Deciding to enjoy a nice long walk to stretch our legs, after being yacht bound for days, we walked around the circumference of the marina, surprised to find a uniform architecture of buildings, beautiful cacti gardens, wide walkways, bridges over little ponds, an Arts & Crafts fair, a swimming pool which we have access to, a laundry facility, supermarkets and numerous cafés, bars and restaurants, all of which were neat, tidy and spotlessly clean.
After completing our business at the marina office, we enjoyed a morning coffee accompanied, of course, by a baked delight, before returning to Paw Paw, where we had a number of important tasks to complete, some administrative and some urgent repairs that raised their ugly heads on passage. These included temporarily plugging yet another leak in the starboard hotwater tank. This was a brand new tank, which we’ve now lost count on the number of leaks we’ve had to repair on it. Completely and utterly ridiculous! The manufacturer is definitely going to get an earful at the first opportunity we get.
Other tasks included filling the water tank, cleaning the RACOR filters on both engines, running the generator and cutting Roy’s hair before getting ourselves ready for our dinner outing; we were meeting Andy and Paul, off Talulah Ruby III, after saying goodbye to them 18 months ago in Suakin, Sudan during our Red Red passage. Needless to say, another evening of fun and laughter over drinks and a delicious meal ensued. It was lovely to see them and catch up.
Later research revealed that the architecture of the all white buildings, with accented wooden beams and specific colours of paint, were the brainchild of the much respected local artist and sculptor, César Manrique, who until his death in 1992, exercised an effective control over the design of buildings on Lanzarote as artistic adviser to the island council. This uniform architecture permeates across the entire island and makes for a very aesthetically pleasing environment.
Unfortunately today was a day that we’d both sooner forget altogether.
Deciding that a video of Paw Paw and all her features would better serve the purpose of selling her, we set about giving her a “spring” cleaning inside and out, then staging each area for a video. This was a retake on all the efforts we’d put into taking the high resolution photographs a fortnight ago in Gibraltar and was something we shouldn’t have had to do again had we not been ill advised and had followed our own intuition at the time instead.
This effort required, on the heals of an exhausting two weeks in Ireland, an exhausting two weeks in Gibraltar, following our return from Ireland, to get all the necessary repairs completed on Paw Paw before our departure, using the parts we brought back with us, as well as all the effort required to complete the majority of the provisioning for our Atlantic Ocean crossing, on top of a five day passage from Gibraltar, without so much as a breather in between, was infuriating and the last straw for Elaine, pushing her well beyond breaking point and causing a complete meltdown by early evening. The good news is that she found her limit, but it wasn’t a pretty sight and definitely not a boundary she could afford to find with her health conditions!
By the time order was restored to Paw Paw and we were able to crawl into our beds after a nice hot shower, it was well past 2200, a day never to be repeated under any circumstances! Our only hope now is that this “pound of flesh” was worth it!
