If you've been, or maybe still are a dinghy sailor you will no doubt have experienced the wildly exhilarating fun of spotting a strong gust of wind coming your way and, at just the right moment, easing sheets and bearing away onto a screaming reach. On our dinghies, it was usually Anne doing the screaming right enough.

The downside to having all that fun though was that as the gust faded, you'd be faced with the prospect of hardening in the sheets and flogging back upwind to recover all the ground you’d just whoooo hooo’d your way down.

Well, its now Saturday morning, we’re just two days out and Bermuda is nearly four hundred miles behind us. Three hundred and eighty to be exact, missing the magic two hundred mile days by a fraction.

For every mile, it’s been a Whoooo Hoooo kind of sail. Full main, Code 0 and flying along on a reach, wind just aft the beam. Tempting fate, I'm going to note that amazingly, the GRIB forecast for the coming week is more of the same. Whooo hoooo. None of that bashing upwind nonsense and none of the stress of trying to sail dead downwind, as close to the gybe as you dare, preventer on to stop you getting a serious dunt on the head and struggling all day to keep the headsail filled. Just day after day of skooshing along, averaging about nine knots under clear blue and starlit skies.

It gets a bit sportier in a few days time. Sportier for a few days but, after some serious negotiations, pleadings and finally threats, we’ll just tuck in a reef or two and, oddly, we’ll not go any slower, eliciting another I Told You So moment

The biggest challenge right now is that we left Bermuda having set up our Watt&Sea hydro generator with the nine knot prop and we’re at its limit now. One high speed surf and it sheds its blades like leaves on an autumnal gale blown tree.

Before it gets sporty, we need to change up to the really WHOOOO HOOO sixteen knot prop. This involves having me hung off the back of the boat in my life jacket and harness, back step awash and me up to my pants in the ocean. Anne puts the boat up into the wind to slow us down such that, at just the right moment, the pressure comes off and I can pull up the stupid thing. Anne bears off to full speed while I fiddle about with Allen bolts and switch props, all the while my knobbly knees getting a much needed rinsing. Not to mention the pants. We then need to scrub off the speed again so that I can dangle over the oggin and, at just the right moment, get the stupid thing back in its bracket, in the water and locked down in place.

A few days ago I got so frustrated with this daft design that I sent Watt&Sea a drawing of how it should be built but as yet, no response nor royalties.

Scottish readers and perhaps the Bermuda resident that we met yesterday, who is a Runrig fan, might know the band's song, the Mighty Atlantic. We play this at full blast every time we head out into it's wild and woolly wastes. And this morning is no exception, much to the joy of the exhausted crew of the ARC Europe boat that anchored just behind us in the wee, small hours.
It's about 2000 miles from Bermuda to the Azores and with the looks of the GRIB it's an excellent forecast, fingers crossed.

The thing is, not only to we have to get to Horta and it's limited berthing before the ARC fleet but there's a Rapido 52 trimaran also leaving so, the race is on. "No pressure darling.And no thanks, I don’t think we’ll be needing a reef!”

This is our tracker.

https://forecast.predictwind.com/tracking/display/TimeBandit/

To pass the time during our periods on watch—or even during our off-watch, when we're not catching up on lost sleep—we often immerse ourselves in podcasts, some of which can be quite captivating. They can certainly help take your mind off the mayhem that is ensuing outside in the pitch black.

A few nights ago, we listened to an episode in a new series that painted an unforgettable scene: a man, his wife, and their family journeying through the arid, rugged hills of Lebanon. Their meager belongings loaded onto the family 4x4, their flea bitten donkey. Yet, amidst their challenges, the glimmering views of the azure Mediterranean sparked joy in their hearts, with the enchanting island of Cyprus just a whisper on the horizon.

The narrator goes on to say, “Their adventure is only beginning, and what a remarkable one it is! Over 6,000 miles lie ahead—from the eastern Mediterranean all the way to the shores of the USA!”

“Holy smokes. Six thousand miles!!!”, we thought. “That's what we’re doing, just going the other way.”

Well, we were, until the weather forecast turned grim. Just a day and a half out from the Bahamas the latest GRIBs showed that our already sketchy passage plan was crumbling. While we had hoped to make it to Bermuda on, at worst, a tight teach, it now seemed that about two hundred miles out from St Georges we'd be hard on the wind, until such times as we made landfall, if ever, possibly beating back ‘an furritt for eternity like the Flying Dutchman.

