During the afternoon of Christmas Eve 2019, I was steering a tubby old steel ketch called Cristina on a delivery passage slowly westward along the south coast of Isla Las Aves Barlovento. The sight of the low-lying coral reefs and mangroves of the South Caribbean atoll brought back memories from 50 years before when Ann and I had been shipwrecked on that very same shore in our yacht Starlight, a 27ft wooden Stella. Fate had interrupted our voyage to Australia by crashing us into Venezuela and we had made our home there.
I was tired out from lack of sleep and the stress of dealing with Cristina’s many tantrums up to now. I had first seen her only four days earlier when I had been asked to deliver her to Curacao.
At first sight she was a freshly painted old lady – mutton dressed as lamb – crawling with young energetic technicians frantically trying to finish the installation of expensive new electrical and electronic bling, while the rigging was slacker than a coal miner’s pants. A huge plotter screen blocked the view over the wheel
