Grandad by Jack

Grandad by Jack

We were in St Kitts with Grandad and we were in this bay called Whitehouse Bay and we had just finished snorkelling. I asked Grandad if he would like me to show him how to use a DS when my Dad said "Are you OK Dad?" to Grandad. He said " No, where are we, where is Lesley?" so Dad had to explain that he was on holiday in the Caribbean for two weeks without Lesley and then he said again "Where is Lesley?" and he kept asking what was going on. I thought it was wierd Grandad asking all these questions, I thought he was playing, then I thought it was funny and then I realsied it was serious. I was quite amazed at it all. My Dad then asked Grandad if he knew who we all were. Grandad did know us, but he could not remember mine and Ella's names, I was quite astonished that he could not remember and then he asked again where he was and where was Lesley. Again I thought he was being silly but when I saw Mum and Dad looking at tablets that Grandad had taken I began to get worried when they read that the side affects said that old people could get confused. He had taken the tablets because he was having hayfever, but now he was telling us he never suffered from hayfever and again asked where was he? I thought I would help by asking if Grandad knew what a marina was as he loves boats so much, he said of course he knew what a marina was and then I was not worried anymore because he seemed OK to me. I was wrong because straight away he asked where was he and where was Lesley. That is when Mum and Dad said he needed to go to the hospital.

We were left behind on the boat and Mum tried to cheer us up, I think she wanted us not to be worried about Grandad. she said we could watch a DVD, this does not happen often as it uses too much power on the boat so it was a special treat. We watched a Sarah Jane adventure, Stuart and Eleanor, I really thank you for sending them,and I am not scarred of them anymore, it was good to watch, we then were so tired it was so late we went to bed.

The next week was in and out of hospital and the walk up the hill from the marina was a long one which sometimes we did more than once a day, we nearly always took the bus back thank goodness. It was not much of a fun week but Grandad was better and everyone stopped worrying about him and we enjoyed ourselves in his hotel when he was allowed out of the hotel but not allowed back on Brimble. It was a difficult time with Grandad and I would like to have another holiday with Grandad becasue I miss him and want to spend time with him. Grandad has promised to make ginger beer with me when I get back to England and I am really looking forward to it. I love you Grandad.

St Kitts and Nevis by Ella

St Kitts and Nevis by Ella

The sail from Antigua to Nevis was awful for me, I felt sick nearly the whole ten hours we were sailing, although the adults thought it was a great sail. I stayed down below nearly the whole time, it was too hot on deck and with the forepeak hatch open, there was a little breeze down below. It was boring down below so eventually I went on deck as I thought I am the best land spotter and maybe if I went on deck I would see lan d and we would soon be at Nevis, I DID spot Nevis, at last I thought to myself.

Nevis was a great dissapointment for me, it was not a great island and there was not so much to do there. We did go to three museums but they were not well laid out and did not tell us any more than we knew already about Nelson. I did learn a little about a very sad ferry accident, on Easter Monday in 1970 a ferry from St Kitts sank on its way to Nevis, it was overloaded with people on holiday visiting family on the other island and too much luggage and the ferry slowly started to sink with the extra weight, by the time everyone realised it was too late and most people could not get off the ferry and drowned. It was very sad. the lady in the museum, her sister was suppossed to be on the ferry, but she had a dream the night before that there would be a crash and she should not get on, she did not and now she is a pastor in the local church!

I was glad to leave Nevis and to get to St Kitts. When we arrived in St Kitts it looked wonderful, we first anchored in a really beautiful anchorage, the scenery was great, it felt good to be here.

As soon as we arrived we snorkelled to the land, it was about 250 meters away from the boat, easy for us now, we love snorklelling and we were looking forward the next day to snorkel over another wreck in this bay, but we never got to do it because Grandad became ill and had to go to hospital and we had to move Brimble to the marina to be close to Grandad.

The people at the marina were lovely, there were two we liked both Charlie and Truckie. Truckie spent a lot of time with us and we learnt that he was a Rastafarian and this religion teaches peace, justice and love, I think this is a good idea.

Truckie even took Jack out fishing but all they caught after 4 hours was this little fish called a grunt! Mummy cooked it but there was only enough for her and Jack to have a bite each, thank goodness, I still don't like fish!

