Sunday and Monday 5 & 6 May 2019

We are preparing for the arrival of much anticipated visitors over the next couple of weeks, first our younger son, and then friends. As we do not plan to be in port much during the period between now and their arrivals, we have busied ourselves with the necessary preparations. However, before we started yesterday (Sunday), I made the trip to the bakery for croissants. I think I will have to insist that we are somewhere we can get fresh croissants every Sunday. Without rituals like this it is very easy to lose track of the day of the week, there is little else to distinguish them.

We set to cleaning both inside and out. There were some marks in the cockpit that have been annoying me for days, and this was the opportunity to get everything pristine. There was cleaning activity again on our neighbours Baloo I & III, but before long the crew changed into uniform and welcomed new folks on board, then departed on Baloo III only.

A Dutch registered boat arrived with just a couple and a small baby, we think less than 3 months old. I cannot imagine taking such a small child on a boat, but they seemed to be managing.  Perhaps the motion of the boat is soothing to the child, in the same way as a rocked cradle. There was soon a rail full of washing, so there must be challenges in what they are doing.  Hats off the them.

I spent some time working on the windlass (anchor winch) and discovered loose connections in the control unit, which I have fixed.  Having tried unsuccessfully with the spare, I took this apart as well and found exactly the same issue.  Hopefully we will now put this problem behind us for a while.  We are generally making very good progress on resolving issues. There is always something that is the biggest problem, but the current biggest problems are nothing like as severe as the biggest problems of the last 2 years. With all these things, they are either difficult, you don’t know the answer, or (relatively) easy, when you do know the resolution.  With each thing we cross off, the number of answers we know increases.  As an aside, while researching the outboard carburettor problem last week, I came across someone’s contribution on the internet, that described how you might try to fix the problem, or he said, you could just pour a beer and stare at it.  This is an approach I may try on the next challenge that comes along.

We went for a long walk / run yesterday afternoon.  It was not too hot. This time we went south from the harbour, and in general, it was not as attractive as the route to the north we tried on Friday. We passed many bars and clubs where people could hang out, lying in the sun, drinking and listening to the music. When back on the boat we can still just hear the music from one of these places from the other side of the bay. On the way we passed a windmill, very close to the beach. Apparently there were many of these throughout the islands, but now only a few remain. The one we saw is now a museum.

The weather today has been gorgeous, but there were still chores to get through. We have done the laundry and been to the supermarket. As ever we had to go through a performance to arrange delivery. The conversation goes “do you deliver?”, “yes of course, where is your house?”, “our house is a boat in the marina”, “I don’t know if we can do that” followed be a discussion with the supervisor and eventual agreement that it is possible. Today was not different and all this done in a mixture of Tricia’s Spanish and their English. A couple of weeks ago, when we first asked for delivery we consulted Google Translate, which gave us a word in Spanish. We got some very funny looks when we used it and eventually we asked one of our network of contacts for the right term.  We now think that we were asking for deliverance in the religious sense, which would explain why they thought are request to be so strange.

I haven't done a photo of a fish shop for a while, but we still visit everyone we can find

The former lighthouse in Sant Antonio

Distance covered today	0	nautical miles
Trip distance covered	328	nautical miles
Distance covered 2019	328	nautical miles
Steve (and Tricia)