After a bit of a lazy breakfast AJ went out in search of his new friends from "No plans just options", coming back to ask me if he could go to the beach with the boys, which was fine as he took one of our new 2-way radios to keep in touch. After a while I decided to take a walk over to see Zoe and Guy while Patrick kept a very subdued Esmé company (she had fallen off her scooter the night before). What followed was a perfect, unplanned, lazy, sociable day on board "No plans just options". Eventually Patrick and Esmé appeared, I guess wondering what I was up to, at some point AJ and Cam returned, and then Lynita, Justin, Kynan and Leora joined the party. We all got to have a nosey at what life on a catamaran is like, the kids had a whale of a time jumping on the trampoline, and the adults had chance for a lovely long chat largely uninterrupted by small people. At some point we got peckish so Lynita and I nipped back to our boats to pick up nibbles while Zoe introduced kids to Vegemite sandwiches. And then we continued chatting until nearly tea time. What a perfect day!
Monday
School, lunch, relax, then we all went down to the meeting room for the afternoon craft session which was building Viking long ships out of cardboard. AJ wasn't too keen so Patrick went back to the boat with him while I helped Esmé for a while before leaving her in the care of Lynita while I walked into town to get some shopping. An early dinner then I abandoned Patrick and the kids in order to pick up the meeting room key ready for our low budget ladies night.
Earlier in the day I had asked reception where to get the key and they had advised me to get I from the security guys. I borrowed AJ's scooter as it was in the opposite direction from the meeting room and I was running late, carrying a rucksack full of bottles, pewter goblets and nibbles. The new security lady had very little English but luckily another Marina guy was there and understood from my hand gestures that I needed a key. He followed me in his van, all the way to the other end of the marina only to tell me he didn't have the key and I should talk to the office tomorrow.... Noooooo I have a bunch of ladies expecting a social evening tonight! Eventually, after phoning somebody, he asked me to wait 5 minutes. Another marina guy arrived with a key... result! He let me into the room, turned all the lights on and just stood there. I asked what I should do with the key at the end of the evening and he said "no... you can't have my key. Speak to the office tomorrow". Turned the lights off and made for the door. Again I objected and eventually he phoned somebody else who obviously told him where the spare keys were in the office... and luckily he had office keys. Finally after half an hour I had a key for the room.
What followed was another lovely ladies evening, comparing cheap bottles of prosecco as well as cruising plans for the coming year. We eventually finished a short while after midnight with grave concerns for our ability to function the following morning!
Tuesday
Too tired (hungover?) to run so a lazy start to the day. A little school followed by a family trip to the market, and then a little more school on our return. Lunch, Panto rehearsals and then over to Yves Christian for dinner. Yves is an amazing 66 year old Gaff Ketch owned by Lotty and Sacha. It is possibly the only boat we have come across on our travels that Patrick is truly jealous of. He loves classic wooden boats and thinks fondly back to the days where we owned and raced our Stella "Vreny" on the East Coast, however when we decided we needed a bigger boat for our growing family we took what we felt was a more sensible option of buying a GRP boat which would need far less maintenance.
Lotty treated us to a fantastic roast complete with Yorkshire puddings which the kids loved. Then a movie was put on for the kids while us adults chatted in the pilot house. A beautiful evening with beautiful friends!
