An interesting day. Gorgeous weather for a start. Very warm sun, blue skies and hardly a breeze. The sea has been very very calm all day. Oddly enough much calmer here in the Atlantic than it was in the Caribbean. We lay out on the top deck and sunbathed with our books all morning. Both so brown now. After lunch we went to art class and finished painting the Little Gardener. Really pleased with the results. I can't believe we've painted something as ...

A very lazy day indeed. We didn't get up till about 9ish and then went up to art. The morning class today as we had a lunch in the afternoon. Firstly we finished off the drawing of the first painting we are going to do with the new tutor, Jack Gray. It is a young girl walking away carrying a watering can and wearing stripey dungarees and a dark green apron. Called The Little Gardener. It is difficult to draw and will be difficult to paint. Anyway, he said...

So, a very lovely warm, sunny day at sea. The wind was a bit brisk first thing and the pools were half empty and staging mini hurricanes, but it was still gorgeous to lie out with a book. Which we did, for the morning. It is still very warm -- 27C. Hopefully it will remain so for a few more days as yet. We have 5 sea days between Antigua and the Azores. Then 3 days and Southampton. Bob nearly choked on his sausage this morning as he overheard a man tell...

So excited to arrive in Antigua. The ship was moored up by 8am, right up against the dock in the centre of St Johns, the only town on the island. Quite biggish I would imagine in Caribbean terms and charming in a ramshackle, old fashioned kind of way. It reminded me of Castries, St Lucia when I was there in the late 1970s. There was a bit of "cruise ship" smartening up right on the quay but otherwise everything was the same, largely unmodernised. Engla...