Wednesday 19^th November – Cagliari

39:12.064N 9:07.510E

Only one mossie last night and, for a change, it bugged Richard rather than me J  Richard thought he had killed it but I found it and zapped it this morning – it was big and horrible.

This afternoon we made some repairs to one of the seams on the spray hood; the stitching is gradually disintegrating in the sun and giving way.  It was quickly apparent that we would need to clean the inside of the cockpit enclosure first as some mildew had built up whilst we were away.  So Richard set to with the bucket and I decided to have a go at the slime lines.

Slime line:  official name lazy line, but gets called slime line because of the condition it is normally in, spending most if its time on the sea bed.  Typically, with Mediterranean style mooring you go bow or stern-to the pontoon and then pick up a thick mooring line (or two) with one end anchored to the bottom of the sea bed a few boat lengths out from the boat which you fasten your bow or stern to.  The other end of this thick rope is attached by a thin line to the pontoon.  When you moor, you grab the thin line at the pontoon end, haul up the thick mooring line and lead it to the other end of the boat where you then cleat it off securely.

We have noticed some of the local boats keep their lines out of the water, slung along the guard rails to keep them clean.  The lines on our berth have obviously been in the water for a long time and are heavily encrusted and very heavy.  So today I pulled the first part of the slime line out by the bow and tied it to the guard rail and knocked off some of the growth. When this part of the line has cleared of crud I’ll take up another part.  I’m trying to clear it all off so that we can use them more easily when we go out for the day.  Unfortunately I then had to wash down the boat hook, the sides of Pyxis and the decks to clear off the mess L 

Although we started the sewing in bright sunlight, sunset is now around 5pm and it gets dark quite quickly.  By the time we had finished the sun had set and we needed to use torches so we could see the stitching – quite a challenge.

This evening we went for pre-dinner drinks on Cape who have friends visiting for the week; it was quite a crowd on board with Wandering Dragon and Mascot3, an American couple who have recently arrived at the marina, joining us as well.