11th August 2020 

Arrived back. We had booked for the 16^th but so we changed to 6 days earlier having decided that Cummings (he and his cronies are now in sole charge of everything in English government) would certainly do the dirty on us. This he duly did announcing effective blockade from the 14^th with only a few hours notice. Quarantine doesn’t bother us much (we’ve already had it for 4 months) but Horace didn’t want to leave St Mary’s in the lurch for 2 weeks and Hettie didn’t want Martha to miss her first day at a new school; so they’ve both had to cancel their holidays but managed something else instead. What does affect us is the Foreign Office advice not to go because that would invalidate boat and car insurance. 

The boat is fine with just small niggles like the mainsail not furling and the freezer not starting, but as yet nothing serious. We’ve even managed to get some varnishing in the cockpit done; it took ages and we’re so glad we left the rest of the boat unvarnished! Bit windy at the moment (up to 40 kts) so we’ll wait to start pottering around.