Things are getting quite desperate because we need to stock up on food, gas and clean some clothes - don't want anyone accusing us of smelling! The Met Office has also issued a severe wind warning following on from Hurricane Katia. Winds are expected to get up to 80mph in the next couple of days and if the press are accurate......50ft waves!

I'm not sure if we said earlier in our blog but even the cheapest marina's are relatively expensive (approx £30.00 per night for us) so neither of us want to stay for longer than absolutely necessary, ideally just the one night. Our plan is as follows:

- Up at 06:30 - 'Yes' we do have the occasional early morning!!
- Catch the 07:10 shipping forecast
- Leave Cargreen and go back to Plymouth Yacht Haven (one of the cheaper marina's that has access to most facilities), arriving somewhere between 9-10am.
- Catch the Mount Batten ferry across to Mayflower Steps (adjacent to the Barbican), visit some of the Chandleries (to purchase a new ensign) and do the normal browsing
- Find a supermarket & do the shopping
- Return late afternoon
- Boot up the PC and Skype family and friends (free wifi included in the £30 overnight charge :-))
- Do some research on 12v battery power for the laptop - an hour or so capacity just isn't enough!
- Wash/dry clothes - conveniently located on the marina premises...but not free :-(
- Shower

If all goes to plan, we will leave the following day and either return to Cargreen or go up river to Weir Quay again, keeping the costs down and wait until the weather improves (late next week earliest if the forecasters are right).

...

Plan accomplished but it's taken a lot longer than anticipated as we got to bed at 3am!!! We gave Wifi/Skype a real hammering (3hrs with video!!) and then had an issue with the dryer whereby one of us didn't hit the start button (no names but it wasn't me) so we wasted 40 minutes waiting for the clothes to dry when in fact, they were just sat in the dryer! - ops!

Other notes:
August was one of the dullest on record with around 100mm of rainfall, 30% more than average, and just 150 hours of sunshine. It's a shame they didn't comment on the wind because I'm sure we've never seen such periods of constantly high winds in September!