Cleopatra Boatyard

The boatyard is slowly coming to life. Three weeks ago you could walk round the hundreds of other boats and if you were lucky see one other person – probably the cleaner or maybe Markus the engineer. Now you hear intermittent grinding and polishing noises from time to time and there’s perhaps one launch a day from the travel lifts (beep, beep, beep) as they are remotely controlled from the yard, out the gate, and into the water. Sooty Albatross went in yesterday looking fantastic. Across the way from us Brian and Maggie are working on Lone Shark and next to them the lovely wooden Moonspray is repainted and almost ready for launch. Give it a few more weeks and the yard will be struggling to keep up.

The weather is picking up now too. The days are warmer and the nights slightly less cold. When the wind gets up though you still wouldn’t call it warm.

The water is back in the toilets, and a new bit of hardstanding has been produced by a myriad of trucks trundling by with hardcore. Shame about the thousands of frogs that lived in the marsh now under the hardcore, that formed part of the evening cacophany of croaks, chirps and froggy-type noises that accompany us to and from the loos at night, but there are plenty more to take their place as we are essentially living on an island surrounded by marshland and seas. The stars at night are fantastic, and the sunsets visible from the boat are lovely.