Saturday - 15 September 2018

Today may be Saturday but it’s the day of the “deep clean”. This is another carry over from my Clipper race experience. At the end of each leg, in the Clipper race, we had to do the deep clean. This meant cleaning every crevice of the boat; much needed in a large boat with a crew of 18. We have, never the less, adopted this on Equinox, as good practice. It involves lifting the floor boards and cleaning out the bilges. However hateful, it means we know the boat well and know we will not get ill from dirt lurking below the floor boards. Fortunately, we woke to rain this morning, which meant it was also cooler. We couldn’t have ordered that better. The rain cleared mid-morning, perfect timing to allow the boat to dry out.

The cleaning has taken up most of the day, so we missed our run. It’s too hot to run in the late afternoon. Instead, we had a brisk walk along the beach-side promenade and back via the supermarket to buy fish.

We’ve noticed a large posse of cats around the breakwater wall. There is a mother with four youngsters and lots of others. We named one Top Cat and another Bennie. We struggled to remember the other characters in Top Cat, other than Officer Dibble, so we looked it up on YouTube but were disappointed to find you have to pay to watch Top Cat!! It much be cult viewing. As ever the cats here are very agile and easily jump the meter plus gap between us and the quayside, particularly when they smell the fish we have had for supper. I’ve just shooed away a cheeky little one poking her head over the washboard into the saloon. It’s reassuring to think, though, that there probably aren’t any mice in the vicinity.

Our neighbour, on our port side, is an Oceanis 473 and two teenage brothers arrived yesterday. They oversaw some repairs and have taken their boat out twice today, to go fishing for about three hours each time. They are very personable but we became very nervous of their boat handling in the marina, which I suspect they realise, as we’ve jumped up with roving fenders each time they have moved and we ‘be put extra fenders out along our adjoining side. They put a nice scratch down the motor cruiser on their other side, coming in this morning. I do hope they will advise the owners and offer to pay for the damage. The younger brother lost his sun-specs over the side while the marinaros had several attempts to get him to catch their too short mooring line, which they had left on the quay, while they were out. We’ve been discussing how good the RYA training is in Britain, as a result.

Distance covered today	0	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	1616	nautical miles
Distance covered 2018	2336	nautical miles
Tricia (and Steve)