We carefully considered the options and it didn't take long to think, “Sod this.” and we bore away and had a jolly nice downwind skoosh to our old haunt, Beaufort North Carolina.

Tucked up in Beaufort we caught up on some lost sleep and in the evening, the progress of our Lebanese family in the next episode in the Podcast, “Titanic; Ship Of Dreams.”

The family would have paid £8 for a one-way ticket back in 1913! That's the price of an apartment in Stockholm today! And for just £247, you could travel in first class so I’m guessing you’d get a pretty big mansion for that price in today’s money.

Fortunately we are doing it on a slightly smaller budget, although having spent the morning in West Marine I think we are somewhere in the middle. That and we’ve been going crazy in the supermarkets having been somewhat restricted in the Bahamas, “Sorry, no tomatoes until the ship comes in.”

There's a bit of a weather window opening on Wednesday so we will pack up and head out into the oggin once more. However Anne says that perhaps we should find something else to listen to other Titanic

If you are sufficiently motivated, you can follow our progress on https://iphone.predictwind.com/tracking/display/TimeBandit/

Our chart plotter lays a continuous track of our travels. The track has been running since we bought the new plotter laptop in Hobart, Tasmania about thirty thousand miles and five years back down the track.

One thing I really notice is that for the first three of these five years we have laid but a single track wending westwards across the oceans. In contrast, since "tying the knot" on our circumnavigation in the Caribbean our track now looks more like a bowl of spaghetti that's been dropped on the floor such has been the extent of our revisiting old haunts time and time again. Back an' furrit as my brother would say.

This time about a week ago, we were planning to once again lay another track heading north, laying it alongside our previous years tracks, to spend the summer in New England with the family until........ we spotted Rockhopper Of London, a UK flagged, Ocean Cruising Club catamaran, down in Rock Sound, Bahamas.

We dinghied over to say hello and a couple of nights later, Carl and Jo, came onboard for sundowners.

Naturally, we got into the where you going and where have you been thing.

We told our tall tales of derring-do around the oceans and explained we now felt that other than my itch to do high latitudes we felt we'd done about as much as we wanted on the boat, especially as, post Brexit, the maximum 90 day rule in the Mediterranean ruled that out.

Oh no it doesn't the Rockhoppers said. We've been there for years. Here's how it works.........

About two in the morning, my head in a spin, I arranged a WhatsApp chat with Eric and Vandy, ex Scoots, who we'd met originally in the Pacific, and who we now knew were in the eastern Med. As USA citizens, they had similar 90 day challenges.

We talked for half an hour and their story was just like Rockhoppers. So, guess what ........... New England is binned and on Wednesday, we head for Bermuda, the Azores and the sunny Med making our fifth trans Atlantic.

Back and furrit!!

you can follow our progress, or lack thereof, on https://iphone.predictwind.com/tracking/display/TimeBandit/

If, perchance, you watched our last SV Time Bandit YouTube, you'll have seen us country bumpkins, gawping wide eyed in amazement as we dinghied past marinas in Florida built and run for the exclusive purpose of parking of one's superyacht. So, if like us you wondered what the "billionaire class" did with their playthings, we've found the answer.
They're all parked in the Bahamas, music blaring, the "toys" deployed and roaring around the anchorage. Wealth doesn't necessarily mean you're smart. The super yachts are handily parked adjacent to the equally handy island airstrips, one just a stone's throw from us, kindly financed by Pablo Escobar, or, more accurately, his coke snorting customers. Being less than three hundred miles from Florida, the superyacht owners can take a break from the boardroom, hop in their Gulfstreams and Lear jets and get to the boat in time for Sundowners.

The Bahamas is, like most of the Caribbean cruising grounds we've visited in the last two years, pretty busy compared to what enjoyed ten years ago. I can't imagine what the Hiscocks and Pardeys would make of it, accustomed as they were, back in their day, when they'd be the only boat in the bay and when they were filling the yachting magazines, and my head, with stories of cruising these palm fringed beaches on azure blue seas on their own.

We're in a bay called Big Majors, anchored off Fowl Cay Resort, on the shore, a place we visited about ten years ago, when we were but one of the few yachts in the bay. Today there's over fifty.

During that particular visit, after an hour snorkelling around the reef, dodging the circling sharks, we thought maybe we'd splash out and go for a refreshing cocktail at the fancy resort, possibly even a bag of chips. It was a short ride to the mini-marina where we tied up the dinghy and, still dripping in our dookers and wet T-shirts, and admittedly not really dressed for dinner, we went for a walk round the white coral sand paths among the luxurious bungalows.

