A few weeks ago, whiling away another long, balmy, dark tropical evening, not to mention our lives, we stumbled on a documentary about life on a Caribbean cruise ship. The world’s largest I think. As an example of managing the staggering logistics of accommodating, feeding, watering and entertaining something like four thousand new guests every week it was mightily impressive.

Less impressive were the endless queues of perspiring cruisers lining up for food, drinks and runs ashore. At feeding time, while I’m sure, and I certainly hope there was seated restaurant dining on another, more posh deck, (as I don’t think “posher” is a word) these same poor folk were bouncing off each other while carrying their rapidly cooling meals back to the dining hall which took its styling cues from a 1970’s UK motorway service station. We could only think, “Poor folk. Holiday of a lifetime and there they are shuffling around a glorified refectory hall.”

Next morning, after our thoroughly rewarding evening’s entertainment, having torn an eyelet on the mainsail on the way to Barbuda, we had to haul the whole thing off, remove the battens which are cracking, roll it up and send it off to the sailmakers for a sew job. The Solent also needed some TLC so it too came off.

Rendered immobile with the sails off the boat we made a snap decision to do a quick grandparenting job and headed for Toronto to see the family……where we kissed them lightly, yet lovingly on the forehead then went skiing for a week………where we joined endless queues of perspiring skiers lining up for food and drinks, and carrying rapidly cooling meals back to the dining hall which took its styling cues from a 1970’s UK motorway service station. The difference between us and the cruisers was that we did this
between runs on the stunning, groomed endless, deserted pistes under a blazing sun putting a sizeable dent in the college funds of aforementioned nippers.

We’re back in Antigua now and ready to head north. All we need are the new mainsail battens which are languishing in a DHL facility somewhere, said organisation having obviously completely forgotten their “when it absolutely, positively, has to be there” slogan.