Day 22: 05/07/17 Last day in Rouen

An early-ish start in an attempt to get the masts wrapped before it got too hot meant a packed breakfast and some boatschool at the boatyard. I downloaded Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for AJ on my kindle and he is speeding through it, and Esmé is pretty independent when it comes to getting on with her maths so I went to help Patrick wrap the plastic round the mast. To our disappointment when we unrolled the remaining plastic we had shared buying with Paul, we discovered he must have used more than he thought, or the roll wasn't quite as long as we thought. We were about 2m short for the main mast with none left for the Mizzen. We decided to wrap as much of the main as we could and then ask Paul for a lift back to Brico Depot so we could get some more. All the time it was getting hotter!

I came back to the boat with the kids and dealt with the arguments about continuing with school work. We were all very hot and we're only on day 3 of ramping up the school work. I'm sure we shall find a good balance eventually but it's a little trying at the moment. One of the benefits of boatschool though is that there is unlimited (to a certain extent) time to finish a piece of work so if English isn't finished by our normal lunchtime, we can just delay lunch or even continue working on it after lunch. Eventually the kids realised this and got on with their work as they were starting to get hungry!

After lunch we went back to the boatyard and found that the mast had been moved into the shade... result! We quickly finished wrapping it and moved it into the shed before collecting the mizzen and wrapping that with the booms of both masts.

Patrick and AJ went back to Laurin to get some supplies to mark the masts with our contact details while Esmé and I settled up with Christoph. He very kindly only charged us for 1 hour of crane use although I'm sure we were a little longer. He also did us a little deal on the mast storage as we had 2. He's been so helpful and pleasant we were sad to say goodbye. I had spoken to Rainer Petras at masttransport earlier and he will collect our masts in a couple of weeks and transport them to Port Napoleon at the end of the Rhone where we will collect them in a couple of months.

Once back on the boat I had a short rest before heading out in the heat to do some shopping so we could be on our way in the morning. We're currently booked into Paris Arsenal Marina from 12th to 16th July (might drop back a day) and Rouen although a lovely city, is not a great marina for kids so we are keen to get going. I paid up at the marina office and checked we can get Diesel in the morning.

On my return from shopping Patrick came up to meet me saying that the kids were on Growling Tiger with Annabel, he'd brought my shower stuff so I swapped him for the shopping bags so I could go and cool down. Another late tea and late night as it's so hot, but the kids are getting tired! No maths for AJ tonight, he just wanted his bunk! So tomorrow heading towards Poses, on the move again:-)