Well, a lot of land and air miles have passed beneath me since the last time I wrote but I make no apologies for that. After all, the title of the blog is ‘Sailing Jeannius’ … and I wasn’t!
We rise at some ungodly hour from our bed in Worcester and drag two heavy bags into our hire car. I doze all the way to London Gatwick – our plane is only scheduled to be half an hour late (which of course turns into an hour by the time we actually take off) and have a very hot flight to Barbados, checking in for a slightly delayed LIAT flight (which of course turns into nearly two hours). There’s that ‘Leave Island Any Time’ theme again. It wouldn’t be so bad if they would just keep you informed. Still the Sauvignon Blanc in the executive lounge is good and cold and eventually we are airborne.
We take the puddle jumping flight – first to Antigua, where we get off and have to go through security again. We are in transit. Why the security again? Where do they think we have been between the tarmac and the terminal? Madness and lipservice to security. The airport departure lounge is closed or at least, its few shops and catering facilities are, but at least it’s only about 40 minutes before we board again. Although we are on the same flight continuing to Tortola, they have changed our plane and I wonder whether our bags will change too or whether LIAT will live up to its other name, ‘Luggage In Another Town’.
We hop from Antigua to Nevis, from Nevis to St Martin then eventually land on Beef Island, Tortola. Amazingly our bags land with us and Derrick, a friendly taxi driver well known to us, is waiting with bottles of ice cold water to drink. Half an hour later, he drops us at the boat.
The boat has not been cleaned as it came in so late today but the dirty linen has been removed and the clean linen is in the saloon. I ignore it and drag our own stuff out from the bag and make our bed up. By the time we flop, exhausted, on top of it, it is nearly midnight – 5 am UK time. I sleep!
