The few days before passing Barbados were slow and painful as we had little wind and were running out of diesel, knowing that we had to keep up our speed to meet our deadlines. Fortunately, we work for quite a large organisation and sometimes, things get "smoothed out" when we are in a rush. More about that below.

Our Ship Spotting Competition came to an end when we passed a point directly south of Barbados. The results: Hardy - 19 ships spotted Andries - 12 ships spotted Myself - 13 ships spotted So, Hardy gets a good bottle of rum when we arrive in Tortola. It was fun and competition was on the entire time between everybody. The whole reason for the competition was to keep everybody alert at all times to the shipping around us. And it has its knock-on effect, keeping everybody aware of what's going on around us at all times for the remainder of our journey.

Yesterday afternoon we tuned into a radio station in Barbados and listened to a cricket match being played there as we slowly sailed past the island. Quite an interesting domestic 50/50 match. Then the sun went down and we had the lights of Barbados slowly fade behind us and the lights of St Lucia slowly brighten ahead of us. There was no moon and the stars were bright with only the occasional cloud coming over to blot out the view. At 04:25 this morning (Monday, September 21), we crossed the invisible line that divides the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, when we passed through the channel south of the island of St Lucia.

We then slowly curled up the west coast of St Lucia and made for Marigot Bay, arriving a few minutes before 09:00. Our head office in Florida had notified the base there of our arrival and we were expected. We checked in with Customs and Immigration and then took on two tanks of diesel and cast off our lines. We were out of there within half an hour. We now should be arriving in Tortola just before noon on Wednesday and should make the TUI base just after noon as we have to clear in at Virgin Gorda before going to the base.

We have a few little problems to sort out as well as servicing both our engines and we will most likely stay and have a burger or other missed junk food before casting off our lines and heading for Annapolis. Another update before the weekend.

Regards from Andries, Hardy and myself, John