Wet, Wet, Wet! Our drive way would be better suited as a toboggan run; it is so muddy and slippy. This means that the digger still can’t get up and the drive still can’t be concreted. We do have gateposts though and the middle floor now has doors on the veranda and is secure.

Jeff and John have delved into the small container and found the gas cooker (at the very back), so it has been taken into the house ready to have the island built around it. It is a big range cooker, something I have always had a yearning for but realistically far too big for our needs. It has eight burners, probably four more than we need but as I told Jeff, it’s a girl thing and I love it. When they went to get the cooker on Monday morning they were very concerned that someone had taken off our lock from the container and replaced it with their own. Fortunately when we then took that padlock off we found everything was in order but for a time we feared the worst as the container contents had been on show the previous day when they were trying to find bits and pieces. It is still not clear what actually happened but it looks like someone wanted a piece of wood out of it, and when they couldn’t get hold of us thought they would just break in, only to find it impossible to get to the stacked wood at the very bottom. It’s all very odd and no one seems to be telling the real story.

Last Sunday Jeff, John and I went to Micoud to have a mornings ATV driving. It was great fun trundling through the mango plantation, meandering through the rainforest until we eventually came to the river, where we had a swim and a break for some freshly picked grapefruit and bananas. Afterwards we drove to Laborie and went to Debbie’s restaurant and had the Sunday buffet, all you can eat for £10 and that includes crab and prawn salad starters. Great value in a lovely local place. Foxy was looked after by a friend of ours and when we got back I found them on the beach, playing in the surf with her other dog Minnie, so it seems we all had a good day.

It is all very quiet on the boat now that John has gone and joined his boat for the next leg out of Antigua. It was great fun having him here; his work and attention to detail were appreciated as he took on any job that Jeff put his way.

This weekend is non-working for our builders but the plumber and electrician are in doing their final bits to the house. We were hoping to have a bit of a clean up but there is still a load of sanding to do downstairs plus painting. The fence has started to go up and doesn’t it look too much like an internment camp. Jeff met up with the window maker to get two more French doors, so we are down to the last two plus one window, which should be ready next week. What a long and frustrating haul that has been and we really could not recommend him as even his work got shoddy towards the end but we accepted it anyway just to have doors. As we get closer to the move in day this boat seems to get smaller!