From the ubiquitous red shirts and baseball hats with the yellow map of Barbados emblazoned on them – the secret code of serious sailboat racers worldwide – to the Royal Navy tradition of serving up a thick, syrupy and brain-befuddling concoction daily to her sailors, it seems like rum and boating are synonymous.

For what sailor worth his salt doesn't savour a ration of grog? Almost a moral imperative.

Sometime before dawn this morning a snare drum roll of rain beat out a tattoo on the coach roof of our Gibsea 42', chartered from Sunsail in Sint Maarten. Thunder growled through the night. Rain cascaded from black cumulus clouds swirling over a cacti-studded ridge. A medley of line squalls passed overhead, each ending as soon as it began.

I didn't see much on my first cruise through Anguilla Passage in the Leeward chain of the Caribbean Sea. I was crewing for Steve Fossett on a one-hundred-twenty-five-foot catamaran called "Playstation" and we were chasing the Heineken Regatta's round-Sint-Maarten record.

This year Paul and I celebrated 20 years of long-distance cruising. As writers and documentary filmmakers we're fortunate that we can work while we travel and since setting sail from Toronto in September 1989 on our first international voyage we have logged 76,000 nautical miles cruising to over 50 countries on 5 continents. And whenever anyone asks, "What's your favourite place to sail?", we both say without hesitating, "The Bahamas!".

In Tortola’s far eastern reaches a causeway crosses a strait etched by the Caribbean. It leads to Beef Island, one member of the forty-island archipelago called the British Virgin Islands. Two hundred years ago cattle grazed here. Today it is home to the airport.

All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey. Is it time for the BVI Spring Regatta yet?

This summer was a wonderful one – I put a lot of water under the boat, had a ball and it didn't seem to rain on a single weekend! But now the boat is under its tarp and my deck sneakers have that wandering feeling. The pull is stronger than in years past because just before launch last spring, I started my season extra early by taking in the BVI Spring Regatta.