They bring out the best in people. Beneath the battlements of Morro Castle, which stands on the summit of a 200-foot-high rock promontory, the harbour entrance is almost as wide. A long flight of crumbling steps, hewn out of the rock, leads up from the water's edge to the castle and I almost made the boat try to climb them. Two hundred feet of open sea to aim at and I still managed to nearly put us on the rocks. So long as I was looking at Melba it wasn't looking good for our chances of hitting Haiti.

'I wish you'd put some clothes on,' I said.

'Don't you like my bikini?'

'I like it fine. But there's a good reason Columbus didn't take women with him on the Santa Maria. When they're wearing bikinis they affect the ship's steering. With you around they'd probably have discovered Tasmania.'

She lit a cigarette and ignored me and I did my best to ignore her back. I checked the tachometer, the oil level, the ammeter and the motor temperature. Then I glanced out of the wheelhouse window. Smith Key, a small island once held by the British, lay ahead of us. It was home to many of Santiago's fishing folk and pilots, and its red-tiled houses and small ruined chapel made it look very picturesque. But it wasn't much next to the scene inside Melba's bikini pants.

The sea was calm until we reached the mouth of the harbour where the water started to swell a bit. I pushed the throttle forward and held the boat on a steady east-south-east course until Santiago was no longer visible. Behind us the boat's wake unzipped a great white scar in the ocean that was hundreds of feet long. Melba sat in the fisherman's chair and squealed with excitement as our speed increased.

'Can you believe it?' said Melba. 'I live on an island and I've never been on a boat before.'

'I'll be glad when we're off this tub,' I said, and fetched a bottle of rum from the chart drawer.

After about three or four hours it got dark and I could see the lights of the US naval base at Guantanamo, twinkling on our port side.