The first week were there we had to go and forwards to the hospital, it was not much fun, there we mean and nice nurses there, one would not let us in Grandad's room and we had to wait outside, it was awful but a little OK as there was a TV there so we could see some for the first time in months and then the nice nurse let us visit Grandad.

After a week Grandad was allowed out of the hospital but not onto Brimble because she was so small, we thought that was really mean, but never mind. Grandad had to go to a hotel paid for by insurance and I loved it, it was called the Marriot hotel and is the biggest hotel in the Caribbean, it was fantastic and we were allowed to swim in the pool. We made a few friends in the hotel, one girl was called Hannah, she had a lilo and we all tried to get on it but there were too many of us but we always failed, I had to push them but when I jumped on everyone fell off, it was so funny.

This second week in St Kitts was much better than the first week. We ate lovely cake in the cafe bar and had good food in the evening, we all had baths and showers too, it felt good. The resturant was great becasue they had big big chairs, a bit too small for a giant to sit in but much mcuh mcuh to big for us, they were fantastic, we all thought they were a really cool idea.

We were excited to see our friends on the Danish boat Avalnche arrive, they had heard we were in the marina and came in to find us. I was so excited becasue we had not had any friends to play with properly for so long. Straight away we began to play all sorts of things together. Jack was not well but Avalanche took me away to another bay one day to a bay called Frigate Bay, it was great. There was a ginormous water rubber ring, in the middle of it was a massive trampoline, it was so high up that you needed a ladder to get on it, there was also a slide to slide through the middle, it was so much fun and I had a great day with my Danish friends, I wish I could do it again, but I did feel sorry for Jack missing out.

Grandad flew back home to England with a nurse who had flown out to make sure he would be alright, it was a strange time with Grandad, not what I had thought it would be, but it was good to see him. We said goodbye to Grandad and said we would be seeing him in about 6 weeks when we get home.

We left St Kitts the next day as we had now been here for two weeks and we were going to sail in tandem with Avalanche to St Barts.

Antigua and Barbuda by Jack

Antigua and Barbuda by Jack

Ella and I loved Antigua, we had great food at the MadMongoose and even bought the tee shirts from there, we took Grandad there too and he loved it as well. I always order fish now, it is my favourite, so far I have eaten: swordfish, flying fish, both blue fin and yellow fin tuna, mahi mahi, barracuda, red snapper, grouper, grunt, Spanish makeral and makeral. We have caught a lot of fish too but there is afish poison over here in the warm water and you have to be careful which fish you eat, so many of the ones we catch we have to throw back, I get so cross becasue I really love fresh fish.

We love to have BBQ's and try to have them whenever we can, but the one we had in Antigua on Pidgeon beach is my favourite one so far and that is becasue Pete from Tigress brough his dinghy and he let Ella and I have a turn at sailing it. We sailed at least 6 knots in it, it was fantastic. When Mummy took a picture, Pete told me to hold up my can of coke and smile, I felt brilliant, thank you Pete.

Antigua was brilliant as well because we saw Grandad for the fisrt time in ages, it was good to see him and I was able to tell him lots of stories about sailing, it was great to have him on Brimble. Ella and I kept talking to him all the time.

Barbuda is special because it is a very flat land it is made up of dead coral from millions of years. As we sailed to Barbuda we saw the palm trees before we saw the land, that is how flat it was. Barbuda is also special becasue it has pink sandy beaches. Ella and I made a gigantic sandcastle after we had walked along the beach for TWO miles, we still could not see the end of the beach, the beach was 17 miles long! Our sandcastle was brilliant and we were sad to leave it.

Barbuda has very few people and only one road, made out of sand. We walked all the way to the only village on the island, I did not like that idea but we got a lift in the back of a pick up truck, it was so cool sitting in the back but it was bumpy. We did have to walk all the way back though in the heat and it took over two hours, I was exhausted, it was not very good. Everywhere in Barbuda there are wild donkeys, we saw maybe 50 in just one day in all over the place.

We had dinner with Pete and Anne on and she made us pizza, I was so happy, we can't make pizza on our boat because we don't have an oven, I miss that, it means we can't make cakes either, I think that is sad. Pete and Anne are great and we played Rumikub with Anne again, we are going to buy that game when we get back to England and I will play it with all my friends. We said goodbye to Pete and Anne because they had to go back south and we had to go and collect Grandad, it was sad, but they have promised that we can visit them back in Englan, I can't wait, they are my favourite adults.

