Electric outboards are silent. Electric outboards require no maintenance. They are light, they don’t pollute, their “fuel” is free (providing the sun shines and the wind blows).

And yet I haven’t seen a single one in Spanish Water, this huge, land-locked harbour in Curacao.

There must be 200 boats at anchor here, waiting out the hurricane season. Their crews whizz back and forth to Uncle J’s the hamburger joint or the Fishermen’s dock where the courtesy bus picks up for the supermarket. Saturday morning is Zumba class on the beach, Sunday afternoon, Mexican Train Dominos…

You need an outboard in Spanish Water, and they all go flat out at all hours of day and night because RIBs with 9.9hp outboards work best going flat out – and who needs lights when all proper sailors can see in the dark?

And here is me in my little inflatable which deflates because I can’t find the leak – and I’m the only one who’s rowing.

Nobody can understand this. They keep offering to tow me in. It takes a lot of explaining.

Readers who have been with this blog from the beginning will know that when I had Largo in the 1980s, I had a two-stroke Suzuki 2hp which I used to pick up in one hand off the pushpit bracket, step over the rail holding it high in the air, climb into the dinghy still with it in one hand and slip it smoothly onto the transom.

So, when I bought Samsara in 2017, I found (eventually on eBay) another two-stroke 2hp Suzuki. Everything was the same. I had returned to my 30-something lifestyle.

In a 60-something body.

The big surprise was that I could barely lift a 2hp outboard in one hand. I certainly couldn’t wave it around while I climbed over the rail. I ended up having to lay it down on the deck and sort of shuffling it into the dinghy.

I did consider a derrick but you really need two people for those. In the end, I dumped it and bought what was called a “trolling motor” – a little electric job that weighed only 5kg (although you did need a 12kg lead-acid battery to make it go).

Nevertheless, I thought this was brilliant. I even made a little raft for it so I could lash it alongside and push the boat through those seemingly endless ocean calms. It didn’t work – I’m not sure I really expected it to. It tried to capsize as soon as I turned it on.

In the end, I sold it on eBay. I could row faster.

Besides, rowing is good for you. When the RIB drivers roar up alongside and offer to tow me the rest of the way, I puff out my chest and say: “It’s OK. If I don’t do this, I have to go to the gym!”

It’s true. My son the doctor tells me that, after the age of 75 (which the NHS categorizes as “late elderly”) you don’t make any more muscle. In fact, you have to work damn hard at holding onto what you’ve got left.

But I still hanker after an electric outboard.

I certainly hankered after one when I found myself rowing the two miles across the lagoon in Barbuda with a 15kt tradewind going the other way (it took an hour and 40 minutes).

It would be useful on those occasions when I have to carry passengers – like ferrying the family inside the volcano crater in the Azores – or Mohammed, the very large customs agent who navigated me through the Byzantine check-in procedure for the Gambia.

Now, with all the time in the world (and all the data on the Starlink Regional plan) I have started looking up electric outboards. I have even drawn up a spreadsheet with the pros and cons – which leads inevitably to long discussions over Uncle J’s little bottles of Heineken.

A Dutchman sought me out and tried to sell me his Mercury (I didn’t even know Mercury made an electric outboard). Apparently, it had been fine in the Med but the distances here are just too great. He couldn’t keep it charged – even with 1600 watts of solar…

So I’m back to square one.

Or not: The Slovenian company Remigo has offered me a discount on their version if I would like to give it some publicity. The point about the Remigo is that, although it weighs only 12kg, it has a range of 30 miles.

That’s right: 30 nautical miles at its lowest setting of 2kts.

And that got me thinking: OK, so I could whizz around at the five knots top speed for an hour but I would only be doing that in an emergency like having passengers on in the lagoon at Barbuda. The rest of the time I would be rowing anyway to make sure I still have some muscles to show off in selfies.

But the Remigo would really come into its own on an ocean crossing – in those calms that last all day: The sea dies down, the mainsail flops on the coachroof and, for 12 hours, the boat rolls her guts out in the swell that never sleeps.

If I had the right electric outboard, I could have a little bracket made for the transom and get the boat moving just fast enough to steady her – and I’d be making progress.

Marko at Remigo tells me they put one on a Halberg Rassey 42 and got it up to 3kts after a bit. Think of all those cruising boats that sail around with racks of diesel cans on the side decks to get them through the Doldrums…

I’ve got this vision of myself sitting in the shade with a cold beer wafting soundlessly into the next hemisphere.

I’ll let you know if it works out that way.