The two things that have the potential to spoil this year of ‘sailing bliss’ are my accumulating list of injuries and the kids behaviour. During the few days of skiing with the kids I hit a tree hard following Max down treed steeps, and now have a classic gamekeepers thumb, which means my thumb keeps sub-luxing, giving me trouble pulling anything, and no chance of strangling pheasants. I then gave myself a rotator cuff injury from pulling the starter too many times on the outboard. More seriously In the Bahamas I managed to fall off the back of the boat and crack some ribs. (the other bruises and strains are too numerous to describe).

In the previous days we crossed from Abacos group to near Spanish Wells in the Eleuthera group, where we actually had stayed in one spot long enough for the kids to have fun on the inflatable donut dragged behind the dinghy. We camped out on the beach with a fire. That’s what we should be doing. I have several books on what to amuse kids with in the Wild, and 100 things to do with a stick, etc. Hitting people with a stick is number one apparently, burning it is number two, spearing people is number three, and so on. But this good clean violence was overshadowed by our next destination. Atlantis – the water theme park.