Being sociable

Whilst enjoying Lymington we also enjoyed the company of some friends. A lunch out with John and Kath (the Broom owner folks) at the South Lawn hotel was a long and most pleasurable one. We ended up making an unplanned trip to Hythe with John to recover an old outboard for John to try - a little two stroke job that is way lighter than his current Honda offering.

John, Irene and Archie the Lakeland terrier came to see us. Not by driving all the way down from Newcastle we hasten to add, we are not that popular. They were staying locally and we took advantage of that enjoying their company and the lovely Beaulieu to Bucklers Hard walk. Only it was muddy. Very muddy.

Anne delivered Izzy our goddog for a little holiday. Little? Well, she will be with us for at least two weeks and seems to be settling in rather well:

She is back in charge and calling the shots especially with her little bear toy:

So much so that a rather talented Dutch artist lady we met in Lymington was asked to sketch her:

The sketch was done on board the boat by Nicoline:

who also took a liking to the Nordhavn way of life. Lovely and talented lady - if anyone wants any animal sketches or portraits in the New Forest area, let us know your email address through the comments section and we can pass on Nicoline's details.

It was a busy day actually, Steve who is also a Nordhavn owner (Mity Mouse, a Nordhavn 40) came to see us. Well, more like "came to talk electronics and see what the new Furuno kit was like". Very few folks come to see us unless we have Izzy on board. Do you think there might be a connection?

We also got the old 2 stroke outboard working so that John and Kath could try it out on their dinghy. Out little Tohatsu egg whisk was then exhumed from the darkest recesses of the lazarette and it started too. 4 pulls and off it went after a winter lay-up. Great bit of kit. To check all was well, we had a little Lymington river dinghy trip:

Our extra crew is not keen on her lifejacket but seems to like standing on the tubes of the dinghy and barking at ducks. Hence the lead, firmly attached.

Finally the SW'ly gales abated and a high pressure was being established. Time to escape and really test out the new navigation kit perhaps?

Just for info, this rather disturbing little blog has just hit the 100,000 post reads mark. Go and do something mind improving instead is all we can say.