We hadn't got far, not that there's really very far you can go, when a woman came running down the path frantically waving her arms and shouting, "You can't be here. You can't be here. You have to leave now."

She wasn't much impressed when we said were only in for a drink, possibly dinner. It didn't cut any ice. She just wanted us off the island, tout de suite and we were duly hustled back to the dock and chased.

"That's was a bit odd." we thought. I mean, for the last few days we'd heard them putting out calls on the VHF saying call and book for a scrumptious dinner, then when you turn up you get treated like lepers. Lepers with Covid. Maybe there was an "A-Lister" staying.

Two days later we were walking around Nassau, mystified as to why the streets were totally deserted. Everywhere we looked, not a soul in sight. Until, at a road junction, we looked up the street and saw large crowds. "That's where everyone is. Wonder what's going on." And so, we went for a look. Getting closer, it seemed like the whole population was turned out, Girl Guides, Boy Scouts, school kids, folk in their Sunday best and elevated, shaded platforms where local dignitaries tried to look elegant in the steaming heat.

"What's all the fuss about?" we asked one of the crowd. "It's Harry." "Harry who?" I said. "Prince Harry, he's coming." It was the Queen's Jubilee year when members of the royal family had been despatched around the globe to wish those in the Commonwealth good fortune. That's who was staying on the island last night.

And so, like Muppets, we and a thousand others stood in the baking sun for the next hour waiting....and waiting...and waiting.

Finally, the motorcade showed up, all blue flashing lights and flags.

The rear door of the limo gets opened by an underling and the Great Man steps out, blinking, into the sunshine. With barely a nod to the crowds he made his way to a lectern, pulled his mum's letter from his pocket, read out the contents, folded it up again, got down from the lectern, back in the car and buggered off. That was it. No glad handing. No smiles. No chatting with the kids.

"What just happened?"

We, along with everyone else were kind of stunned at the brevity and hasty departure.

I don't think he'll have sold many books in Nassau.

“Malin, Rockall, Hebrides. Northwesterly seven, veering northerly by late afternoon, precipitation in sight”

That was the poetry of a maritime forecast when I was a lad.

Nowadays, a click of a button will get you as many different models of forecast as you want. All of them wrong.

A few years ago, well, decades actually, when Anne and I were first “walking out”, after work, I’d drive from Glasgow down to Largs for a Friday evening of teaching the young club cadets what little I’d learned about sailing and a weekend racing our Marauder dinghy and winching. The latter in the non Lewmar or Harken context.

In the early days of our relationship I was still in my probationary period with the head of the Rich family, George. Bunking up on the family sofa was a favour I could only ask for on a limited number of occasions.

Normally, I’d say my goodnights, hop in the car and drive round to the sailing club. Parked up, I’d go down to Cairnie’s Quay, pick up my father’s dinghy and row out through the moorings in the pitch black. No life jacket, no radio, nobody really knowing where I was. I’d then spend the night aboard one of dad’s many “tidy little cruisers” known to my mother as “Hell Ships.”

The tidy little Hell Ship that came to mind these last two nights, here in the Bahamas, was a Galleon. All twenty two feet of it. And this was a family cruiser in that era. Not much room for microwaves, air fryers, fridges, freezers, ice makers, washing machines and all the other paraphernalia which most cruisers wouldn’t even consider leaving shore without these days.

The Galleon was moored in the north half of Largs Bay on the Clyde. The Largs moorings, laid by George and David Howie** and the moorings committee were relatively sheltered unless the wind was from the north west or the south west. In either direction, the bay became exposed to a five to eight mile fetch, the seas having plenty time to build before hitting the mooring field.

Jeez. The nights of hell I spent on board that little boat. Character building or at least, building a lifelong immunity to seasickness. Sleeping in a bunk was never an option, the pitching and rolling just too wild to contemplate. To make the most of it I’d put the bunk cushions on the cabin sole in the vain hope that being on the centres of gravity and balance, I’d actually hardly move at all. Fat chance! I’d lie there, braced against the sides and I swear you could hear the waves building as they left the Kyles. The noise would increase in volume as the waves passed Tomont and, just as they were about to hit, the little Galleon, weighing all of a couple of tons at most, probably less, would pitch violently upwards and crash into the foaming crest before diving headlong into the trough. I’d spend the night listening to the oncoming waves, the roar getting increasingly more threatening as it approached, then, BANG, I’d brace myself against all the movement and wait for the next one. Finally, exhausted, I’d fall into a semblance of sleep.

