During our short journey along the coast of Barbados, from Port St Charles to Bridgetown, a Coastguard RIB approached and asked permission to come aboard our vessel. Well, it was a bit of a rhetorical question, and aboard he came. We thought we'd finished with officialdom for the day, but this young lad arrived complete with a clipboard and informed us the visit was 'a routine check'. I think we've heard that before?

He turned out to be extremely polite and chatty, although he kept breaking into patois so I lost count of the times I said 'pardon'. Unfortunately neither of us was at our listening best after being at sea for 22 days! We answered his questions, though some of them were a little out of date like 'Do you have an RDF?' (This piece of equipment was used before GPS was discovered a long time ago!) We learned that this particular Coast Guard was an engineer and had been with the CG for 9 years - although he only looked about 16! The accompanying vessel then disappeared off into the distance and left him on board Morven. As soon as he'd completed his list of questions he asked if he could have a go at steering the boat. He was like a kid with a new toy. We let him take the wheel and he gave us a running commentary of how the currents set around the island, his (short) life history and where to get shopping and water and the cheapest beer - all essential stuff to us sea folk. His mates then arrived back (from nowhere) and began videoing him doing the thumbs up with a huge grin. Don't know if this is standard practice but he was enjoying it and so were we. He eventually left us after a good hour or so and we finally managed to drop the hook in Carlisle Bay and could finally party.

We've drunk a few glasses of rum punch between us, well that's one of the main reasons for doing the crossing! We chanced upon a karaoke in the market with a crowd of old dears, singing along to some 50's classics, and beer so cold it's almost frozen. It was certainly more entertaining than the Elvis wannabe from Almerimar. The Barbados Yacht Club also made us very welcome in their beautiful colonial clubhouse, and even provided us with a table, chairs and lots of cool drinks while we sat and typed the blog. We've eaten flying fish and chips (no Dave, the chips weren't flying, though the fish were until moments before appearing on the plate). Apparently there is a shortage of flying fish this year, which is a big problem for Barbados as this is considered one of their national dishes. The general consensus among the fishing folk is that it is the Sargasso weed which is killing the fish off as it has arrived in swathes, and the whole of the east coast of the island was smothered in it whilst we were there. Of course we know different. They're all playing Kamikaze in mid Atlantic preying on innocent yachts.

If you want to be 'in' in Barbados you really have to know about cricket. We were lucky to find an inter-island game on at the famous Kensington Oval and so had to go and watch. (Cost only 5 Barbados Dollars, equivalent to about £1.50 for the day). I begin to see why people find it so fascinating at last, and I can now get the bit about silly mid-off, two slips and a gully, but when a local shouted 'put a man in Cow Corner' we were both stumped. The Kensington Oval pitch lives up to its name and is indeed oval; where are the corners? There's an awful lot of audience participation at the Oval too, probably because they all know the players, so they're happy to chat to them from the stands and naturally offer the benefit of their advice and experience.

Cricket is the subject of conversation everywhere, and can stall the supermarket checkout for hours if disagreement breaks out. Even when I got stung in my ear by something nasty in the sea and had to seek out a doctor he wanted to talk about cricket first; perhaps it's just his line in conversation but Doctor Alert (yes really!) took a while to get around to what was actually wrong with me, even when faced with my very inflamed and swollen ear! All was well in the end and I was finally released with antibiotics, but glad I was up to speed on what was happening in the national game.

On Commonwealth Day the flags were hoisted and young and old turned out in their best uniforms and marched through town to the Parliament building. All very proud to be there, and managing to stand still under the midday sun. The horse guards were waiting in the wings to join the throng when one 'mountie' shouted to a policeman "who's opening the batting then?" (Another match was about to begin). His female leader gave him such a glare that, if looks could kill, both he and his horse would have needed an undertaker. A very forceful command of "eyes right" and they were off, so he never knew who was opening.

We've swum with turtles and horses in Carlisle bay, and they can both swim much faster than us - that's a fact. The horses were brought down to the sea every morning and evening for a refreshing dip. Turtles are everywhere and several protection projects are running to ensure their existence is not under threat, but unfortunately this information isn't imparted to the people who hire jet-skis off the beach. They blast in and out and make it very unsafe for turtles who regularly surface all over the bay. It's not that great for snorkelers either and we saw a couple of very near misses. This was the only negative we took from Barbados, but the people are so laid back, and so eager to help, and it made for very easy living, and so we stayed a month. We found a sailmaker and got the headsail repair done too so that was a bonus.

It seems we are always dragging ourselves away from places that we've grown to enjoy, but then there's always something new and exciting round the corner, or across the sea in our case. We had booked Morven into a boatyard in Grenada to sit out the summer hurricane season, so eventually it was time to find Grenada. A short sail of 140 miles but we needed to time our arrival for daylight. St David's Bay, like many of the Caribbean bays, is surrounded by reefs and very poorly lit so it is almost impossible to enter safely in the dark. We found ourselves approaching the shore with 4 more hours of darkness. The wind had been relatively light, but the current was running at well over 3 knots because the trade winds had previously been blowing strongly from the east for 3 weeks or more. So we had to try to slow down, and almost did a u-turn to stem the tide, to keep ourselves offshore until the dawn. By 0700 we were inside the bay and picked up a mooring buoy. Delighted to see two boats we recognised, Nessa V (Nigel and Caroline), last seen in Porto Santo, and Vadrouille (Christian and Kirsteen), last seen in Lagos, back in November 2013.

The customs and immigration formalities were duly completed, once we'd had a chat about cricket obviously, although we had to borrow some local currency from Nigel to pay the officials (we only had Barbadian dollars and now required Eastern Caribbean dollars). We then had some catching up to do with everyone, which entailed a few very sociable evenings in the local bar. Both my iPod and phone took a dive to the bottom of the bay in a dinghy accident, and although we managed to retrieve them both are kaput, so our communications are now even more restricted.

After spending some very enjoyable days at anchor here we have now had Morven hauled out into the Grenada Marine boatyard, where she will remain laid up for a well deserved rest.
So that's it for our sailing adventure (and the blog) until we return in December to explore this picturesque island.