Wednesday 25th June - Friday 27th June.

Mastervolt have not exactly covered themselves in glory dealing with our generator. Despite promises galore and copies of emails etc. the local agent here has failed to show up at all yet! I get to speak to him on his mobile and for the first few days he claimed that the spares had not yet arrived. Today (Friday) he promised that an engineer would come at 1.00pm and replace the impellor etc. and then if there was still a problem, he would send an electrical engineer out. (All this despite the clear email from Holland explaining exactly what parts were being shipped and needed fitting.) Needless to say it was late afternoon before they appeared, borrowed an impellor from me (not sure yet where the special shipment has gone) and simply fitted it. No backwash or other tests! They then ran the generator for 5 minutes and declared it fine. My Portuguese was little better than their English so now we are waiting to hear from their boss, but I will be emailing Mastervolt in Holland before we leave to register our total lack of confidence in their efforts to date.

Sarah has been busy cleaning and shopping (!) and having decided on Tuesday that we both needed to go on diets (trousers were a bit tighter than usual for the prize giving) she has gone on to invite different crews to dinner on Thursday (China Blue and Neal from Bali Hai), Friday (Blue Beyond), and Saturday (Scott Free)! Oh yes and on Sunday she wants to go the restaurant that the gourmets on the rally all recommended.

Still trying to get the foam mattresses dry. It has been extremely hot but very little breeze for the past few days, so although you would think by now they would be OK, it turns out that the very dense foam is very reluctant to release all the moisture.

Only a very few of the rally boats still on the same pontoon as us now. All the ones staying for a while have been moved elsewhere, so it is just those of us who are moving on, mostly waiting for spares or for work to be done. In addition a lot of the crews have now flown home so we are now ready to head off on the next stage as soon as we can.

As it happens, the dry cleaners who are dealing with the water damaged upholstery have also now announced that they will not be ready until Monday, so hopes of a weekend departure have been dashed. Still there is plenty to see and do in Lagos.

Lagos has a long and chequered past, including being the location where Henry the Navigator set up school of navigation and it also has the distinction of repelling an attack in 1587 by Sir Francis Drake. In 1755 it was largely destroyed by an earthquake however certain key features remain in the old town including the imposing fortress overlooking the harbour. Nowadays it is quite hard to distinguish between the old and new town as the modern sprawl continues and one quickly gets to realise that this is predominately a resort favoured by Brits. Sarah has been impressed so far by the shopping opportunities and I suspect that the enforced stay over the weekend will be hard on the credit card.