Highlights from St. Martin.

After a week of fresh baguette every day, the effects are starting to show. Around my middle. And I don't care. There's something ambrosial about gently tearing off a hunk of fresh baguette, stuffing it with poulet roti, cheese that smells like unwashed feet, a bloob of dijon mayonnaise (from a tube!), and a spoonful of apple walnut chutney to top it off. Or spiced gouda for a change of pace. Even sliced tomato with lots of pepper.

The last bit of yesterday's baguette are toast for breakfast, and then it's off to Sarafina's bakery to start the process over again.

For a toast/bread addict, it's heaven, with some drawbacks. When preparing for bed, there's always a significant collection of crumbs to be sluiced out of the cleavage, and one afternoon, I spent two hours hanging about reading with a giant splodge of mayo on my left boob. Men notice nothing. Probably a good thing.

By the time we leave here, there's going to be serious bread withdrawal issues. A couple of weeks on a French island should be followed up by a couple of weeks in...say, Dominica, or the Bahamas: lots of hiking or swimming and poor access to baked goods.

The captain is doing his usual French wine tasting, with the usual mixed results. I maintain that there's a reason that they're only charging 2.99 Euros for a bottle of wine, and it's not because it's the next Yellow Tail. We usually leave St. Martin with a wide selection of wine good for cooking. We know now to avoid the French rum agricole in a box. ND still carries the box we bought two years ago, the stuff we use for killing fish. For several days after I caught the tuna(s!) on the way here, I wasn't enjoying my evening rum drink, cause I kept associating the smell of rum with the smell of dying fish flopping around the cockpit.

Some good work has been done since we got here, fuelled by carbs. Another trip up the mast to stop the wind generator while Randy connected our new batteries. After many months of watching the wind generator twirling about, turbulence from the main we figure, Randy devised a plan to tie a line from the fin/tail/stabilizer thingy at the back of the D400 and run it through a padeye on the mast and down the mizzen to be tied off where we can keep an eye on it. So while he connected the new batteries, I screwed in the padeye, tied the line on, tied a screwdriver to the line and dropped it down through the wind generator and radar mounts.

We are now totally rich in amps. The new batteries rock, and the wind generator is wildly efficient and pumping out amps to burn in these Christmas winds. The water catchers, fore and aft, are hauling in the daily and nightly rain squalls, and after almost two weeks, we're still probably 3/4 full of water. Nancy Dawson is in good shape for hanging around the bakery for ages yet. (One side-effect is that we haven't had to run the engine to charge the batteries, which means there's no hot water. A quick shower is often accompanied by those loud pseudo-operatic-type whoops.)

Friends Patti and John arrive from Toronto on Tuesday, and it is my express purpose in life to fill her just as full of bread as I possibly can. That may sound like a mean thing to do to a lovely woman that you've known for almost 45 years, but she'll understand.