The words of the week are Scaramouch (which reminds me immediately of the brilliant Bohemian Rhapsody song by Queen) and Emancipated - So look out for them!

There are moments in this wandering life when the universe taps you on the shoulder and whispers, go on, be reckless. This was one of those moments.

We had Sawasdeekat settled nicely in Prickly Bay. The anchor held. The dinghy sat on its davits like the Wishing Chair from Enid Blyton's stories, patient and waiting for the next adventure. Everything was calm, orderly, sensible. And then our friends Ed and Flo called with an offer that made sensible feel like a wasted opportunity.

Ed and Flo had recently met a pair of super successful YouTubers who also own a Hatteras. The YouTubers, Ed P and Lyn from a channel called Trying Not To Sink, were facing a boring problem. Their beloved boat was going into refit for several weeks. No cruising. No content. No fun. So Ed and Flo did what proper friends do. They invited Ed P and Lyn to fly in from the USA and spend a week aboard Queen B, their own sixty one foot trawler. And then Ed and Flo invited us to join the party for three or four days. So, like Mollie and Peter, we set off for an adventure!

We left Sawasdeekat bobbing merrily on the south side of Grenada. I gave her a pat on the hull for luck and told her not to do anything I wouldn't do. She has a habit of ignoring me anyway. A taxi carried us north to Port Louis where we found Ed and Flo saying goodbye to their daughter and son in law. The timing worked beautifully. The young ones flew back to the USA. We grabbed their bedroom. Moments later Ed P and Lyn arrived from the airport and suddenly we were a party of six with a magnificent boat to play with.

As we prepared to leave, the lady on the neighbouring vessel stepped onto her deck and raised a conch shell to her lips. The sound that followed was not a polite little toot. It was a deep ancient blast that rolled across the water like something from a myth. A proper island send off. I half expected Poseidon to wave back.

Queen B is not a catamaran. Queen B is a Hatteras. Sixty one feet of American trawler muscle designed to eat up miles without complaining. Our friend Ed got the engines humming and we pushed along at a respectable twelve knots. For context, Sawasdeekat considers six knots a triumph so this felt like flying. And in that moment, bouncing over the Caribbean swells with no responsibilities and no return ticket, I felt utterly emancipated. Not in a grand political sense. Just the simple private liberation of a man who has spent decades caring for others finally stealing a few days to care for nothing but the next anchorage and the next rum punch.

We used the time to get acquainted with our new shipmates. Lyn turned out to be wonderfully funny, the kind of woman who can deliver a deadpan observation that takes three seconds to land and then leaves everyone wheezing. Ed P and Lyn wasted no time capturing footage for their channel. They have spent twenty years in the photography industry and it shows in every frame. Their eye for light and composition makes my GoPro efforts look like a toddler's finger painting.

Ed P also took our friend Ed aside for a quiet conversation about YouTube strategy. I watched from a distance. There was nodding. There were hand gestures. There was the look of a man receiving the secrets of the universe. Ed's channel AWOL at Sea apparently needed a few tweaks for its launch. By the time they finished, our Ed looked like someone who had just been given a treasure map.

Canouan appeared on the horizon like a green jewel dropped into blue velvet. We had never visited this island before and the first sight was heartbreaking. Boats lay in the harbour with their masts snapped like twigs, the remains of hurricanes past. One catamaran had been pushed sideways onto the rocks and flipped over. Ed P pointed to a couple who had started a GoFundMe to raise money for righting their boat. They wanted to fix it and sail again. I admired their ambition. I also find fixing a water pump ambitious. Different scales of courage I suppose.

We took Ed's tender to shore. Important distinction here. Our friend Ed does not have a dinghy. He has a tender. A proper hard small boat rather than our inflatable rib that deflates whenever it feels neglected. We found a restaurant overlooking the bay with Queen B sitting pretty in the background. The food was simple and good. The company was better. Back on board Ed and Flo broke out more drinks and we talked until the stars came out and then kept talking until the stars got bored and started winking themselves to sleep.

