Life is certainly different, I sit writing this in the marina laundrette. I’m not sure that I have ever used one before or certainly not in the last 40 years. We do have a washing machine onboard but it is about priority number 623 on our ‘to do’ list and yet to be tried. It is testament to how shell shocked I’m feeling that I’m gaining comfort from being shut, alone in this small room attending to our laundry.

A busy day of milestones passed, the weather has been great with the sun shinning and the wind light. This morning with the help of Andy and Chris from Stella Maris we bent on the staysail and genoa, both went on smoothly and for a few minutes as they bellowed in the gentle breeze we got a glimpse of how Raya was going to look at sea.

I collected the life rafts from their service and they were fixed in place either side of the stern and we organised to replace all our rusty old fire extinguishers.

We have, thankfully, had some warmth on the boat for the past few days by running the air conditioning on heat, thank you Chris Boulter. However, also today, the Webasto engineer arrived and the proper heating system is now functioning. On top of that, the shiny new stove, which was delivered a couple of days ago, is now ‘almost’ installed, enough anyway to knock up a bowl of pasta, our first meal cooked onboard.

To add to our already full day and complicate things, events in the real world continue, all needing our attention. We are both feeling slightly frazzled. So it was a bit of light relief, as I returned from my umpteenth errand, to find Andy and Rick, who when I left, were on deck sorting out a huge pile of lines, sitting at the table doing what looked on first glance like knitting. Thankfully it wasn’t that Rick had completely lost the plot, the needles were Fids and the yarn Dyneema line, Andy was helping him splice loops for the preventer lines on the boom.