Arriving by dinghy as he does, he came armed with the replacement stainless steel, pushpit and side gate parts together with one of the panels from the ceiling. As usual the radio & VHF goes on and in return I play him music and keep him informed about movements in the Solent as well as more local Medina traffic. Rain had had its usual effect and so the bilge the first job to attend to and is pumped dry. Then the ceiling panel fitted.
With no milk, the kettle remained dry, more so than him, with his sweatshirt damp from the earlier rain and his T shirt also damp from the effort in getting the outboard fired up and him out of the drizzle. With the sun now out and his sweatshirt in the companion way drying, so the buckled side gate came off and the new one encouraged to fit in its place. The pushpit at the rear will be a longer job as there's wiring to thread through to the GPS & Navtex aerials as well as the replacement stern light. The nuts that hold this on are also located in inconvenient places too.
So with the new one stowed in one of my stern cabins, he set to tying the lazy bag that contains the main tighter to the boom and checked me all over for anything that could be caught by the wind.
And the wind came - Reports of 100mph winds hitting the Needles fortunately had 'eased' if thats the word by the time they reached me. If the wind generator had been re-fitted, then I'm sure I could've supplied Cowes with both power and light. My wind vane flickering and wind speed indicator was close to overheating, but then I have a tall mast and that's where most of the wind was lower than that and the wind lessened. Fortunately I'm moored on the west side of the Medina so with SW'erlys I'm tended to be blown away from the pontoon, offering some relief to my fenders and missing the rocking of the pontoon.
On Monday evening my skipper returned to find I was just as I was when he left me, with the exception of more water in the bilge !
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