And so, there I was, all these decades on and, despite being in a somewhat larger boat, listening to the howl of the wind in the rigging, the sound of the waves approaching and the lift and crash of them hitting the hulls.

It was Force 7 through the anchorage these last two nights and I could easily have been back in Largs on a cold, windy, summer’s night.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a wee house?

** Talking of breaking cardinal diving rules, I was beavering away at my “Forthcoming Book” the other day, writing a piece about how Anne and I pursued our PADI diving certificates in Largs and Lisbon. In it I wrote about Anne breaking a cardinal rule of diving by shooting to the surface after seeing a monster crab.

David Howie’s fingerprints are all over the length of Largs moorings. He would set them up, diving on his own for hours, no dive buddy, using, what by today’s standards was pretty rudimentary gear. George would be hanging over the back of a wobbly dinghy in support, more moral than practical, watching for bubbles, although what he could have done to help in any serious situation was probably pretty limited. No cell phone, no VHF……. but probably a flask of tea.

After weeks of tide-ripped, inlet hopping down the Georgia and Florida coasts, and before we got tainted by the extreme wealth of West Palm Beach, not to mention its politics, finally the wind turned from easterly with its on-the-nose windward bashing to a more favourable direction, giving up-yer-chuff sailing and a quick scoot across the Gulf of America Stream to West End in the Bahamas.

Now, in our travels we've "cruised"the Bahamas three times and in case of doubt, that's cruising, in Time Bandit, gotta-press-on style. On two of these visits we were intentionally just passing through rather than cruising, "yellow flagging" it's known as, a.k.a. hiding out from customs and immigration.

In 2012, we spent all of two weeks dashing through the five hundred mile long chain of around seven hundred islands, seeing only a handful and, at that, getting just a passing glimpse. The islands sit on a limestone shelf that is the platform for the Turks and Caicos and Bahamian archipelagos, an area eleven times the size of Belgium but with fewer shops. None of this expanse of sea is more than a few metres deep and much of that is in the one to two metres range. "Shallow draft and VPR rules apply". Initially I thought VPR was something to do with how visible your underwear was but in fact it is Visual Pilotage Rules where one is required to stand on deck or halfway up the mast looking for shallow bits and rogue coral heads. For miles there are coral-head-infested areas waiting to spoil the day of the unwary by snapping off a dagger board or biting a big chunk out your keel.

Having been brought up sailing in the deep, inky black waters of the West Coast of Scotland, and despite a good few miles in tropical, shallow, light blue, reef infested waters, thrashing around here, at speed, with dagger boards just one third down, (and we can still outpoint the Condomarans) we're nervous, feeling vulnerable in the event of a newly relocated sandbank or, worse, an uncharted coral head, it doesn't make for relaxed cruising.

Unless you're in a charter boat that is.

Here's what some of it was like in moving pictures!

We were in West Palm Beach last week, home of millionaires, billionaires and "yer man", the primary contributor to the interestingly named "Truth Social" - The Donald.

Us peasants anchor out in the fairway that includes the Intra Coastal Waterway. The squillionaires keep their boats in one of the many marinas lining the shores. It's not as convenient being out at anchor but at $5.50 to $8.00 per foot, per day it's a lot cheaper. It's also quieter, well away from the exhaust noises of the Lamborghinis, Maybach Mercs and Hummers.

Regular readers might have seen me write about the "St Martin Navy", the rafts of super yachts that inhabit the St Martin lagoon during the cruising season in the Caribbean. Well, now we know where they come from, West Palm Beach.

We could take all the boats out of our three largest marines on the Clyde, perhaps numbering more than two thousand decent-sized sailing boats and there still wouldn't be enough room to park all the super yachts and sport fishing boats.

In need of topping up our diesel tanks, we dinghies into the fuel dock, armed with our two, twenty-litre Jerry Cans.

"Will you fill me up please".

"Sure", said the smartly uniformed marina man. "Once I've filled this guy." Ahead of us, dwarfing our little rubber dinghy, was a seventy-foot or so sport fishing boat. You know, these very rakish looking powerboats with forty or fifty feet of scaffolding above the deck, from which lofty, swaying perch they can steer towards the game fish they're chasing ..... or vomit on the crew below.

We sat and sat and sat as the wide-bore diesel pump filled this guy. Five thousand gallons of diesel!

No wonder fish is so expensive.