The day started bizarrely with an attempted suicide in the marina, except that we didn’t know about its serious nature until chatting with the marina manager later. Apparently a young girl stripped off and sat on the breakwater entirely naked threatening to throw herself in. The night security person, having failed to convince her to return to safety, called the manager who in turn was equally unsuccessful. The first we knew about a strange situation was a lot of earnest discussion and what looked like an animal swimming. Out of interest, D took a photo and only subsequently realised it was a person (really!). This was followed by an aggressive period of shouting from the person in the water who, it seemed to me, wanted to be left alone for a morning swim and did not want rescuing. The manager told us later that he had called for an ambulance and, seeing the state of our slime lines, I am not at all surprised.

Alleged candidate for suicide?

The sailmaker who had promised to come yesterday, but didn’t, was chased twice more by Umberto, the manager, and eventually arrived late  morning to look at the need for a small repair in the foresail and a large repair in the cruising chute. The skipper was so pleased to see him that in rushing across the passarelle with the sail in arms, he nearly joined the attempted suicide in the water and gashed his leg on the edge of the quay in a desperate attempt to throw himself on to terra firma. Admist much concern for D's wellbeing, the sailmaker took the sails away and promised to give us a quote by the end of the day.

We had also arranged for a dinghy repairer to come and give us a quotation for re-sticking the rubber rubbing strake around our dinghy. He arrived more or less when he promised but the job expanded as a more careful examination was made. There was no way he was going to be able to complete the work before we leave on Thursday, so he agreed to return the dinghy into the marina’s care and before we return in August.

Meanwhile, Alison was sussing out where the local laundrette was, only to find that it was in the process of shutting down, permanently, on this very day. This was a blow and will be a drawback to all those using the marina, as well as inhabitants of Fertilia. This led us to a brand new experience, which was catching a bus, with bags full of dirty laundry, to get to the nearest alternative which was in Alghero. In fact, the one recommended to us was on the first floor of a shopping mall, just situated in the corridor. However, we found a machine that was unoccupied, of industrial proportions and not too expensive, loaded our things and went to have lunch while it did its stuff. Two hours later we were back on the bus and the whole operation was much smoother than we anticipated.

Tomorrow is when we are due to be lifted and, as we won’t have access to the boat thereafter, this will be the last blog entry until we return in late August.

The view from our pontoon in Fertilia

The crane that will lift us, provided we can thread our way through to where it can reach!