Sailing Sŵn y Môr 

Back to the boat and the last push of preparations before we set off for the big one. It didn’t start well. The plane was late and then a thunderstorm covering most of Southern England and Northern France closed Gatwick airport. All the time they kept us sitting on the plane waiting to go I was thinking at least this means they are still hoping to depart tonight! We finally left, eight hours late, and arrived in Las Palmas at 03.00. As we got off the plane the person sitting next to me admitted that it was probably all his fault. He was there with a crew to start filming season two of The Curse. Season One had been dogged by troubles and they had begged the writer to change the name of the series. Sadly for us, he had not.  Amazingly our car hire place had stayed open for us. She was very grumpy, but we were much relieved.

Our tiredness led to muddled thinking the following day. The water smelled fusty so we drained the tank and filled with fresh water. Then the water pump chose not to work. No fresh water is quite a problem on a boat, so Jeremy spent seven hours down in the engine room putting in a new pump and switch. This was not a happy time.

We had to return our hire car so drove into Playa del Ingles. They have done a great job here of catering to British tourists; everything you could want and warm sunshine throughout the year. We’d rather be on the boat any time. A quick trip back to the boat in a taxi where Jeremy started to pull apart all his pockets to find he had no boat key. In despair we got the taxi to take us straight back to the car hire, but the key wasn’t there. We were dreaming up notions of drilling out the lock and sleeping on the street. There was no choice but to go back to the boat and there it was – sitting on the back deck where Jeremy had carefully placed it worrying he would drop it in the water!

Having had three disasters we got out our lucky mascot, Fozzie bear, given to us by our neighbour’s girls, and put him on the helm. Keep us safe Fozzie!