The WWW or Weekly Word Whereabouts words are: Conscientious and Travesty.. see if you can locate them.

November had been a busy month. Halloween had brought out the carved pumpkins on doorsteps across Solihull. Bonfire Night followed with fireworks that startled the local foxes more than my mother's dog. The recent wedding of my youngest daughter gave us an excuse to wear proper clothes and remember how to dance. And an early Christmas with family because we were heading off to various corners of the globe meant we were eating turkey and pulling crackers while the rain lashed the windows of our Midlands home.

Our diaries were full. Pookie with food and MasterChef commitments arranged and met up with Sam and Claire from this year’s competition. They had a fabulous time and even managed to cook up a duck pithivier whilst they were here.But life has a habit of reminding you who is really in charge, and December was determined to teach us that lesson the hard way.

Pookie had not recovered from the ciguatera anything like as well as I had. While my system seemed to shake off the poison within a few months, she was still wrestling with symptoms that refused to leave her alone. Here is a sobering fact for anyone who thinks fish is always a safe bet. The World Health Organization estimates between 50,000 and 500,000 cases of ciguatera poisoning occur globally each year, and experts suspect the true number is much higher because so many cases go unreported. The neurological effects can linger for weeks, months, or in the most unlucky cases even years. And this poison does not care if you are a well known TV chef from MasterChef or a fisherman in a tiny village. It treats everyone with equal cruelty.

Pookie, ever conscientious about her health, consulted doctors, read every medical paper she could find online, and eventually made a difficult decision. An operation might help stop at least one of the ongoing effects. And so she flew to Bangkok to place herself in the hands of Thai surgeons while I stayed behind in Solihull to wrestle with a problem of a very different kind.

Our metropolitan council had introduced a new bin scheme. This particular brilliance meant that if your garden waste bin was even inches inside your property boundary, unless you were disabled in a specific documented way, it could not and would not be collected. Never mind that you had paid the annual fee of forty nine pounds. Never mind that the bin was visible from the pavement. Never mind that a grown man employed to collect bins might simply need to step two feet onto private land and do the job he was paid to do. It was a travesty of common sense dressed up as policy.

I tried to explain to Solihull Council that we were often away and my friend cut the lawn and put the grass in my bin and that he would be unable to position it on the public footpath at the assigned time. Could a bin collector not step onto the land with my permission? The answer was no. Of course it was no. Some overpaid undereducated bureaucrat thought there must be a way for me to do it, or a kindly neighbour, or anyone other than the actual man paid to collect the actual bin.

I would rather face a Caribbean squall than another conversation with a British council helpline.

Here is a fun fact about Solihull to cleanse the palate after that bureaucratic nightmare. The town was founded as a new settlement in the Forest of Arden during the twelfth century, and its name is thought to derive from the position of its parish church, St Alphege, on a soily hill built of stiff red marl that turned to sticky mud in wet weather. Some things never change. Solihull is also the birthplace of the Land Rover marque and is considered one of the most prosperous areas in the UK. Though you would not know it from the quality of its bin collection policies.

Pookie meanwhile was in Bangkok navigating a different kind of bureaucracy. Thai hospitals are excellent. The surgeons there know their craft and the prices do not require you to sell a kidney. But the waiting and the anxiety of knowing someone you love is under anaesthetic thousands of miles away, that is a weight no blog can adequately describe.

After the absurdity of the bin saga was finally resolved and after receiving good news about Pookie's operation, I flew back to Trinidad loaded with items we thought we desperately needed. New fans for the salon. Lights for my cabin. Spare parts for things we had not yet broken but inevitably would. And two bottles of Thai Sangsom rum because the first bottle would not last long in our company.

I landed around eight in the evening, tired, hungry, and ready to collapse into a taxi. Walking through the airport security checks, like 80% of the people on the flight, I was stopped. A second bottle of rum! Apparently one is acceptable and two (despite it being legal) makes you a potential smuggler of contraband.

My bags were emptied and searched like I was a mule for a drugs cartel. They did not find any illegal substances of course. What they did find was six months worth of medication. Boat meds in case we don’t see last for a long time. Not opioids. Nothing drastic. Just Losartan, a blood pressure tablet of the kind a fair number of men my age take. The actual proportion of men in their fifties on antihypertensive drugs is around forty percent from the data I have since seen. But when you are standing in an airport at midnight watching customs officers confiscate your heart tablets, you are allowed a little creative exaggeration.

Did I have a prescription on me? What!

The medication was seized. I had a few days to produce a prescription or it would be destroyed. Now I am from the United Kingdom and have taken the same medication for years. Whilst we were in Thailand it seemed perfectly sensible to buy some over the counter because the whole system there is not so wrapped up by the British medical council. So no I did not have a prescription. In my defence the Thai pharmacist smiled and handed over the box like it was paracetamol. I did not realise I was committing an international pharmaceutical crime.

