Monday 20^th February

We have had a very peaceful day at the Middle Harbour Yacht Club marina.  We haven’t stirred from home base.  Pete has done lots of boat jobs.  He has replaced the reefing line in the mainsail, and has MacGuyvered the TV aerial, so we can now, he says, receive 35 channels.  Won’t he have fun, with his remote control device??  The aerial, when we aren’t under way, sits jauntily on top of the boom, on top of the mainsail cover.  Very pretty it looks, like a giant toadstool in an unusual place for a giant toadstool.

I have done very little.   A bit of lying-on-the-couch, reading.  Playing Words With Friends on my iPhone… And popping out of the cabin whenever Pete needs something handed to him, or poked back into a hole, or whatever.  It has been a lovely day, warm and fine, but now…it has started to rain.  Possibly because in an hour or so we are chuffing off in the tender, across the way to Chris and Karen’s for a BBQ.  And no – we will not be arriving empty handed!  A backpack full of dirty washing will accompany us!  (I did exert myself to the extent of changing the bed linen, so was not actually totally idle today.)

We had a v lovely dinner at Cala Luna last night.  I won’t go on and on about the food…Pete has gently pointed out to me that I write more about food than I do about sailing and this blog is called….yes…SAILING2XS, not EATING A LOT OF YUMMY FOOD.  Along with dinner we had a spectacular display of thunderbolts and lightning.  A magnificent storm!

Tomorrow we are meeting up with an old friend of Pete’s, Martin Cooper.  They haven’t seen each other for possibly thirty years and they are both very happy at the prospect.  Martin is a lawyer and is very much involved with the media amongst other things – he has a huge CV, which Pete found with the aid of Mr Google.  (They know each other because their mothers were childhood friends.  When Pete and Martin were 13, Martin’s father organised a big adventure for them – they rode pushbikes (no gears in those days) all the way from Katoomba into Sydney.  It all sounds very Huckleberry Finn; I’m looking forward to hearing them reminisce.)