Neighbours

We were having lunch in deck when a man approached and kindly offered us 4 passion fruit.
Christian and his wife Agnes live on a nearby yacht, with the deck piled high with boxes, that turned out to be beehives. They had just returned from their hives ashore, and Christian had a swollen eye from being stung.  One of their bees joined Tin Tin for a bit too.   We quickly established that we could buy some honey, and now have a large bottle of delicious aromatic honey with a skim of pollen on top as they do not use a centrifuge.

Opposite us is a large gleaming white yacht called Alumni from Guernsey sporting a discrete German flag on the cross trees.    The grey haired skipper keeps it immaculately clean and tidy and, always fascinated by other boats, I went over to admire.   It transpires that Hans and his wife Sylvia have been cruising for 8 years doing a circumnavigation and a half including a long period in Patagonia.  They used to have friends and family all the time, but no one wanted to join them for the long passages........  understandable!  They had their boat designed by Bill Dixon in Southampton, and built in aluminium in Germany. Everything run on hydraulic pumps it seems, so very easy to sail solo.  He offered to show me his walk-in engine room, but sadly I didn't have time then, and now they have headed home for 2 months.

Living alongside the dock for a week means that we get to meet interesting people and see new boats. At the end of the dock is the largest cruising catamaran, which was raced solo by a Frenchman...... and for cruising has now had 20 tonnes of ballast added so it doesn't spend the whole time up on one hull !