New Year etc.

So after Christmas, it was time to say goodbye to Mum and Dad, so we went back to Deep Bay for a relaxing morning and lunchtime. Dad, Gesa and Max climbed up to an old lookout / fort above the bay, whilst the rest of us swam and relaxed on the beach. Gesa and I zipped round the corner in the dinghy and found that we could get a 'day pass' to the all inclusive resort at Hawksbill Bay, so that was her birthday sorted out. We said a sad goodbye to my parents as they caught a taxi to the airport - Dad has been on board for seven weeks since we left the Canaries and Mum was with us for three weeks - I haven't spent that much time with them since I left home, and it was great to be together all this time.

The next day, we caught an early taxi round to the resort and played tourists for a day. For a rather surprising price of ninety pounds, total, the four of us got breakfast, lunch, snacks, all the drinks we could order and use of the pool, watersports and other stuff at the Hawksbill Bay resort. It was lovely. We did everything we could, including sailing, kayaking, swimming and a lot of cocktail sampling. We left rather full and slightly wobbly, and returned home to the boat for the night very satisfied. That was great value fun - we've spent that much on an ok-ish dinner for two in Cambridge. We actually reckon we could find more regular excuses to do this sort of thing, Issie's birthday in March being the next one.

Over Christmas, we'd met up with some new friends on their boat, Aqua Libra. Paul, Morag and five year old Holly had crossed the Atlantic together recently and the kids really got on well, as did us adults. We hatched a plan to spend new year together, and chose a place called Nonsuch Bay as a suitably out of the way middle of nowhere path less travelled sort of place to go.

It was pretty much that, but the journey there was rather tough. Motoring into big swells for three hours used up pretty much all the sailing brownie points I've accumulated recently and Gesa looked distinctly close to jumping ship for a while. Once in the bay, it was much more sheltered and we found a near perfect Caribbean beach, a little curve of perfect sand with palm trees and fun snorkelling. Our two little boats had this space all to ourselves, whilst elsewhere in the bay were three enormous superyachts, showing that the rich and famous rate this place highly too.

We had a New Year's lunch on the beach, the kids building sandcastles, harbours, dens, and finding big sea-stars which they decided were sick and needed looking after so the poor creatures were placed in the 'harbour' and nursed back to the point where parents could safely release them again. A conch also made it's way to the beach but cleverly snuck off again when it saw what was happening to the sea stars....

We moved across the bay to Green Island, where the anchorage is sheltered but you can walk across a narrow spit of land to the east facing atlantic beach where the surf pounds and throws up all sorts of good beach souvenirs. We have more dead crab claws then we know what to do with. The waves have also exposed fossilised sea urchins in the limestone, so it all makes for a good biology / geology lesson. Back on the calmer side of the island, hermit crabs and foot long lizards wander about pretty much oblivious to the human visitors.

Saying goodbye to our new friends, who are heading south to Guadeloupe soon and then Panama and eventually New Zealand, we returned to Falmouth Harbour to stock up with food, get the laundry done and connect to wifi once more. Ah, the essentials of life. We also made the most of the Mad Mongoose Happy Hour (4pm-7pm, every day, rum punch $5EC = 90p, Gesa had four which is at least one too many)

And that was our new year. A pretty happy one, the odd bout of sea-sickness and child tantrums aside. Welcome 2008, a very different year for us.

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