As the Welsh "Fire Break" ends, so the English lockdown starts....

Yes, just as we thought that things would get easier after our 17 day "stay at home", so we escape from it and England goes into 4 week of the same. Makes deciding what to do pretty tricky really. Actually that is not fair, you can go places as long as they are in Wales - until the next lockdown that is.

We went big and washed the doglet in our shower which led to the usual mad behaviour as she tried to get her scent back, We kind of liked the conditioner smell that she had acquired but she seems less impressed:

No matter, some nicer weather was about and the bay looked stunning in the evening sun, only the phone camera could not do it justice:

Meanwhile, 11 shipping containers were carelessly lost from a ship in the Bristol Channel. See BBC report and this sad looking old thing was contracted by the government to recover them if they were spotted. It spent all the time tide up outside the marina, bet the berthing fees were not cheap:

We know that news about Patrick the penguin has been light recently - he seems to have been in a bit of a sulk and there has been little activity from him. Most unusual. We think we have discovered why though, it looks as if Anne led him astray whilst she was here and he is now either recovering from a huge hangover or pining for her:

We need to have words with Anne (once the English lockdown is over of course). Meanwhile, the doglet decided that she could take over the recliner chairs as well as the sofa:

Our allowed space on board is shrinking by the day.

As an aside, something for those of you who still believe that size matters. It seems that in one respect you are right. When we upgraded our radars in 2019, we fitted a new technology digital 4 foot scanner and an old technology magnetron 6 foot unit. Here is how the sexy new technology scanner sees the marina from our berth:

and here is the same but using the other scanner:

You can see how the bigger scanner does a better job of trying to show the individual boats. Naturally the new technology one has lots of other benefits but for the ability to discriminate between close together targets,  no matter how far away they are, size mattered.

Maintenance news:

As the weather had finally decided to dry up, a few outside jobs could be completed. Extra insulation on the new heater exhaust, reseal around the teak capping on the transom and drill a new hole for the replacement tap that we have for the aft cockpit sink:

and as you can see, it just keeps raining..... The tape is just to keep the rain out until the tap gets fitted. It was a pesky job as we had to fill in the old 35mm hole then move it away from the side of the cabinet so the new retaining nut would fit underneath (way bigger than the one for the old tap). 

After all this fun, we turned to a more exciting piece of prep - packing for a little break away.