Alone, near gales, grooming and walks

Thanks to some tricky family issues that needed attention, Martin and Inge departed on Malaspina (their N47) heading for Portland. So suddenly, we were very alone again - apart from a furry little doglet that is. We needed to make her slightly less furry and so a little visit was in order. She happily walked into Pets at Home, sniffed all around the treats section but was less impressed with the back of the store:

It only involved claws and paw fur, things we could not easily do, so not too traumatic. Her powers of recovery were remarkable once back on the beach of course:

We were beginning to "know" some locals who take their hounds down to Havelet Bay at low water. One gave us a serious local knowledge update on the immediate area, pointing our a concrete pillar that was used by the German occupying forces during World War II to pull a cable across the bay. He also pointed out the strange slits in this construction on the harbourside which was an ammunition / explosives store and is still in use today, we know not what for....:

What did we get up to apart from indulging the doglet on the beaches? Well, the bank holiday Monday was the traditional hill climb event, arranged by the local motorsport club. We were particularly interested (OK, we means the captain) as Gary the Rubis tanker driver had told us about his passion for motorsport and his Mk II Escort rally car. Sure enough, he was there:

with a very tidy looking car. It has a potent Vauxhall engine in it and despite the extra weight of the gear needed in a rally car, was competitive up the hill climb, An interesting (again, for the captain) chat with Gary ensued about the other competitors and their machinery.

One challenge was mobile phone connectivity. We have the new router on board and it happily roamed here, using our old EE sim and contract. We had swapped out our main phone(s) to a Lebara deal as they offered free roaming in Europe (rare after Brexit) and WiFi calling. Ironic how a reseller of Vodafone services does that when the network operator does not. Sadly, the Channel Islands are not treated as an EU roaming destination so calls and particularly mobile data would be quite expensive. Hence we bought a cheap Jersey Telecom pay as you go sim that gave us 5Gb of data over 30 days for £5. That helped a lot with bus times, maps etc etc. Annoying but necessary.

Another walk to Fermain Bay in the sun was a must, as was enjoying a local cider there again:

and walking to St Sampson then Bardeaux harbour had the treat of a little lunch at Rendezvous, a super local cafe, to encourage us. 

Why were we still in Guernsey? Well, we stayed to offer B and B services and that meant we missed the calmer weather window to head off. Not that it mattered as we like being here rather a lot. This was the kind of forecast that we were getting day after day:

but at least it was sunny most of the time:

The only drawback is the wind direction. NEly is not good for St Peter Port harbour which is pretty much open to the north east:

as you can see from the map above. With the wind in probably the worst possible direction for the harbour we put out all our fenders, trussed the boat up, removed the bimini cover to protect it from harm and settled down to some rock and roll periods. At least we were in the better, northern part of the harbour but the rope creaks and fender squeaks were most unpleasant. The nice black marks on the hull that they left will take some cleaning off too:

But at least we were well fendered for the bumpier times when a big swell entered the harbour:

Luckily we hadn't done any hull polishing yet this year. The port side suffered a bit as well - Malaspina rafted onto us left some fender marks and genset exhaust gunge to remove so the whole hull needs proper attention soon. We will have to find a quieter place to moor, stop having fun and start some serious maintenance. Oh good.