Sniffling and pottering

Well despite his dose of man flu, the captain soldiered on. Just not very actively. A trip to the Deere dealer for oil and filters and fuel additive was OK, as was the regulation run around the bay to warm up the oily bits in the engine room. Our usual less than exciting track ensued:

You cannot go too far "left" in the picture as it gets very very shallow.

The nice dose of man flu rather put paid to some other mad ideas that the captain had - like replacing the Racor spin on filter assembly that is used as on the wing engine with a "proper" Racor turbine style unit like the one on the genset. The engine room was too chilly for a sniffling person to work in. Copy / paste outside jobs. So, in reality, not much got done. We did make some progress, but not of our own labours just via our bank account.

The RIB cover (10 years old now) had a split in a seam and as the rest of it was starting to look sad, we had ordered a new one from Josh at Severn Sails.. He duly arrived to fit it and a much better job it is too. Better size, covers the tubes more effectively, straps with the buckles on the side you can get to easily not against the rail etc etc. Here is his handiwork:

The new cover is a way better fit around the stern and outboard and secured with a big strap this time. The RIB tubes at the stern are properly covered and should keep much cleaner. Even the belly straps are nicely reinforced and fitted:

Very pleased with this and also a little cover he made up to protect the FLIR from the worst of the winter weather:

and there has been plenty of that....

Realistically, the last few days felt a bit like a wasted time - there is a huge and growing "to do" list of things that we want to finish before the cruising season starts and we didn't even dent it in the last couple of weeks, bar changing the main engine gearbox oil and filter. Just have not felt up to doing much. Time to man up and get on with things, sniffing gently of course. We did cheer ourselves up seeing Anne and Izzy though. Izzy looked her usual regal, cute self:

Pick your own words to describe how Anne looked:

The good news is that this cold / flu thing seems to have infected plenty of folks in our area and it started way before the current Coronavirus scares. Otherwise we would have to self-isolate on board. Mmmm. We have wine, gin, a freezer full of food and a few tins / packets of edible stuff kicking around. Seeing the mad panic buying going on in the supermarkets here it is so tempting to anchor somewhere in a sheltered bay and just hope it all goes away. Somehow we doubt that it will.