Adrienne awakes, I have been up for a couple of hours, it is about twenty to seven - but I am not too sure what day it is, here in Bahia de Caraquez Ecuador, South America.

The land seen from the cockpit of our anchored steel yacht Bluebottle has the look of a tawny raggedy old lion's pelt, dusty dry and patchy; it lies stretched out between a bright grey sky and bright grey water. The street lights are still on like toy lights on a toy train set. Buses move slowly on the malecon. Tinking sounds from the bridge they are building, purr of an outboard engine of a panga, slop and gurgle of the boats at anchor, a HOY! from a man's voice from the bridge. A faraway rooster. The boat rocks gently.

Work goes on all night on the bridge. They have barges, with big red cranes and two tall pipes which they let drop when they want to work and which drop into the mud pinning them for a while - while they hammer in yet another steel pipe, later to be pumped free of mud and filled with concrete and have steel bars and concrete shaped into beams to bear the load of the roadway.

Smoke stretches lazily upwards and to the right, seen against the lion's fur. Can fur be green? The foliage seems to be overlaid with veils of dust, the natural forms of the hills become a lion couchant. The forms of masts - masts of yachts, radio masts onshore, all stretching straight up - are like illusions, quite unnatural, and the birds that fly by me here have no interest in these interruptions to their air-space; flying singly or in loose formation, coming towards and over me in a line as straight as a spine, flapping wings like vertebrae, or perhaps stitching their way across the fabric of the soft grey sky. Some birds lazily float like scraps of burnt paper above a bonfire, wings straight out, riding the up draught.

A loud crash of dropped metal from the workmen on the part-finished bridge, then a POP! Like a firecracker, distant voices, murmur of cars along the shore, time passing quietly, it is high tide and the boats will swing soon, to align with the ebb. A light breeze. The air is cool. Sounds now of Adrienne moving about below, will she put the kettle on? One of my favorite things is to light our little gas stove in the morning and settle a kettle of water on it, prepare the mugs and the tea bags, and wait. There IS nothing quite like "messing around in boats" and I found out years ago that I loved to go below while my little yacht sailed and make a cup of tea, what luxury I thought, after dinghy sailing, wet and windy, often cold and shivering.

Little comforts. Blapping farting sound of a diesel truck passing along the malecon. A bird's call. A fish lops itself back in the water - a small jump for the fish, a large jump for mankind, for me at least. What IS small? What IS large? The slack tide has arrived and the breeze is pushing the boats around. I put out a second anchor seven days ago, with a rope rode. (Rode is the anchor line.) Every day I woke up to find the rope had wrapped itself another turn around the principal anchor's chain. Five days, five turns! This was intolerable! In it came - the second anchor - before we had thirty wraps for thirty days! No point.

Everything is seen in terms of its purpose. Every purpose in terms of what I think I am. Simply, my self-concept determines how I see the world.

Today I think I don't know what I am and I don't know what any of this means. But I like it!

The blue cone, seen as a blue triangle of the roof of the bell tower of the Catholic church sticks up against the sky, just beyond the tree line. And the chalky blue roof, very like the blue roof of the Greek church back home was, sits amid the jumble of roofs and buildings. Some old windowless shacks are notched into the hill, decrepit, crumbling, some have washing hung out, a sure sign of habitation and roosters seem to crow from that direction, but no people are ever spotted moving around these houses.

A cup of tea is put in my hand - thank you Adrienne. And now I hear her warm chuckle, her deep laugh as she reads from her book "Running With Scissors" about some very funny people, people who could, conceivably, live in those home-made, put-up, run-down homes on the hill. Carlos will be here soon, to dive in the opaque water to clean the propeller, "limiar el propulsor, por favor?" my terrible Spanish, asked him yesterday, and he said Si, manana, neuve o'clock, making a wristwatch out of the hairs on his wrist. And then we will move anchor, on the strongest part of the ebb tide, so I can see all the anchor chains out straight. Anchoring is one of the hard bits of sailing, you must guess where all the other boats anchors are, as you place your 18 ton 50 foot lump of boat in the right position among the close anchored boats.

We tried yesterday to dive on the prop, the water was too murky and we picked a bad time because the current was too strong. We ended up cleaning the starboard topside of the black smears the dinghy had put on the white paint. This was the result of the dinghy makers putting a black rubber strip around the side, which left a mark. So - a couple of days work with the sewing machine and hand-stitching it in place - and we have a cover, called a thong, to stop the dinghy graffitiing the ship. Little things, but what IS little?

Now Carlos is here! This is big stuff! Diving! He comes in a panga, white, blue on the inside, like the church. Carlos is always happy. He gets his tools ready - a brush, a scraper, a scourer, steel wool, he tucks these inside the chest of his wetsuit. They bulge like boobs, and I mime this, he sees me and mimes the shimmy of a busty woman. We grin. He puts on yellow flippers and red gloves; his tank is grey like the sky. He jumps overboard, and breathes through the hose, dives then starts scraping, water swirling from his flippers. Just cleaning the prop today, on Monday - Luni - manana manana manana he will do Todos, or total, the whole boat's bottom. Now he is finished! I hand him a five dollar bill, we confirm Monday and he is gone. The boats are swinging now. It is really slack water.