A two week stay in St Martin's turned into four weeks as there was a spell of very little wind so we made the most of our stay shopping and doing maintenance work along with swapping all the books we had read. We treated ourselves to some new sunglasses and hats and Felice got a larger outboard so we can travel a bit further and not struggle so much when filling the jerry cans. he Heineken regatta took place whilst we were waiting for the wind, lots of boats out on the water each day quite a sight to see and quite lively around the lagoon.

The wind picked up enough to give us at last a down wind sail, a very pleasant trip to the Virgin Islands we managed to time it nicely so that we arrived in the early morning and could easily see the round rock passage into Sir Francis Drakes channel. We chose to head into road harbour to do the check ins with customs and immigration. There is not too much room to anchor due to lots of mooring buoys but enough for us, it is not very comfortable as the sea rolls in to the harbour but at least the bows were pointing into the waves so we did not roll too much. Once anchored and settled Andy headed off to check in whilst I tidied the boat and chased up the scent of laundry detergent which we had noticed whilst sailing in. At last I found the problem the bottle of liquid had developed a hole and the contents about half a bottle was now in the bilge. It took longer than expected to clean up the mess as the fumes from the liquid in a confined place made us both feel quite unwell along with having not had much sleep. The bilge is now quite clean although there is still a whiff of scent now and again we will have to hose out the bilge when we haul out at the end of the sailing season.

The following day we had a wander around Road town, along with hundreds of tourists from the 3 cruise ships that had arrived. A pleasant little place, much like most of the other Caribbean island with a good supermarket. We stopped at the Pussers pub for an iced banana smoothie which was delicious and had a browse in there shop. Then it was off back to the boat to read the guide book and plan our next little adventure.