Martinique by Jacobus

I was really excited to be going to a French island because we were running out of food and goodies and Ella and I wanted to get some Haribo sweets. We also really wanted to haul out Brimble so that we could paint her bottom, there are lots of goose barnucles stuck to her and this makes Brimble sail slower, I had even chosen the clothes that I was going to wear for painting in.

There was a problem though because everything was shut, they were all on strike, I do not know why they were on strike, even the teachers were! There were lots of children in the park everyday because the school had been closed for nearly four weeks, that was good for me because then I had friends to play with in the park and on the beach.

I did like sailing to the area where there had been a huge volcanic explosion lots of years ago. We walked in the town called St Pierre and saw lots of broken walls and many of them were black from the heat from the lava. We saw new houses that used some of the old walls, it looked weird.

Ella and I had so much fun on Brimble here because we used her as a climbing frame, but Daddy not was not very happy!

Martinique by Ella

It was horrible and that is the end of that!

St Lucia by Jacobus

Something very funny happened to me in St Lucia, I got covered in mud! We went to a volcano near the tall Pitons, where we could see the gas coming out of the earth and the mud boiling from all the heat. There was a terrible smell there like rotten eggs, but really it was sulphur from the earth being heated up, I did not like, it was horrible. As we were leaving we decided to go to the mud pool and see if we would swim. Daddy was first in the pool and said that I would not be able to bear it because it was hot, I went in before Ella and it was boiling hot, it was hotter than a bath and I have not had one since Barbados. It was as hot as can be and when I got used to it, it was lovely. I even swam under water in it! A local man called me out and he covered me in mud, it felt weird and I liked it, it was hot but it cooled down quite quickly. He said it would make me 10 years younger, that means I cannot be born yet! It was great and I loved it, I did not want to leave, but we were on a tour of the island and there was still much to see.

St Lucia by Ella 31 Jan - 11 Feb

Along the coast of St Lucia the wind was not too strong and Daddy said we could be towed behind Brimble in the dinghy, I had wanted to do this for ages, I was so happy because I never thought Daddy would let us. We had to get from Brimble to Poppy while the boats were moving, it was so hard, I almost fell over board, but I was wearing my life jacket so I was not worried. Being towed in the dinghy was great, Jack sat at the front of the boat, I went to sit next to him and the dinghy began to flood with water as the bow was going under the waves, I did not realise until my bum was soaked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was really bumpy and not so bumpy. We were being towed at over 4 knots, which was quite fast! I loved it and hope to do it again! It was a good job Daddy brought us back in when he did because the wind really picked up and it might have been dangerous, it was so exciting!

St Vincent by Jacobus

I really wanted to come here because it was were the Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed and I wanted to take photos for my friend Luca in England, he loves the film! I thought the set was really good but I was disappointed that they had not looked after the sets and some of it had broken into the sea, but it was still exciting. I could see the pontoon where Jack Sparrow arrives and his boat sinks and where he swung away and said “This was the time when you nearly caught Captain Jack Sparrow!” It would have been fantastic if we had the DVD of the film here with us and we could have looked at the set and then seen it on the film, I am looking forward to coming home to watch it again and say, “I was there!”

St Vincent by Ella 30-31 January

We arrived in St Vincent when it was pouring down with rain, the first thing I noticed was the rock where the three dead men were hung and Jack Sparrow took off his hat to pray from the film Pirates of the Caribbean, I was flabbergasted to see it and especially as I saw it first and pointed it out to everyone, even Dad was excited too.

When we had finally moored up, it felt like hours on end, I was desperate to get into the water, when Grandma Sue from the next boat came out and said she thought we should not swim as she had been stung over 72 times by tiny jellyfish in just over half an hour, I thought “Oh no!” We decided if we could not swim then we should go ashore and see a waterfall, as we arrived at the waterfall it was a big disappointment because the waterfall was so tiny and the water was not clear at all, the water looked more murky than England! As we left the water fall we noticed a nutmeg tree and decided to pick some. The nutmegs were so high up we could not reach them, not even Daddy and he is rather tall, so we were just about to go when I spotted another tree with nutmegs as close to the ground as half a meter. We picked a few nutmegs, I was very surprised when we opened them up, the first ones were not ready but when we found one that was ready it was covered in a bright red lines, it was very unusual. We only stayed one night, but that was OK.

Union Island by Ella 15/01/09

We were anchored at Frigate Island on Union Island, we were swimming around the boat and I thought Jack was joking that he had seen a stingray, I had seen one two days before that he had missed. All I could see was something moving that looked like pebbles moving with the current. It started to surface and came close to me, that is when I realised it WAS a stingray, my second one in a week! It was a spotted eagle ray. I kept still, he came up past me and then changed direction and swam off. The tail was so long on this one that it kept moving upwards, it was much longer than the one I saw in Tobago Cays. Daddy thinks the size of the sting ray though was smaller than the previous one, but that this tail was much longer. We then saw a second sting ray, this was a smaller one still and was the cousin called the eagle ray, a grey coloured one. It was a really exciting swim.

We also had been sailing with everyone from Starblazer which was great fun. After school each day, Jack and I were allowed to play with Josie and Clemmie and we even had a BBQ and bonfire on the beach and body surfed in the water at night too. It is great sailing with another boat.

Union Island main town called Clifton was great fun too. By the dingy dock they had a shark pool with five sharks in. Jack and I loved to watch them each time we came in. At the bar there the tables had painted games on them and Jack and i often played checkers, it was brilliant.