Bob has had a busy day and has managed to do lots of those jobs that should only take 5 minutes but then take several hours.  I haven’t a clue half the time what he is doing but it involves strewing tools across the saloon, covering the chart table in handy gadgets and opening every cubby hole.

Before he became too engrossed I insisted that we went shopping.  We set off in the dinghy to go over to the shopping mall for our big shop, a fifteen minute ride across the lagoon, and discovered that the fuel tube was disconnected so the petrol was being pumped over Bob rather than into the engine.  Mr Fixit had it sorted in no time and we set off in a haze of petrol fumes.  Bob was incredibly well behaved and patient in the supermarket, this is extremely unusual, and we returned to the dinghy with bags bulging.  At the dinghy dock a Rasta  Man asked for a lift across to the marina and we duly obliged but found that the dinghy was rather small for a load of shopping, us and a Rasta man so it was a bit too cosy. Possibly distracted by the sight of three men crammed into a boat the next man along fell in as he clambered ashore but we were very good and offered sympathy rather than raucous laughter.  We put the Rasta Man off on to the very first pontoon as we entered the marina because he was snuggled up very close to me and smelled rather bad even over the petrol fumes emanating from Bob.

The people from the boatyard came and put the battens back into the mainsail that they had inadvertently left out and then Bob sorted out the great lengths of rope that they hadn’t put on quite right.  I now have a working fan beside my bed courtesy of Mr Bob the electrician, once he had got the wires the right way round.  But Bob’s main job of the day has involved learning how difficult it is to break out of jail without a decent file.  He has been attacking the washboard with inadequate files to try and fit a new lock, the existing ones went the way of all flesh over the summer and Bob had had to break them spectacularly in order to gain entry on our arrival.  A trip to the hardware shop is on the cards tomorrow to find bigger and better weaponry.

In the meantime I have had to decide whether to sit upstairs or downstairs, whether to read my book or do a killer Kakuro and just snoozed a bit.  It is a hard life.

Gin and tonic has arrived, must go.