The saying ‘reality is stranger than fiction’, is the category into which the next several days fall.

First, Brigantine ‘Eye of the Wind’ sails into the bay as well as the brand new (June 2017 launch) all carbon fibre PINK GIN VI Baltic 175 Pink Gin – Baltic Yachts

 – the largest single-masted all carbon fibre yacht yet built … even the tiles in the shower are carbon fibre.

Her billionaire owner (Nader) invested some funds in Avontuur and provided a 3 person camera crew to document the latest event … loading Rhum barrels from the beach by building a bamboo and barrel raft and paddling them out to Avontuur.

Naturally, the guys volunteered to seek out bamboo on shore and help in the raft construction.

I won’t steal any thunder from Cornelius (Avontuur’s primary owner), so go check their website but hey, they did it.

Jake had just come off Eye of the Wind before joining RUTH and was scheduled to go onto Avontuur for her return sail to Germany, so Jake was the common popular denominator across the 3 vessels.

Cornelius asked if we wanted to do a pursuit race for the cameras (they had drone cameras too), of course, when in the twilight zone, roll with it.

Nader was onboard Avontuur as well and we gave them a running start. They raised every piece of canvass, I expect even their handkerchiefs (nod to ‘Master and Commander’ the movie) were flying as well.

We flew the staysail, jib, foresail and main reefed and caught them on the tack back from heading to Guadeloupe. I expect they will have a great video of it. We tacked, raised the fly jib, caught them again and came up with one boat length away on leeward. The guys all climbed high up the port shrouds shouting menacing pirate stuff .?!?, great fun and must be an excellent video.

Back on anchor in the bay, we got word that everyone (36 souls in total) from the 3 tall ships were invited onboard PINK GIN VI for BBQ dinner and sundowners, also, a warm shower was offered as well.

You can imagine this yacht, lots of pictures online. You enter by an opening in the port hull and walk upstairs to the baby grand piano on your left, I think this sums it up quite nicely.

The BBQ was 2 huge grills off the stern platform, where there were steaks, pork filet, sausages, fish etc., her crew compliment is about 15, so even with the open bar, a lot of trips there weren’t necessary.

I made a point to go and personally thank our host for inviting us, his retort was, ‘we are all sailors’.

Into all this sunshine, a bit of rain did have to fall, literally and figuratively. I took the opportunity to roll over the ivory for a couple tunes (a bit of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata) which corralled my crew, they think I’m just uncultured salty sailor dog, that too, but much more.

The next day trying to clear out by heading into the main town Grand Bourg municipal office, I was told we had to go to Pointe-a-Pitre on the mainland to do so and sign off Jake to Avontuur.

So we duly sailed up to Guadeloupe and dropped anchor in the bay and I made it into the marina office with one minute to closing.  With the admin. done, I took a tour around the marina and amazingly ran into Eddie, my Yachtmaster student from Blue Oyster school in the Mediterranean.

We got together later and caught up, he just started a job on a Lagoon 620 Cat for Tradewinds Charterers.

Of course, he had to come see RUTH, a lot of jealousy dripping from his every word as he walked around.

That was the last piece of being in the twilight zone, next stop is Saint Martin and STCW2010 license training for the guys was back to reality real quick.