Then, while Roy completed a few maintenance tasks in preparation for our upcoming departure, including cleaning both engine compartments after doing the oil changes on Wednesday afternoon and checking the fluid levels on the generator, Elaine caught up on the blogs and catalogued our latest photographs. Surprisingly we still hadn’t had decent enough data connectivity to upload our photographs to the website, since she last tried in Italy. In fact, our coverage in Spain is worse than what we had in Italy; Fiji’s cellular infrastructure puts these places to shame actually.
Afterwards, we dinghied ashore and returned to the lounge of the Cultural Boutique Hotel and Restaurant to enjoy a coffee and baked delight. While we were there we chatted to a delightful couple, who were on their holiday from the UK.
With the weather looking rather menacing by the time we left the hotel lounge and temperatures having cooled down significantly, we decided to returned to Paw Paw rather than remain ashore. Fortunately nothing untoward developed from the weather, allowing us to return to shore for a dinner of spare ribs with a view, enjoyed, once again, at the Dakota Grill & Bar.
Before we made it ashore, though, we helped a young couple, who’d just arrived from Barcelona, after they ran out of fuel in their dinghy. To thank us for our efforts we received some fresh tuna which they’d caught en route to Mallorca. Apparently they’d caught so much fish their freezer was full; might explain why the orcas have migrated into the Mediterranean Sea.
Unbeknownst to us, however, the inclement weather was yet to arrive. While this anchorage is never calm during the day, primarily due to the churned up water created by the wakes of the numerous speedboats that power through the yachts all day, every day, it thankfully calms completely at night, allowing for a good night’s sleep, but not last night; we’d barely climbed into bed when the wind started howling from the south, the only direction that this bay is not protected from, creating quite a fetch, but stopped as quickly as it started. Unfortunately a southerly wind brings with it the red desert sand and heat, which made for a very uncomfortable night and covered Paw Paw in the red sand once again, creating another major cleanup task that neither of us can be bothered to deal with at this stage.
Then this morning, while we were getting ready for a morning walk along the waterfront, the wind increased suddenly again, blowing 18-22 Kts for most of the day, scuppering our plans. Instead we returned to bed for a morning nap, given we’d both tossed and turned all night.
Since we were yacht bound anyway, Roy took the opportunity to run the watermaker and Elaine managed to upload all our photographs, up to the end of June, to the website, after we switched service providers for the exercise. She also consolidated our daily blogs, discovering a slight error in the blog numbers, which she’ll fix at a later date.
A chat to Elaine’s folks and, more importantly, to her dad, sealed the day.
