Paul at play in the Walker Bay

Well, things are moving along. I've now renovated the everything down below - just about - got the floor to strip back and varnish, but apart from that every little bit of wood or paint down below has now been scraped, sanded and either varnished or painted - a huge job and not one I anticipated doing but am now very glad that I have. The work was hard and exhausting but down below looks so different. The photographs don't actually do it justice, but I'm happy so that's fine!

In the meantime we have decided to replace all of our standing rigging (the metal bits that hold up the masts) and in order to keep the costs down, Paul is removing all of the old rigging (not all at once) and replacing it with the new. Once he has been up and down the mast(s x 2!!) approximately 20 times our rigger will come along and 'tune-up' the rigging. By Paul's efforts (and they are great) we are saving around 50% of the cost - bless him!



We are very fortunate in this exercise that one of the friend's we have made here is Sam, and Sam has gone sailing for 4 weeks and left us his car - we shall be forever indebted. This is going to make the daily trips into the rigger in San Diego much easier.

We have also been out sailing a few times in the last couple of weeks and are very pleased with the boat. It's been nice to take our Chula Vista friends out with us on these trips. We've been made to feel so welcome, it's nice to give something back. In the meantime, while the rig is in bits Paul will have to make do with sailing our new 'dinghy' at the end of each working day. We replaced the inflatable with a little sail boat that fits perfectly on our foredeck and while we have both been working seemingly unendingly, it has been very pleasant to be able to at least take to the water at the end of the day in our walker bay boat. And, as usual, this blogspot doesn't seem to want to allow me any more photographs with this posting. If anyone knows any way around this, or what I may be doing wrong, I'd be grateful for the advice!