This search and seize process kept me in the airport until past midnight. The taxi ride back to Peakes Marina in the early hours found me explaining to security guards that I owned one of the boats inside and would they please let me in. They were remarkably helpful. They rang the managers of the facility who had long since gone to bed to ask if anyone knew where my key was. I had left it in their care so the workers could get access to do the various jobs we had commissioned. The key had been safely locked away in a cabinet somewhere and would not be retrieved tonight.

But one manager offered me a bed in a room of the motel they have on site. A super result and I actually got some sleep.

Four days later I managed to get a prescription from a doctor. I took a cab back to the airport presented the prescription and retrieved my medication. I understand countries want to stop illegal contraband. But heart tablets? Really?

Here is another fun fact about Trinidad to balance the scales. This small twin island nation is the birthplace of the steelpan, the only acoustic musical instrument invented in the twentieth century. It is also home to the Moruga Scorpion, officially one of the hottest chillies on the planet. I am grateful to report that my encounter with Trinidadian bureaucracy was considerably less spicy than that chilli would have been.

I was finally back on Sawasdeekat. And she looked splendid in her new colours. The black stripe along the shoulder and down the front of the bow finished the whole thing off perfectly. Our team of workers had done a magnificent job. The new anodes gleamed on the freshly polished folding propellers. The cockpit boasted a new seat design that made lounging at anchor a genuine pleasure. The kitchen had new doors that actually matched the originals. The salon had new fans that pushed air around without sounding like a helicopter taking off. My cabin had new lights because the old ones had flickered like a haunted house for the entire Atlantic crossing.

The MPPTs on our solar panels were brand new and a big difference in charging efficiency was promised. The trampolines where we lounge and watch the stars now had new dyneema ropes that would not stretch or fray in the tropical sun. A new dinghy cover protected our little tender from the relentless UV assault. Everything that moved had been serviced. Everything that creaked had been silenced. Everything that worried us had been addressed. Almost.

There were still a few things to finish. The sponge for the new cushions had not arrived so we would have to order those another time. The extending bowsprit that had been bent needed final adjustments. The cleaned and tiny details of improvement to the genoa needed to be hoisted. The torn code zero needed professional attention. Within a week or so that work was complete and we were ready and eager to get back in the water.

Pookie joined me by taking a red eye thirty hour journey from Bangkok to Port of Spain. She looked tired and pale and the operation had taken more out of her than she let on. But she was here. She was safe. And she hated the dusty now mainly empty boat yard with a passion that made me smile.

The next day we were dropped back into the slime. The disgusting sea water of the bay welcomed us like an old friend who had not bathed in a month. The hull slapped against the murky tide. The engine coughed and then roared to life. We knew we were late to the sailing party because everyone else had started their Caribbean season in October. But we are not everyone else. We are the couple who bought a catamaran without knowing how to sail it and crossed an ocean without knowing how to fix it. Being late was the least of our problems.

Without even having lifted the code zero into place we set off immediately to catch up with friends and to see the Caribbean in our much improved boat.

The new colour scheme turned heads at every anchorage. The black stripe gives her a sense of purpose that the plain white hull lacked. The new kitchen doors make cooking at sea almost a pleasure. The new fans keep Pookie cool while she chops and stirs and creates magic from whatever fish we have managed to catch or trade or beg from fellow cruisers. The new anodes mean our expensive folding propellers will last more than a single season. The new dyneema ropes on the trampolines mean no more frayed fibres digging into bare feet.

We were happy. We were on our way. And the Caribbean stretched out before us like a promise written in turquoise ink.

Join us next time when we get to Martinique and welcome in a new year with old and new friends. The boat will inevitably hit back with new mysteries and malfunctions because that is what boats do. They test you. They challenge you. They remind you that every solution creates two new problems. Some repairs will turn out to have gone well. Some money will have been wasted. Some bruises will have been earned.

But that is the deal. You cannot have the sunrise over a calm anchorage without the midnight engine failure in a squall. You cannot have the dolphin escort without the customs official who confiscates your heart tablets. You cannot have the feeling of Sawasdeekat slicing through warm Caribbean waters without the memory of that dusty boat yard and the slime and the frustration and the fear.

I will leave you with just one picture of the new colour scheme. It is not the best photograph ever taken. The light was wrong and the angle was awkward and I had rum on my breath. But it shows off the new attire. The black stripe. The proud bow. The promise of adventures still to come.

Pookie is already planning what to cook when we reach Martinique. I am already planning which rum to open. The boat is already planning her next mechanical surprise. And that is exactly how it should be.