Ella and I mas]de

Antigua by Ella

My favourtie thing in Antigua was the Antigua Yacht Club. It was like the first time ever in my life I was dinghy sailing, as I have been sailing my whole life in big boats it was exciting and different to be in a dinghy. I thought it would be easy as I was used to sailing on Brimble but actually it was hard. We had learnt everything on Brimble, things like the names and parts of the boat and what everything is for, but a dinghy is so much smaller and everything happens so much faster. On Brimble when I am sailing her I look at where I want to go and sail in that direction but on the dinghy you look at the sail instead of where you are going, you are only allowed to look at where you want to go for one or two seconds. My teachers name was Jamalie and he was incredible nice, he woula show you how to do something a couple of times and he would not be like a normal old teacher who might say are you listening, are you teaching the class or am I teaching the class or things like that, he would just tell you how to do it and if you could not he would show you again and again until I had it perfect. I was able to know how to do most of the things perfectly most of the time and I was so happy. To have these lessons we had to become a menber of the Antigua Yacht Club which meant we could use all the dinghies and kayaks whenever we wanted, it was so cool. We also made two friends from South Africa Micheal and Jonah. Micheal showed us how to capsize a kayack, it was so much fun, I love it here in Antiqua.

Deep Bay on the west side of the island, was actually a shallow bay and not at all

deep. In the middle of the entrance to the Bay there was an old ship wreck, the boat had caught fire over a hundred years ago and then went aground in the entrance to the harbour and sunk! we were able to snorkel over the wreck and I was able to see the mermaid on the front of the boat. It was all so old and there were lots of different corlas growing over the wreck and so many differnet types of fish swimming around. It was a difficult snorkel because there was a strong current which kept moving us backwards and forwards so Mummy was my snorkeling buddy and we swam together to be safe. Deep Bay was one of my favourtite places in Antigua.

One of the most popular things to do in Antigua is to walk to Shirley Heights. It is a very famous resturant at the top and it has the best views of the famous harbours below where Nelso used to have his fleet and where we hoped to see Brimble. It was a three mile walk upwards, it was half a road walk and half off road, I love walking off road and have been called a mountain goat by my family as I can walk so fast up and down on off road trails. The first part of the walk I find difficult because it is not interesting and you hace to watch out for cars, but the second half was really easy becasue it was fun as well as hard, it was a challenge as you had to watch your step over the rocks and tree stumps and bend underneath branches. At the top I found it was a dissapointment as we thought the food did not look nice although the drinks were good, but please if you ever go to

Shirley Heights do not have more than 3 rum punches, we met a man from Poland who had 4 and he fell down the off road trail into the cactus bush and had to pull out 72 cactus spikes as well as breaking his branc new glasses, there were lots of stories of rum punches at Shirley Heights. the view was amazing and we watched the sun set and we saw the GREEN FLASH! the flash only lasts for a split second as the sun goes down on the horizon and it does not always happen, we were so lucky to see it! The girls from Nutmeg were there, Emilia and Jemima, we had a good play with them, but not as good as fun as if someone my own age had been there, I really do miss my friends.

We lost our dinghy Poppy in Antiqua, on our way back from recoverin Poppy, she was found by the rescue team and she was in their rib, we were welcomed back into the harbour by two of the biggest dolphins I have ever seen. One of them jumped right over our bow, I was so amazed that a dolphin could do that and also so happy. We ran to the bow and it was as if they knew who we were and that we had lost the dinghy, I wonder if they had seen Poppy and maybe they helped the resuce team find her for us, I like to think so.

Today 12th March 2009

We are waiting for Grandad to come out tomorrow and are really excited. We have found a sailing club here in Antigua and have become menbers and are learning to dighy sail too, it is fantastic. We have anew video that is uploaded from the Atlantic crossing, you need to watch them in order from 1 to 4, we hope you like it.

Thank you to everyone who leaves a comment, we love to read them and look forward to opening the blog to see who has read it and what they think of it. Can you write more?

love from

Ella and Jack

Dominica by Jacobus

When we were in Dominica Ella made popcorn all on her own for the first time. She put too much in and when they were popping too much came out, we called it a tower of popcorn because it raised the lid of the saucepan, it was so funny.

