Monday 22^nd August

Back to 2Xs…did you even know we had gone?? I sort of neglected to mention it in my recent blog entries… It didn’t seem like a good idea, for some vague reason. We left on the tenth and have spent many happy but very busy days home in Tasmania. When we arrived, everyone who saw us gasped and said, “Oh don’t you look well!” (They also may have gasped because my hair is so SHORT; who knows...) By yesterday, no-one was mentioning the words “well” or “relaxed,” in fact I heard the word…”tired”… Oh dear, oh no…will have to get back into RelaxedMode on the water.

It is wonderful to be back although we had to wrench ourselves tearfully away from our darling families and friends. 2XS looks fine; no rat infestations or engulfment by tsunami; not even a light bit of break ‘n’ enter. I had a bit of difficulty getting aboard; our plank had been confiscated (maybe to deter rats and break ‘n’ enter attempts??) so I had to dejoomp across quite a big gap. I made just a bit of a wally of myself, teetering on the edge and saying, “I just can’t,” in a Selwyn-esque voice (private in-joke, won’t explain…) until,, with a bit of coaxing and hand-holding from poor tired Pete, I got aboard, to a round of applause from the people at the nearby café table… The plank is back now, so I just have to wobble across instead of teetering and whingeing.

I won’t go into an account of our Tasmanian time just now; in fact I am just going to sink into a very nice big G & T, dinner at the Yacht Club at the other end of the plank, and then – snoozytime.