I woke up at 3am to a very quiet boat. The air-con was off. No power. I thought that maybe the whole marina was affected, told Jack and went back to sleep. Jack checked the breakers. All was intact and so he thought the same thing. He went back to sleep.

I do think Quest does this to us on purpose. She did it to us last year. We’d been on the hard and on the dock for about 6 weeks. I swear she pushed us off. How did she push? Well, we’d just gotten her air-con sorted. She was so comfortable to live on in hot, hot Trinidad. We’d rented a car. Enjoyed weekend trips to the beach on the north coast. Even the lady at Peake’s boatyard reception hoped out loud that we’d stay for Christmas. Christmas was still three months away!

‘I was hoping to make you a black cake,’ she said, handing me laundry tokens.

I felt my face assume its confused look without the necessary intervention. Black cake? I’d asked what was in it. The answer I got was too long to remember. I do remember molasses though. And lots of currants. Maybe a kind of Christmas pudding? It sounded delicious.

But Quest had other plans. The air-con pump died. After spending a significant amount of money on other stuff, including new house batteries, Jack declared that this was a sign. This meant it was time to leave the dock. We were to go out into the big, wild Caribbean Sea – again. A year later, we’re sitting in Bonaire – on the dock. And Quest’s played exactly the same trick on us.

We’ve been on the dock for over six weeks now. And we’re comfortable. We’ve had the hatches closed. The air-con’s been on pretty much the whole time. Patrice calls us ‘the Freeze family.’ We’ve been going out into the hot hurricane season, doing our jobs and racing back inside.

We’ve been wondering how we’re going to get off the dock, it’s so pleasant inside Quest. At the same time, we’ve come out of tune with the elements. If it’s blowing a hoolie, I don’t know about it. Just a bit of rain on the windows. If the morning is cool and breezy rather than its usual hot searing sunshine, I don’t know about that either. It’s hard to tell from a constant 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

In the morning, we woke up to no air-con still. In fact, we had no shore power at all. Jack went straight into diagnosis. The girls did school since it was a busy Thursday. Patrice helped Jack all day too. He seemed to genuinely enjoy it.

Those two tried every plug/cable combination known to boats. And in the end of a long day (which we suspected had an electrical surge many hours earlier), we were ecstatic to simply have shore power again. The air-con however, well that’s a different story. And I’m not crying again – not like last year. I learnt my lesson. Quest strikes again.