Wednesday
This week AJ has been working on long division. It was quite tricky and he found it hard concentrating on me teaching him via our usual "Maths no Problem" text book so I enlisted the help of Math Antics and a whiteboard for a change of approach. I'm really impressed with AJ's perseverance this week and I have to say, we have just about cracked it. Just one more section to complete before the chapter review. We've also been encouraging him to photograph his lego creations. This one will be used for a Green Blue Peter badge application (he was somewhat jealous of Esme's blue badge and this has spurred him into action). The model is of a special plane which collects spilled oil polluting the oceans and returns it to land where it is recycled into fuel to power land based vehicles. The green Blue Peter Badge requires him to write a 50 word application letter explaining his environmentally friendly efforts. Once school was over I was just about to make lunch when Gabby, our Italian boat neighbour came past asking if AJ and Esmé would like to join her and Lynita taking their kids kite flying. I quickly grabbed their kite and thrust some fruit into their hands and they were off, leaving Patrick and I to a nice quiet lunch of Tom Yum soup. On their return our quiet time continued as they both went to watch Coco at the weekly kids movie afternoon. Finally retrieved them from Mrs Chippy just in time for a late tea before trying to get an early night.After school we had Lynita and crew round for lunch. After being introduced to the idea of breaded "eggplant" by the young Australian boys we met in Port Napoleon, we have been enjoying these every once in a while with baked beans as an accompaniment. As Lynita is vegetarian I was keen to introduce her to them. It was a horrible wet and rainy day, which made the hot, crispy fried aubergine taste particularly good. We all had a lovely afternoon with the kids spending time after lunch investigating our magnetic toys.
Friday
Another wet day, with thunder and lightning too, so after school we were quite relaxed about the kids having an electronics afternoon while we did some planning. Once Mum and Dad have visited next month we are going to try to get to Malta for a week or so, as later in the year it gets extremely expensive. While conversations with Guy from "No Plans Just Options" were reasonably fresh in our mind we wanted to map out a rough plan of where we wanted to go, and get an idea of how long we might like to stay.
It was nice to do a little planning as I think we are all starting to get itchy feet, however this is dampened a little by the realisation that although we are keen to continue with the next part of our adventure, it will mean saying goodbye to the amazing friends we have met this winter.
The usual Friday evening kids social on Vesna was cancelled as Jack is away back in Oz, the weather was hideous, and Declan had had some dental work and really wanted a quiet night. In order to offset the kids disappointment I suggested a family pizza and movie night, taking the opportunity to show AJ the trailer for Percy Jackson and the lightning thief. I've been trying to get AJ into this series of books for a while now as he really likes Greek Mythology and I thought it would be a good thing to read before heading to Greece. Up until no he has resisted however he was pretty excited at the trailer so we downloaded the movie for the evening's viewing. It was a lovely family evening and I am now hopeful that he will read other books in the series. (There is one more movie and I told him in no uncertain terms he needs to read the next book before we watch it!).
Saturday
An early morning run, the first this week as the weather was horrible on Thursday. Followed by breakfast and then a long trek down to the MD supermarket in search of more bacon, and a birthday present for Doug, while Patrick took advantage of a dry sunny day to do some laundry. Esmé decided to come with me on her scooter so we had a lovely time walking along the seafront in the sun. Shopping done we started our return slog now laden down with shopping, and it started to rain. As soon as we had crossed the road onto the seafront I let Esmé scoot ahead so she could get out of the rain quickly, and eventually Patrick came to meet me to help me carry as my legs were like lead and I was questioning the sanity of a 3 mile round trip to the furthest supermarket just an hour or so after my first run in a week. On the way back I saw locals on the beach obviously on a mass litter pick. I was a bit disappointed that we hadn't known about this as it would have been a good thing to get involved with as the sailing community. We are all becoming increasingly aware of the issues surrounding plastic pollution in our oceans, and bit by bit people seem to be shunning single use plastics in favour of carrying water bottles, using stainless steel straws, and taking reusable bags shopping with them. It did cross my mind that in order to collect plastic of the beach, the easiest method of containing this litter was in a plastic bag. Perhaps they were biodegradable, but I guess we've still got a long way to go before we take reusable bags to collect litter!
The afternoon passed in a prosecco fuelled haze, watching the kids attack the now traditional Manzano Piñata, and eating crisps and cake.
Carrying on the theme of avoiding plastic littering our seas we seemed to be constantly fishing balloons or other items blown into the marina. I'd like to think we are pretty good at this but I think we can all improve our mindset with regards to this.
However as 4pm loomed I was brought back to the reality that I had invited Lotty and Sacha over for tea at 5pm so Patrick and I headed back to the boat to tidy up and prepare a Thai green curry. Yet more prosecco and a good night was had by all!
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