Wednesday 25^th March – Cagliari (Day of the Smurf)

39:12.197N 9:07.640E

This morning we were up early ready to get to it with the cleaning of the bottom of Pyxis.  The electric went off as soon as we put the kettle on – Richard went up on deck ready to fix the trip and found our neighbour Kevin from Sailaway already onto it.  There are three boats on the same box and we had all coincidentally put our kettles on at the same time.

Richard was about to go off to town, as he had been advised that a sander might be useful, when Kevin called across to ask if we were alright for sanders!  Two minutes later he popped across with two of them – so the answer was now ‘Yes’.

Richard attacked the bottom of the boat and I tackled the propeller – I am using a drill with a wire brush on the end, in combination with a scraper.  Richard spent the day cleaning the hull, scraping off the remains of the barnacles; he had on a coverall, gloves and a face mask but it didn’t have a hood and when he had stopped for the day he looked like a smurf, totally blue around the head.

As antifoul is not user-friendly, I cleaned off as much as I could and he went for a long shower.  He then headed off to the bricolage (hardware shop) to get some better protection and returned with goggles, a hooded coverall, more gloves and a few bits from Auchan.

Tonight we were invited along to Wandering Dragon for dinner, along with Delores and Preben from Tyfon who are on the hard beside us.  We took some tuna flavoured cat treats for Yo-yo and Koshka which went down well with them.