1 - 2 April 2023 - Biograd

Saturday had to be April Fool’s Day. I woke up to go to the bathroom at 5am, and in the dark, put my foot down into several centimetres of cold water, which were filling the bathroom floor. There’s a setting on the toilet pump for drawing water in, and if you leave that switched on, water continues to fill the toilet, and in this case, also flood the floor. I pumped the water out and returned to bed. Steve remained asleep the whole time, even during the pumping of the noisy shower drain. We have always tried to have a ‘no blame boat’, but I reckon it was Steve who did it. Well, he’s taken it on the chin and, unusually, got up first and my reward was tea in bed, while we chatted with Henry on the phone.

The rest of the day remained fool free. The guy in the local chandlery really enjoys speaking English with English people, so we chatted to him for ages, not about boat stuff, but football, politics, English history. Fortunately someone else came in to buy something, otherwise we could have been in there all afternoon. That’s not to say we didn’t enjoy it, we did, he’s a nice guy, but we just had other things we needed to do. Always there are food supplies to be got, if not fixing something on the boat. We arrived back in little wind so reset the boat position to set ourselves up for the storm, which will arrive during the very early hours of Monday morning. Scrubbing the deck always reminds me of the punishment of scrubbing floors at school, but despite that, I was pleased with the result of my labours.

On Sunday morning, our morning exercise was walking up the hill to the petrol station to buy petrol for the dinghy engine, only to find the garage closed. There was just enough fuel left in the can from last year for Steve to, at least, get the engine going and prove it still works. We’re hoping to use the new dinghy a lot more this year than we did the old one.

The lull before the storm

The level of activity in the marina ramped up greatly this weekend. Several charter boats went out and others arrived. The sound of music blaring across the pontoons in the evening was a sign of the pontoon party season starting. I suspect it was the continuation of it being bitterly cold that meant it all went quiet quite early.

Tricia (& Steve) 

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