On Bank Holiday Monday we caught up with Dave Sturdy (of welding on the pointy end fame), Elaine, Ruth and Rhiannon for a Joe’s ice cream and a couple of bottles of wine. The jury is still out on whether Joe’s or Llangrannog ice cream is the best in the world. Lawrence reckons that Llangrannog ice cream beats Joe’s, but as the Smith’s haven’t tried Llangrannog ice cream, we’ll just have to wait until we come back to reach a verdict. Meanwhile, Beth and Bryn have offered to test the ice cream in every place that we visit in case there are other contenders for the title.

Plan A was to leave Swansea for Padstow on Tuesday to meet up with the rest of Sarah’s family. However, with memories of the Aberystwyth to Neyland passage still fresh in everyone’s mind, we decided not to do battle with the forecast gale 8. Instead, we went with Plan B and hired a car for 3 days to head for Christow (where Sarah’s aunty & uncle live) in Devon, followed by a day in Falmouth to pick up the rejuvenated Aries wind vane (self-steering gear that keeps us on course when we are under sail). Hats off to Helen and her husband (her father designed the Aries) for performing miracles on the transmogrified Aries equipment. The instructions we had didn’t make sense before the rebuild because the gear had been put together inside out and back to front, then welded and painted to hide the modifications! We also managed to find the time to visit the National Maritime Museum, where, by chance they had an exhibition on survival at sea. Sobering to say the least when we saw the Robertson’s 10 foot dingy in which 6 people survived on a diet of turtles and fish for 37 days (The Last Voyage of the Lucette) before being rescued. David and Lawrence had to have a lesson on how to drive an automatic when they went to pick up the hire car, but both had a lovely time fiddling with the knobs (e.g. cruise control and seat heaters) which helped to pass time on the journey. 

Dino-man turned up (at last) on Friday from Neyland to finish off commissioning the SSB radio and do a com’s check. The sponsons for the Walker Bay (new car) also turned up, just over a week late!

On Saturday morning the ‘babes on the bow’ show provided a welcome distraction from the weather and working out how to put the sponsons on the ‘car’ (see ‘babes on the bow’ blog photos). Later we tried kite flying in a force 6 with a beach state of moderate to rough – Sarah happened to have 3 kites secreted about the boat for just this type of occasion. David managed to lose the stunt kite (twice) when the string snapped (luckily Bryn does a pretty good labrador retriever impression), whilst Lawrence somehow managed to fly a kite-shaped kite successfully with 2 strings and managed to get it to do some tricks! We’ve also done beach football in half a gale of wind, and beach rugby in full wet weather gear (including wellies).

Spot the kite competition on Swansea beach.

As we have worked out (at last) how to upload photos, here are illustrations to accompany items in previous dispatches.

Lawrence taking the new ‘car’ for a spin. When not in use, it has its own parking space on the Lego deck.

Dinner with Ruby at the Pumphouse in Swansea.                                               Final score: Bryn 1, sticky BBQ ribs 0.

We are now stuck in soggy Swansea waiting for a 36-hour break in the weather to head for Crosshaven (Ireland). So watch this space!