We went on a tour of the island, the tour was really fun. We had to hike through the rainforest, it looked very very green inside and wet, this is because it rains a lot here, I called it 'rain a lot', iot rained every day that we were in Dominica, but it did not rain hen we were in the rainforest. It was really hot and sticky in the rainforest and we felt wet even though it did not rain. This hike in the rainforest was my favourite thing on the island, we had to walk through a river over 5 times to get to the waterfall. Our guide was called Lion and he gave me a piggy back through the water because the water flowed so fast and it was so deep, I might fall. Ella was allowed to walk through the water on her own and it made me feel quite sad that I could not.

After a while I asked if I could try and wade through myself and Lion said it would be OK. I did do it and I felt so excited and proud of myself. Sometimes I was up to nearly my neck in the river, I had to hold onto someone's hand when it was that deep. The water was quite warm and it was the best walk of my life, I LOVED IT! Walking through the forest and through the river was really adventourous and I want to do it again as soon as possible, it was brilliant. We arrived at the waterfall and it was huge, we stayed there for a while to rest and then we had to go all the way back again and through the river AGAIN, it was GREAT!

We also saw so many things growing but my best was seeing a pineapple, I was shocked to see it growing, I thought it grew on a tree, but it doesn't! I also drank coconut milk from the cocnut but did not like it at all, neither did Dad or Ella but Mum liked it so she finished it all up! the man who cut it for us had the biggest knife I have ever seen, it was HUGE!

We stayed in Dominica for ages and I loved it, we did another tour in the North called the Indian river and I spotted a huge iguana, it was fantastic, we saw lots of them, but I spotted the biggest one. We saw lots of wildlife, real parrots, hummingbirds, a little bird called banana aquit, itliked to eat sugar and came really close to us and we had some and it ate it! We saw lots of birds, it was fun spotting them all. We stayed for the Carnival and Ella and I really enjoyed it, Ella wanted to go in her pjyamas but she did not wear them, I wanted to go as a rocket man, but we could not get all the things we needed so in the end we just wentas Ella and Jack, that was OK too. Everyone was excited about carnival and everyone danced and sang in the streets, the road were so busy and full of people, I had to hold on tight to Mum's hand not to get lost in the crowd. We ate ice cream and watched everything.

We found a really cool beach that had a rope swing on a coconut tree. It was hard to get on it as it was high up, but when we managed we had fun. I did it lots of times but it was tiring, my last time my hands were sore and tired and I fell off and fell into the sea instead on onto the sand, ~I was soaked and a bit shocked, it hurt a bit!

Dominica (14th February - 24 th February 2009) by Ella

We sailed to Dominica, a very poor island. We stayed here for two weeks because we loved it so much. We would row to the beach every day in the morning for a little swim, the water was hot. It was great there too as there was a rope swing on the coconut tree and we could swim over the water, Jack fell in once!

In the afternoons we would normally have school , but sometimes we would take a tour like the Indian river. The Indian river water was murky because it had been raining so much, in Dominica they call the rain, sunshine liquid, the mud from the bottom of the river came to the top and made it murky. Sometimes the barracuda came and swam into the river from the sea to eat the baby fish. Occasionally we saw a splash or heard a bang because the baby fish were jumping to get away from the barracuda's sharp teeth. We saw many birds, two types of egret, snowy egrets and cattle egrets, they are called cattle egrets because they eat the cow's flies and they are not as white as the snowy ones. We also saw green herons, hummingbirds and parrots flying in the tree tops. I loved seeing the iguanas in the trees but they were very difficult to spot, they looked old and dinosaur like. The trees in the Indian river were old and twisted and on each side they nearly touched each other over the river making it look spooky in some places. The roots on these trees were special they were called buttress roots reaching out into the water and lots of crabs lived there.

In the evenings in Dominica we had lots of BBQ's, I loved eating the sausages, chicken and burgers. We would row back to Brimble in the dark, making sure we had a torch so we could see where we were going. If it was not too late we would play cards, we play a game called Rummy that Big Jack taught us in Spain, or if it was very late we would go straight to bed...

We were all sad to leave Dominica, but we did manage to stay for the first day of the Carnival and were happy about that too.