The hope was to leave early this morning but it doesn’t work out. It isn’t crucial as we are only heading an hour or so away initially to stop and carry out some barnacle removal from the hulls.

The morning goes, filled up with last minute emails, another attempt at the PC/sat phone problem, setting SPoT up (a positioning device that allows us to notify a few people of our position on a daily basis while at sea), re-fueling and water.

All is not lost, we finally move and motor through all the debris that litters the bay, a result of yesterday’s rain, and having fuelled up we get to the island of Toboga which we reach for our stopover in time for a slightly late lunch, a siesta, a swim and the necessary barnacle removal. Come late afternoon all jobs are done and as there’s nothing of particular interest to keep us here overnight we haul in the anchor and are outa there!

It is around 5-6pm so we move straight into a watch system. The usual – 3 hours on, 6 off, with Richard stagging on 1st, Huw following and then Bernice.

Schoolboy error this morning though – we both got sunburned while at the fuel dock. Stupid! And there’s no sympathy for self-inflicted wounds!!

The 1st night at sea after a long gap is always a bit sketchy. Tonight was no exception. In fact it was positively bumping – we are woken up with an almighty crash as a wall boarding (the one Huw removed to check out the leak to our bed) falls out and onto our heads. Giving Bernice a nasty gash on her eyebrow. A very close call. A bit shaken we are both ok and try again for some sleep.