Early Spring cleaning

17th & 18th January

It’s been a very busy couple of days as we prepare for the visit of Paul Smith from brokers ABNB. As I said in an earlier post, we have been cleaning the boat compartment by compartment, doing a thorough spring clean so that she is all bright and shiny for the photo session tomorrow.

Yesterday it was the turn of the galley, this process being made more interesting by the fact that I was also preparing a pan of Cream of Cauliflower soup to give Peter and Jan for lunch. I’m pleased to say that both tasks were completed successfully and we had a very pleasant visit.

Just as they arrived, the watering squad turned up and Peter found himself pressed into service helping to pour the contents of the 25 litre drums into the tank, since I was busy putting the finishing touches to the soup. We felt a bit guilty about not being of more help with the fetching and carrying of the water, though in truth there were plenty of willing hands to do the work.

After lunch, we walked round to the yard and had a thorough inspection of Sanity Again. It feels very strange to be able to walk about without worrying about falling over, but the snow has almost entirely disappeared.

Today, we had the engine room and the saloon to clean. We also had an Ocado order being delivered at the boatyard between eleven and twelve. Before going round there, we stripped everything out of the engine room, and took a load of recycling with us to the tip. We collected some post and the A4 laminator which we had bought from Amazon, and at 11.45 the Ocado van arrived.

This is our first experience of using Ocado and we were very impressed by the efficiency and accuracy of the delivery. Our previous experience of ordering groceries on the internet had been with Tesco back in North Wales, when you could only have a two hour slot and I don’t believe we ever had an order delivered which contained everything we’d asked for.

Whilst at the yard, we took the opportunity to try the problem DVD in the DVD player there, and it played with no difficulty. Elanor frequently plays DVDs on her MacBook, and tells us that she has never had a problem like this, so it looks as if we are just unlucky with this disk.

After lunch, we made ourselves finish the cleaning before playing with the new toy. These last two compartments are the hardest work, of course, but it would not have made sense to do them too soon. We had got it all done by mid afternoon, and, after a cup of tea, laminated this year’s licence disks very satisfactorily. We find laminating the disks much the best way of ensuring that they survive a full year’s cruising, and this is the main excuse for buying the machine.

It will however come in handy for protecting things like Sheila’s crochet patterns, and, since it is not much larger than a PC keyboard, it doesn’t present much of a storage problem.

Tonight we are treating ourselves to a pub meal on the excuse of not getting the galley dirty. Paul Smith is not due to arrive until half ten, so we shall have time in the morning to clean and tidy the well deck and stern deck, and to give the bathroom and galley a final wipe over.