30th December

12 00 N
61 46 W

Weather; sunny, still, wind n/a, waves n/a

Its howl at the moon night for the last time this year. I hope that it is a cloud free night so that I can get a photo to post. Today it looks like being a repeat of yesterday, there is no wind at the moment - maybe that will change later today. Gypsy Palace is out on our port side this morning, there is not a breath of air and not a ripple on the water at present. The sky is looking a bit ominous though, there are clouds gathering so maybe we will get some rain a bit later on. To encourage the rain Gerry has been out in the dinghy, putting teak oil along the toe rails and has now runout of teak oil so guess what - he needs to go into the dock and pay a visit to Budget Marine to get some more - any excuse! I'm just hanging around doing nothing in particular when he arrives back, soaked to the skin. Apparently the cloud burst happened in at the dock and the rain was torrential, he hung around in Budget Marine for as long as was possible without looking like he was casing the joint to rob it later in the day but eventually he had to leave and in doing so got absolutely drenched. Out in the harbor we got a few spits of rain, just enough to close the hatches up but not enough to fill a tea cup! Gerry was somewhat bewildered that the boat wasn't running with water, but that's what you get sometimes! Lorie had sent us a text inviting us for dinner tonight - great, it meant that I wasn't going to have to figure out something to cook. As always I asked what she wanted us to contribute and got the stock standard reply of "dessert", this is my happy place - I love doing dessert more than anything else and I had a recipe I wanted to try out for the first time - a no bake peach cheesecake. With Gerry just back I got stuck into making it, mostly following the recipe but if you know me you know that I had to tweak it a little bit to suit my thoughts on how it should be. Once it was prepared it went into the fridge to set, supposedly it needed just 2 hours but I was giving it at least 8 - just to be sure! I then set about doing some photo transferring from Gerry's phone to the external storage whilst Gerry was fiddling about with something in the nav station - I think he was checking on charts for our onward journey but I couldn't be sure. Lunchtime came and went with a repeat of yesterday's pate and cheese plate being consumed. Gerry had suggested that we go back into the newly found store today to have a good look at what was on offer and buy some more cheeses and pate, I was all for that as long as it wasn't raining. Of course that was the end of any chance of us going anywhere - the rain came and continued on and off for the rest of the day, not too heavy but that fine rain that soaks you to the skin in minutes. Although we aren't sugar lumps that dissolve in water there was no way we were going anywhere in the dinghy (or maybe I should say swimming pool as of course it had filled with rain water) so we spent the afternoon playing with electronic devices and reading our books. It finally stopped raining around 5pm but we forwent the cockpit sundowner as there was no sun to watch going down, a sky full of grey and black clouds swirling all around us looking threatening, no moon visible and our cockpit cushions were soaked through - not pleasant to sit on! We loaded our bag with drinks and the dessert to take over to Gypsy Palace and after pumping the rain water out of the dinghy we managed to cross the gap between the boats without getting wet - it was a case of dodging the showers successfully! Lorie made a great chicken casserole which we all enjoyed and I'm happy to say that the dessert was a hit with everyone although I would tweak it a bit more if I ever do it again - I found it to be very sickly sweet, but the basic idea is good. The sky stayed dark and cloud covered and the moon only peeped through on a couple of occasions - it wasn't the night I'd hoped to get photos of. We chatted and
put the world to rights before heading back to our boat between showers. All in all it was a lazy sort of wet and miserable day but ended on a high with a great dinner and company.