On Monday morning at 11:20 (15:20 UTC), we crossed that line on the chart that divides the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, when we sailed through the St Vincent Channel, north of the island of St Vincent and south of the island of St Lucia. There was no celebration other than to summon Louis and Greg to assist in repairing two of our reefing lines. Then, up with a double reefed main and off we went again, now tracking more north on a course for Sint Maarten, where we have to collect gear for the boat. We expect to arrive there on Wednesday.

On the day before, Sunday, we had our first fish since St Helena - three of the buggers within an hour! Two Wahoo where the first to take the lures and about three quarters of an hour later a nice sized Dorado decided to visit and partake in trying to eat our nice bright pink lure. Big mistake! He is now "chilling out" in the freezer whilst we pigged ourselves on one of the Wahoo for dinner. Photo above of Louis with his prize Dorado.

Whilst at sea I use the HAM Winlink system for my email. One of the things you can do with it is put in requests for information - one being the 30 closest HAM equipped boat closest to our last posted position. I requested the report this morning and noticed M0SAE (Oceans Dream) was in St Lucia. Oceans Dream is an Admiral 40 owned by Adrian and Jackie, which I helped to deliver to Trinidad about a year ago. I popped off an email to Adrian and an hour later he was calling me on the marine VHF. We had a brief chat and it appears they are enjoying the cruising life after they had spent many months with problems with the boat after arriving in Trinidad. Go for it guys - enjoy the boat and cruising life.

Our ship spotting competition came to an end about 100 nautical miles from Barbados. Louis made the top sightings with 20 ships, I came second with 18 ships and Greg last with 16 ships. So, Louis gets his bottle of Caribbean rum after we arrive in Tortola.

As I type this, we have just sailed past the island of Montserrat, which is spewing volcanic ash into the sky and with huge landslides of ash tumbling down the side of the volcano. It has been quite a sight for everyone as I am the only person on board that has seen a volcano before. At the end of the day it actually just means that we have to scrub the boat more as we are now covered in a fine grit - everywhere, including inside the sail covers.

Well, the washing will not be long off. We will arrive in Sint Maarten in the small hours of Wednesday morning and be able to do the boat wash and fill our water tanks. Oh, what bliss it will be to be able to shower ever day from now on. Remember, this is a charter boat and has no such luxuries as a water maker - all our water is in tanks and those were last topped up in St Helena.

Hope the above updates you in the delivery. Regards from Louis, Greg, Joy and myself, John.