Land O'hoy!! BARBADOS

At 3am Oernulf sees the lights of Barbados. On my watch the lights turn into low, gentle hills, first blue, then growing greener as we approach. "Oh, the green and pleasant land.." They call the verrry British Barbados "Little Twickenham", I hear.
We raise the Barbados flag with its "Neptune" three-pronged spear on yellow and blue. And the Q-flag. This yellow flag, once indicating The Plague on board, now a sign of a boat that must clear immigration and customs.

Just before rounding South Point on the home stretch who do we see ahead, on our port? A wooden, "Colin Archer" ketch, all sheets out. In the binaculars a red circle on their sail, with R10 inside it. It's "Redningsskjøyte 10", (Coast Guard 10), 100 year old "Christiania" with its young crew on board! Hurrah!
Nice to have a chat on the VHF radio (a working channel). We agree to tie up outside of her at the huge commercial dock's customs quay in Bridgetown. The large Colin Archer boat can better manage the concrete walls designed for huge ships.
Clearing in, in three stages, including health office, went very well. They all seemed in cheery Christmas-y moods! The health office form was chock-full of questions like:

[_] "Does anyone on board have The Plague?"
[_] "Has anyone died on board?"

and other similar not-so-cheery questions. (We answered "no" to all of the above, in duplicate.)

After checking in one unties and goes to "Carlisle Bay" to anchor. "Babette" and "Christiania" leave in tandem, still tied together, with the three kiddies, Syver, Frigg and Ask doing our "Flekkefjord" puzzle. So, when we untie, mid-waters, we find we've acquired three new children! Hey, done this!
Anchoring goes well. We're "old hands" now. Soon the dinghys are on the water. And our "new kids" have already flown the nest and are off to town. We take a little trip to "terra firma" too. A hamburger for Ørnulf, an ice cream for me. And a jug of ice water.

But first we sit in the cockpit a bit. Half contemplating the crossing, half dozing. Well, we did it. Crossed the Atlantic Ocean. It went well, and why shouldn't it have. We've had fair weather all along on our five month journey so far. Some haven't. We've always checked the weather forcasts, waited for fair winds. We've never had hard dates to meet or delivered someone at airports. That's helped.

The crossing went well. The days seemed short and the nights long. Some of the 12-hour daylight has to be used to catch up on sleep. The work of sailing can, periodically, take some time. Still Ørnulf read two(!) books, as did I. And I did my Spanish. We fished dorados and baked bread. The mid-days are so hot any energy wilts like a flower with no water. And we try to drink enough liquids to keep us going. And exercise! Our boat-made stretch-thingy is well-used now! It's the every-three-hours night-watches that take their toll. We may use a different system on the way back. But we intend to keep a night watch! All in all, we can't complain.

We have 24 hours to catch up on sleep.