After what has been one of the hottest and driest summers ever up until October we now face day after day of driving rain, which isn’t great for getting boat work done. We can’t drop the mast, we can’t replace the teak, we can’t even keep the plastic sheets up around the hulls to continue with the antifoul. It’s insane.

So we’ve been up on the hard for about four weeks now, and the rudders have finally come off, have been drained, dried and repaired, the replacement bearings are on special order, the engineer now has all the parts he needs to service the two engines and saildrives. And the fancy rope- cutters have just arrived too. These should hopefully help avoid costly sail drive snags in the future.

Tim the electrician had an operation and we’re now waiting for him to recover before we can continue with the boat electrics. However, I may try and fit the galvanic isolator myself before we go back in the water, otherwise the anodes will vanish within weeks again while in the marina on shore- power.

The big news is we completed on our house and moved out last weekend, and have moved into a small two bed air BnB in South Sea, Portsmouth. It’s a nice area and we’re loving the cozy bars and cafes. But each time we’ve been out with Zibbs she’s come back soaked, after yet another rain storm.

And to that matter the new owners of our beautiful home were greeted on day one with water coming through the lounge roof. Disaster! We felt awful for the new guys so we called out a roofer who has investigated, found the issue, and now a few days later fixed it!