Mike and I both wake up feeling a bit dodgy although Mike feels decidedly worse than me. We only had two glasses of wine each so if wasn’t that and I don’t think it was the food so we must have both picked up a bit of a stomach bug. I leave the boat 5 minutes before I have to pick the Thomas’s up from Village Cay Marina, to find that a car is double parked behind me and there are no keys left in the ignition (which they normally do if it’s one of the employees).
I race around with Kirsty trying to find the owner. Eventually we do and he moves it for me just as a taxi comes in and blocks the entrance. I wait while a ton of shopping is unloaded, practically hopping from foot to foot. I get Mike to manoeuvre out of the tiny car park – this is the first time I have driven in the BVIs and I’m nervous enough as it is without having to worry about micro- manoeuvring!
The driving here is all to cock. All the cars are imported from the US so they are left hand drive but they drive on the British side, the left, so instead of being on the inside of the road, you are on the outside. As I drive into Road Town, now 15 minutes late, I keep repeating my mantra – keep by the curb, keep by the curb. It seems to work and I pick them up and deliver them to Nanny Cay without hitting anything and by this time I am feeling a lot better.
Rosemary and Bill end up joining the committee boat for the start of the race but the boat looks pretty crowded and Matt and I decide not to join it.
Photo: The committee boat prepares to leave for the Americas Cup start line
Instead we go back to Jeannius and Matt helps load some boxes into the car, take down the genoas, expertly folding the spare one up then putting the original one back up again.
Photo: Mike watches as Matt folds the genoa, folding not being of Mike’s ‘things’!
Photo: Hoisting the genoa – the hard way – no electric winch
Photo: Figuring out the furling line
For nearly two hours they work together, Mike making as much use of Matt’s help as he can, then we reward Matt by taking him on the drive to Penny and Pete’s to deliver the boxes and the washing machine. He agrees that it’s a bit of a nightmare and the last bend nearly gives him heart failure and he’s really looking forward to going down that one. After unloading, playing with the dogs and admiring the view, the evil moment arrives. We have to negotiate that bend going down. Matt practically turns green and shuts his eyes which is amazing as I’ve never seen him scared on anything. I too turn away from the edge of the cliff, not able to look. I think Mike keeps his eyes open as we manage it once more. We vow that we will make as few trips as possible to minimise the opportunities that the Grim Reaper has to claim us.
We pick Rosemary and Bill up from Nanny Cay and take them back to their marina arranging to pick them up later for a night at The Elm over on Cane Garden Bay but during the afternoon Mike doesn’t improve and I get decidedly worse, so much so that we have to cancel at an hour’s notice because I can’t be away from the loo for more than 15 minutes at a time. Nice. We spend the evening in bed, drinking water, eating dry crackers and feeling sorry for ourselves.
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