There is a saying “cruising is just boat maintenance in exotic locations”. Since arriving in the clear pleasant waters of the Caribbean where colourful fish frolic under Ruffian’s shadow and the sun beats down warming us to the core, we’ve not had just the joy of maintenance we’ve also had the joy of cleaning. You would have thought that all that water washing over the decks on the trip south would have rendered Ruffian the cleanest ship on the seas. This may have been the case outside but it wreaked havoc inside.

After making the entrance into North Sound and having the sweetest of beers we found our bed amongst the chaos and revelled in some of the activities that are simply impossible at sea. Some of you with potty minds out there will be thinking of other ‘sheet’ based activities, but we simply fell into a sleep that felt like it lasted eons on a platform that was not groaning and crashing over waves. Sleep oh sweet sleep.

Awaking after the sleep of the dead, we knew of the task in front of us and after checking in with the friendliest of customs and immigration officials, the process of drying, cleaning and scrubbing commenced. Ruffian was simply turned inside out to start the drying process. Fiona took on the herculean task of saving all the books in our ‘library’ that had arrived dripping with half the ocean in them and Iain got his head into the bilges to get rid of what used to be in the fresh water system in our engine.

All the cleaning enabled us to ignore the elephant in the room; our poor engine that was slowly filling Ruffian with sea water. Whilst at sea it had proved to be way too difficult to fix and this also proved to be the case in the flat and calm seas of Virgin Gorda. With our expertise exhausted and confidence at an all time low we enlisted the help of helicopter pilot, sea captain and mechanical wizard of Tom from ‘Want To’.

Although Tom was a wizard his magical powers were not enough to make our engine completely happy. We flushed the water system, pressurised the heat exchanger and did everything in our power to resolve where and why things were going wrong. Ultimately we decided that it was indeed the heat exchanger and to resolve this we needed expertise that can only come in the form of a professional outfit. That would be easier said than done as everything here works on ‘Caribbean Time’.

The Salty Dawg fleet were all arriving in Virgin Gorda and we loved seeing boats that were bigger and should have been faster than us pick up mooring balls around little Ruffian. With the fleet assembled a super social time was to be had by all. There was the fish fry on ‘Want To’, pot luck pie’s on ‘Ruffian’ and dinner with proper china plates on ‘Serafina’ where Iain managed to not only eat his fill, but also cover the whole boat in crumbs, which Sarah has been remorselessly teasing him over ever since. The social time never ended, with so many friends now in the sound it was impossible to complete the simplest of tasks without taking time to chat and chill. We were getting into Caribbean time.

Apart from being surrounded by friends and swinging on a free mooring ball in North Sound we also had the opportunity to get into a routine; dawn hike, breakfast, snorkel, lunch, swim & snorkel and all followed by sundowners. The trip south was suddenly feeling very worthwhile. There were daily dinghy safari’s, in true Steve Zassou style on Serafina’s rib, to all the surrounding reefs where we swam in the most lovely water where colourful fishies frolicked around turtles above the swaying coral.

The social whirl, swimming and getting Ruffian in order, were all major distractions to what was playing on the minds of the crew of Ruffian. How were we going to get her engine fixed? We had many irons in many fires and we just needed a single strike for a plan to form and for Ruffian to be on the mend. Finally after playing the waiting game we had a strike and then we knew we’d be in for a big change in the coming days.

The cleanup starts.


Never has a beer and cocktail tasted so good.


You can nearly trust Iain now. The facial hair is half gone.


Tom working his magic on Ruffian’s poor engine.


Errr Where has the sunshine gone?


Rob from Serafina being as manly as he ever gets.


And the cleaning and drying still continue.


That’s more like it. Sunsets now that we don’t have America ‘in the way’.


Ampie working his magic. The Caribbean is great for power generation.


Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.


Peace and harmony reign in North Sound, Virgin Gorda.


Hike, breakfast, swim, lunch, swim. It’s almost nice to have a routine.


That’s a serious upgrade from the brown water of America.


And things even live down here.


It’s haircut time.


A room with a view. Fiona & Sarah get to a viewpoint just after dawn.