Bahamas

'Gimme a cast, 11 o'clock, forty feet'. Our guide, Efraim stands on a platform high above the outboard motor, spotting for fish, a long carbon rod in his hand which he uses to pole us slowly across the sandy flats in a few feet of turquoise water. I am standing on the bow of the flat-bottomed fibreglass boat, line stripped from the reel at my feet, fly rod in my hand, poised ready for action. I cast into the milky water, stirred up by bone fish feeding on the bottom where they forage in the sand for shrimps. 'Let it sink, let it sink ...... ok, now strip, strip'. With my left hand I strip, retrieving the line back onto the boat, the fly on the end twitches in the water, tempting the bone fish to bite - but not this time. 'ok, try again' says Efraim.

Miami Beach

Our route back to the UK takes us via Miami and we decide to spend a day in South Beach where our friend Susie has kindly arranged for us to stay at the Mondrian Hotel, a very trendy hotel with marvellous views from our balcony on the fifteenth floor overlooking the lagoon and across to the skyline of the city.

US Virgin Islands

As darkness falls on a hot humid evening in the US Virgin Islands, a tropical shower passes overhead, splashing large drops of warm rain onto the huge expanse of deck of MV Edamgracht, the freighter which will transport Juno back across the Atlantic to Palma, Mallorca. Juno's hull stands high above us, nestled in a steel cradle and secured with a spider's web of yellow straps which are ratcheted down to strong points on the steel deck. A team of Filipino deck hands in red boiler suits swarm around us and an arc welder sparks as the cradle is fixed into position. We cast one final look over the fixings and pick our way across the deck and down a gangway onto the dock where Hans is waiting. As we climb into his open Jeep the heavens open and a torrential downpour thunders down on us and we head for our hotel.