I'm sitting on board waiting for Paul to check us out with BVI immigration so we can sail across to Culebra, part of the Spanish Virgin Islands and formally managed / owned by Puerto Rico, our next major destination. It looks to be a good sailing day so we should make it in around 5 to 6 hours. Just before we leave we'll go and buy some bread for the journey - it really is lovely from the bakery here - and will make up for the sad disaster Paul and I created a couple of days ago!
When we were crossing the Atlantic, we were lucky enough to have fresh bread every day made (usually) by Ed, who had practised with bread mixes several times before we set sail. Now Ed will admit he's not really a cook in the true sense of the word, but my goodness his bread was good. Contrast that to the heavy, unrisen "lump" that we managed and you'll realise why we're buying bread today. All I can say is, Ed, can you get out here and give us some lessons please? Otherwise the journey back to the UK will be a bread-free zone!
I must just mention another bareboat charter incident I witnessed today. A Moorings boat was approaching a pontoon in the marina at Soper's Hole at both a sharp angle and quite a rate of knots, both big no-no's as any sailor would know. Add to that the fact they had no fenders out, despite the dockmaster yelling "fenders" at them, well it goes without saying that they whacked into the dock with quite some force at the bow and proceeded to scrape all the way along the starboard side of the yacht. The amazing thing is that they really didn't seem to give a damn. Pity the poor owner of that boat that allows Moorings to charter it out in return for 13 weeks of sailing it themselves. Yes, you can buy them at a dicounted rate and after 5 years you get your boat back, but will there be anything left of it worth having?