I do like a modern day James Bond film. Not too sure about Roger Moore and his smug quips and glances to camera from yesteryear. I guess that stuff is of an era now. But Daniel Craig has stamped his own interpretation into the character and the scripts and story lines have improved. Big action, great locations with Judy Dench and Ben Wishart giving the cast-list more credibility.

We have found ourselves experiencing James Bond vibes here. The Bond DNA oozes throughout Jamaica. We made landfall in Port Antonio. An lush island sits in the bay which incidentally was once owned by Errol Flynn. Hollywood stars apparently used to party big time there back in the day.

The bay has been ‘booked’ by the production company making the next instalment of James Bond. In fact we just missed the auditions for extras by a few days when we arrived. Although whether middle aged white people dressed in worn out shorts and T-shirt’s were the demographic needed in shot is up for debate. Locals were abuzz with this news and we understood the filming was due to start in the next couple of weeks. Port Antonio is a town which tourism hasn’t really touched. We crews from visiting boats in the marina stood as the anomaly. I hope the community enjoys the Bond interlude.

Ocho Rios was our next stop. A posh resort called Goldeneye sits on the headland. It’s here that Mr Fleming chilled out and wrote 13 Bond novels so I believe. He built the property and named it after a navy operation in World War ll and apparently used to rent it to Noël Coward too. From our selfish perspective, a posh resort has the wherewithal to install good WiFi and we could pick it up on the boat. Always a bonus not to have to go tramping around town for comms. The podcast collection got a boost and we also made use of our Netflix subscription to download some telly.

This morning Dave is making Saturday morning pancakes as we sit in Discovery Bay. We had a brisk sail here yesterday, the wind occasionally touching 30 knots. It was from behind and with just the yankee up (that’s the triangular sail at the front of the boat if you’re not au fait with such boaty terminology) Grace performed just fine taking it all in her stride.

Dave has his pancakes rolled up and lined up on his plate, all lemoned and sugared. “Nice piece of linear work” I said. “You mean I’ve lined them up’ he replied. “Helps with the shovelling” with that he’s disappeared into the cockpit to watch a large boat navigate out of the bay and to commence shovelling.