What a morning we experienced yesterday in Jolly Bay, Antigua! We witnessed a French sailor, an obviously very inexperienced sailor on a chartered sail yacht, crashing an American yacht at the fuel dock which ended up in a police matter…

After finally having picked up Ariana in the capital St John's we continued south to Jolly Bay. For Cecilia, who has been our guest for a month now, Jolly Bay was the last stop on her vacation, too bad she had to leave us and fly home for work. We miss you Cecilia! However we had some very nice last days with Cecilia together with the Norwegians on s/y Draugen and Fortitudo and even our cutest Alaskan fan showed up. After having waved goodbye to Cecilia yesterday morning we filled the diesel tank. Last time we refueled was in Las Palmas, and I must say that having a 170L tank but just a 12HK engine can sometimes be very preferable. We managed to run empty 5m from the petrol station and since we had totally ran out of fuel we needed to bleed the engine. Before doing that we got a spectacular drama to watch. Suddenly a Frenchman, who apparently doesn't know the length of his yacht (no, not his yacht, the chartered yacht he was sailing), ran into an American yacht and ruined a navigation light. Fine, these things can happen and are easily solved with an apology and a compensation for the damage you have caused, but no… When the French yacht finally was moored at the fuel dock, which also was a part of the story with them having fenders put way too high up, and a shaky wife incapable of handling the lines, the French guy starts refueling as if nothing happened. The owner of the crashed American yacht is standing next to him waiting for an act of contrition, but nothing happens, the Frenchman didn't even look him in the eyes and said I'm sorry, which got the American furious and an argumentation starts. The Frenchman acts very weird and is unwilling to take the blame for the damage. The American wants to sue him and harbor security is called but the Frenchman just refuses to understand what he has done and thinks the American is just rude to him. Then the Frenchman tried to seek some kind of sympathy from me by claiming that the American "insulted my in front of my wife", what nonsense! The argumentation continues but the Frenchman is just acting stupid and in the end the police are called. When we are leaving the fuel dock the police arrive. What we have heard the American finally got a compensation for his broken light. But we don't know what happened to the stupid Frenchman, maybe he ended up in jail or in seamanship school.

Today we have sailed a bit further south to English Harbour, where there will be some kind of a quarter of a century party tomorrow; you are all more than welcome to join! I'm getting old, or I prefer the way my skipper puts it, i.e. I'm turning the perfect age. Nighty night! /First Mate