The next morning we pointed north and made for Tobago Cays. This is where Pookie and I finally got to feel useful. We have spent enough time in these waters to know exactly where to drop anchor for maximum effect. The best spot. The sweet spot. The place where the water turns that impossible shade of turquoise that makes you doubt your own eyesight. I directed our friend Ed with the confidence of a man who has absolutely no business directing anyone anywhere.

The ladies went for a swim. I grabbed my snorkel and slipped into the water.

Here is something I will never get tired of. The moment when you put your face beneath the surface and the whole world changes. The heat fades. The noise stops. And then the turtles appear. They move like slow motion ballet dancers, elegant and ancient and completely indifferent to your presence. The manta rays are different. They glide with a quiet authority, like they own the place, which I suppose they do. I floated above them and felt very small and very lucky at the same time.

That evening we went ashore for barbecue. The same stretch of sand where we had eaten with Jan and Miguel only weeks before. The same smoky scent of grilled fish. The same sound of waves pushing gently against the shore. Some places deserve to be revisited. Some meals deserve to be eaten twice.

Union Island came next. But first our friend Ed had to solve the mystery of the dead air conditioning. There is always something on a boat. Always. I have learned that boats are not machines. They are negotiations. You give them attention and money and they give you passage and headaches in roughly equal measure. Ed disappeared into the engine room and emerged victorious some time later. The air conditioning worked again. The man is clearly a miracle worker.

Union Island's bay is lovely but we decided to explore the northern edge this time. The tender carried us to a rum shack run by two sisters who clearly knew exactly what they were doing. Cold drinks appeared. Food appeared. And then a large group of young women appeared, most of them French speaking and all of them in a party mood.

A small speaker started playing French pop songs. Then people started dancing on the beach. Then the dancing spread like happy contagion until the little rum shack had no one who wasn’t on their feet dancing.

Pookie got tipsy. Not her usual gently buzzed state. We are talking proper wobbly tipsy. At some point she attempted what I can only describe as snake arms. The dance move involved a lot of elbow motion and very little control. I watched from a few feet away, feeling like a scaramouch in my own comedy. There I was, the self appointed main character of this floating circus, and yet all the action belonged to my tipsy rabbit born wife and her accidental assault on Ed P’s spectacles. I could only bow and grin like the buffoon I sometimes am. Pookie's drunken snake arm caught Ed P's glasses, lifted them clean off his nose, and sent them flying into the sand. She looked horrified. Ed P looked amused. Lyn looked like she was filing the moment away for future video outtakes. We all laughed and Pookie retired from the dance.

The return to Port Louis felt like the end of a small perfect holiday within a larger imperfect adventure. We had made new friends. We had seen new places. We had danced on a beach to French pop songs and knocked glasses into sand and eaten barbecue under Caribbean stars. Ed P and Lyn launched their video of the trip astonishingly quickly. I watched it and felt a pang of professional envy. Despite them losing some footage, their version looked like an entertaining documentary. Mine looks like someone dropped a phone in the ocean and then edited whatever survived.

But that is fine. I am not competing. I am just recording. And what I will record next is the journey south to Trinidad for hurricane season. We have to leave Grenada behind and sail the distance to safer waters. But before that I had one worry to resolve.

I returned to Prickly Bay half expecting to find Sawasdeekat gone or damaged or surrounded by confused officials wondering why an abandoned catamaran was taking up valuable anchorage space. Instead she sat exactly where we had left her. The dinghy still waited in the dock. Nothing had been stolen. Nothing had sunk. Nothing had even drifted.

For two people who knew nothing about boats and had never sailed before we have learned one important lesson. Sometimes leaving things alone is the best maintenance of all.

Join us next time for the run to Trinidad. The distance is not enormous but the weather might make it interesting. And on this adventure interesting is always the goal.