First thing on Monday morning, however, although we’d had rain overnight, making for a cooler morning, was to put our coils on the stern docklines to reduce the amount of jerking Paw Paw was doing. With a swaying dock and swell coming into the marina, we also added another dockline to the bow in an effort to stop her yawing as well, and then made a few more modifications / additions, which we’d thought about overnight, to the website and advertisements we’re using to sell Paw Paw. To take a break from the mayhem, we enjoyed lunch at the Waterfront Restaurant and Bar.
Elaine also continued her packing efforts and we started the preparations needed to leave Paw Paw unattended, including stowing all the cockpit cushions and spare docklines, leaving a spare key at the marina office, rinsing the deck, taking delivery of our liferaft, after it was re-certified, etc, before taking a walk to Morrison’s to start the bulk provisioning for our Atlantic Ocean crossing.
Yesterday morning Roy decided to take a long early morning walk to Europa Point, an 8 Km round trip, while Elaine slept so soundly, she didn’t hear him leave. As soon as she surfaced, though, she spent the best part of her day servicing all the enquires and sales we had for the miscellaneous items. This turned into an impromptu afternoon of socialising on Paw Paw when one of the cruising couples, who were anchored in La Linea de la Concepción on the Spanish side of the Iberian Peninsula, popped over the frontier to collect the cruising guides and flags they had purchased from us. Before long, we had two more cruising couples onboard, friends of the first couple, who also decided to purchase some flags, but not before an afternoon of exchanging stories had ensued in the usual cruising fashion; one couple had already completed their circumnavigation and the other two were in the process, after sailing from Australia. All were crossing the Atlantic Ocean this year, but going via Cape Verde. After a lot of “chin-wagging”, they bid us farewell, with the hopes of seeing everyone again in the Caribbean.
With that we returned to our efforts of folding paper charts, checking these against the inventory Elaine had provided to the purchaser to ensure we had all the charts and getting them ready for shipping today. Since we were on a roll of ridding Paw Paw of all these charts, Elaine then decided to take the opportunity to clear out all the other excess paperwork we had onboard, but no longer needed, including a stack of the completed Deck Logs from all our passages. It was a great trip down memory lane looking at them again, but it was a little sad too, knowing it was all coming to an end soon and, indeed, disposing of them was difficult. All in all, though, it was a very productive and lucrative day.
Today, Roy was up early again to get through the rest of his preparation tasks, including backwashing the watermaker and washing the saloon floor in preparation for another coat of varnish, but not before he walked into town to purchase the right size boxes we needed to post the paper charts, all 157 of them.
Once the boxes were filled, sealed and addressed, we walked to the post office. Being very familiar with the process now, it didn’t take long to get those posted, appreciative of the help we received in combining the two boxes into one parcel, achieved by strapping them together with tape, and saving us a double shipping cost. Afterwards we stopped for lunch in a quieter neck of the woods, then paid another visit to Morrison’s to continue our bulk provisioning exercise.
Excitement at seeing our loved ones again, though, had definitely started to mount as Elaine finished the packing and our final preparation tasks were completed.
Our day ended with a Fund Raising event called “Model for a Day”, which took place along the waterfront of the marina, right alongside Paw Paw. We didn’t exactly have a bird’s eye view, but we could see the “models” as they paraded up and down the Red Carpet.
Fortunately it didn’t go on too late, since we both wanted and needed our beauty sleep.
