at anchor in St. Martin’s “Lagoon Jail” for a while, I had removed our hull speed sensor – which amounts to a paddle wheel stuck on the end of a stalk of electronics – to prevent growth building up on it which results in inaccurate speed readings. So, when we departed St. Martin, it was time to replace the sensor, I asked Laurie to give it her evil eye and make sure the thing was properly clean and would spin freely. True to form, Laurie set to with toothbrush, scissors and tweezers to make sure that the sensor was clear of absolutely everything.

When the sensor was back in position, it indeed performed flawlessly… but… in the process, a piece of her cleaning equipment – the tweezers – managed to puncture a hole in one of our 5L bags of wine which were stored in the same locker – a particularly good bag of Cotes de Rhone – disaster! She stemmed the flow with duct tape, but the fix was somewhat leaky and the longevity of the wine was now in question.

Disaster averted however – and turned into a major benefit – when we got to Falmouth Harbour we were surrounded by numerous familiar boats so we had a wine mopping up party aboard Toodle-oo! with Peter and Patty from Serendipitous, Tom and Suz from Nomad, Baxter and Molly from Terrapin and Malcolm and Elia on Orion – and by the end of the evening we had demolished all of the Cotes de Rhone and a little bit of Bordeaux to boot!

Needless to say, heads are somewhat heavy this morning!