Sunday's forecast was for changeable weather including heavy wind and showers/thunderstorms. They arrived as predicted sop from mid morning to mid afternoon we were under the cockpit tent with rain pouring down and the I wind howling and thinking "we could be in Cornwall" - except it would probably be sunny and warm there at the moment! Due to a huge improvement in the Marina's wifi performance, we are able to get a good signal on the boat and even managed to stream the cricket - so we were sitting in the boat, sheltering from the rain showers in the Adriatic, watching cricket from a sunny Edgbaston!

In between showers, Will went back up the mast to fit the new deck-light. He took a go-pro with him and streamed the footage to the skipper in order to get any help in fitting the light. In the event, no assistance was really needed, but the footage is quite spectacular so we are trying to figure about how to upload a section for your viewing pleasure. Millie also decided that she ought to go aloft too - so up she went to the second set of spreaders (no go-pro this time) we will try to do better as the holiday progresses. Talking of which, there is a gallery of additional pics from this holiday at the Gallery tab.

We also decided to try and fit the sails, despite heavily gusting winds from the wrong direction (you want any breeze to come from the front of the boat, so the sail streams backwards - but, of course, the wind was coming from directly astern and gusting occasionally over 20 knots). The whole crew rallied and having carefully prepared everything we hoisted the Genoa (front sail) in a (sort of) lull in the breeze. Mel, who was feeding the sail at the front ,was only nearly swept overboard the once!

Having made congratulations all round, we proceeded to the main sail (one from the mast). Following careful preparations, to ensure we could hoist everything quickly in a lull in the wind, Mel noticed something odd with the sails ruling mechanism - it looks like someone has pressed the electric furling mechanism while the sail is off. The crew is exonerated from blame as it was like this when we arrived, but we only saw the issue when we removed the mast cover plates to fit the sail. We. Are going to have to take a closer look in the morning - best case scenario is that we can fix it relatively easily ,and continue with our planed itinerary, worse case scenario is that the mast will need to come off the boat to fix the problem so we are looking at plans 'B' and 'C' in that eventuality - more tomorrow when we get to the bottom of the problem...

Finally - we ate in the local restaurant and on returning to the boat, Will was congratulated onion his mast climbing prowess - it was the subject of a few photo ops ( from the charter boats) and interesting spectator sport (from the live-aboards and permanent berth holders). I realised that we could have a nice money earner - to replace Victorian chimney climbers with mast climbers. The key sign-off was that Will lead the grand 'switch-on' light ceremony. I can confirm that, after 2 years of darkness, we now have an extremely bright (and efficient) LED deck light.