Mud, mud, glorious mud

Essex mud, marvelous stuff. Well, amazing anyway. It's soft, it's sticky, it's friendly and forgiving when you hit it.

It also gets everywhere! Yesterday, I quickly hosed the worst of it off the cockpit, after breakfast today it was time for a more serious scrub and hose down from stem to stern

Some hard work later and pretty well all the evidence of Erbas's adventures last week was gone. Even the scrapes on the hull mostly turned out to be good old sticky Essex mud

After those labours I needed a lie down! No seriously, I've got a bug, the old sore throat, chesty cough sort of thing, which is leaving me with even less energy than usual.

Bit of a nap later and it was back to work this time with the bucket and sponge removing the last gallon or so of water from the bilges that the pumps can't lift.

Meanwhile, we entertained visitors, well one visitor anyway, when Chris of Tomahawk stopped by for coffee. How much nicer to be able to invite guests on board and sit and chat on comfort!

Late afternoon, we hoped in the car and drove around to the yacht station. After checking that our tender is ok (it is) we walked down the riverbank and took some photos of "our" mooring in its new mud berth location! (Photos below)

She got frighteningly close to the rocks and hard stuff along the edge of the sea wall! No doubt the buoy, chain and sinker will be retrieved and reset in due course but I doubt if Erbas will be back on it.

After nipping into the yard to stare in dismay at the damage done to our friend Lisa's boat when it fell over, we repaired back on board in the rising wind and falling temperature - it's been blowing a yachtsmans' gale all day. Didn't stop the racing boys going out around lunchtime though.

Dinner was home made beef stew and dumplings after which I dozed of again cunningly leaving Jane to do the washing up. No doubt I'll pay for that later! It started raining so we abandoned any thoughts of walking down to the pub for a drink and did some damage to the rum supply instead

Tomorrow, it's pack up and go home after breakfast as work rears its ugly head again