36:08.940N 5:21.304W

Yesterday evening we discovered that one of the replacement spinnaker pole ends was not working (and it was brand new). Stephen‘s first job this morning was to fix it. As we don’t have a suitable rivet gun he headed off to the hire shop to see if he could get one. He came back having caused chaos in the shop but complete with hired rivet gun. To cut a long story short, he did not have enough cash for the deposit so the manager of the shop “lent” him the money from his own wallet so when his wife did the books at the end of the day all would look ok (honest – we didn’t make this up!).

He drilled out the old rivets and removed the non-working end. After “playing” with it a bit, it started working. We have no idea why it suddenly started working. We decided to put more grease on it and refit it back on the pole. This time Stephen checked it was still working as he went along. It worked fine until Anne had a go. Luckily Stephen spotted the user error by Anne and it was still working really.

While Stephen was doing this, Anne started on covers for the two small hatches. We have a replacement hatch that we need to fit which meant Anne could use this as a model and for drawing round to get things the right size. By the end of the day she has completed one cover and the other needs a few “tweaks” which she will do in the morning. She is getting really good at canvas work now.

The wind picked up today however it was from the east. This meant we only had normal rocking of the boat and no tidal waves hitting us every 15 seconds. As we were now being blown onto the marina wall, we needed to desperately tighten the bow line. If we had a working engine we would simply have motored forward and tightened it. However the gearbox is still in bits. Anne did a stunning rolling hitch onto the bow line; then Stephen winched it in. We are now (hopefully) perfectly set for the evening.

Meanwhile the work of “art” was fitted. The objective is to stop the spinnaker poles moving while not in use. The bracket seems to work perfectly. Currently it is held by a shackle, however we may refine the design to use a drop pin later (all ideas welcome).

Finally, one interesting observation; now we are in the land of UK supermarkets once again we have noticed the amount of waste packing we produce has increased.

The work of art holding the spinnaker pole in place using the down lift loop on the spinnaker pole.

The shackle holds it all together.