Our time in Basse Terre had a lovely social twist as we met a Canadian couple on the boat beside us in the anchorage – Tom and Marj. Turned out she was brought up on Bute before moving to Canada as a teenager. We had a lovely evening on their boat discussing Scotland and Canada and their trip and ours and partaking in the usual way. We are going north and they south, but we hope our paths will cross again one day.

Today, after another turbulent night, we moved the boat up to Deshaies, where the Death in Paradise series is set. The sail up was short but very gusty. There must be some pretty big winds coming over the Atlantic, and they then come over the top of the island and scream down the valleys at the back and it all gets quite interesting. So we sailed up here with three reefs in everything, and all was well.

The village is simple, very French Caribbean, has a church clock which chimes on the half (must check accuracy as part of our general survey of French town clocks) and generally is a nice, simple, colourful place to visit. The anchorage itself is hooching wi’ boats. We managed to get tucked well in, but many have ended up way outside the bay. It seems full - and still they come elbowing in; lots of charter cats with strange ideas about anchoring. This is one of the first places to land when coming down from Antigua, and also the last jumping off point on the way north, so it gets fairly busy; and with the strong winds over the last few days it looks as though quite a few boats have stayed put rather than head north.