It's a lovely day!

I awoke this morning, my 60th birthday, to a beautiful clear blue, sunny sky, three weeks into our Kantara adventure.  We may venture out today, but we're now being a bit cautious since discovering that the engine has not been serviced for some time.  It's an eleven year-old engine with over 6,000 hours on the clock - not excessive for an engine of this quality - so we need to be sure that it's been professionally serviced before we entrust our cruising to it.  So we await the arrival of an engineer "some time in the next week or so" to do the work.  I look forward to being able to ply him with questions about an engine which is largely a mystery to me at the moment.

We now boast what must be the tallest 3G mast in the marina.  There is already on the roof of the boat the mounting for a Sky dish.  We have taken the dish down for the moment, but could always replace it or another service dish at a later date.  But the mounting looked just right for the task of housing a telescopic mast for our 3G antenna.  It did need some modification, though, so we drove around to a boat-builder's yard, where a young man cut and welded the housing, to produce exactly what we needed, charging us a mere £2 "to cover the electricity".  A trip to a caravan accessories shop resulted in the purchase of a telescopic mast - extending to over three metres if we wish - and then back to the boat to mount it.  The mounting unit needs sanding and a couple of coats of paint, but the antenna is now held aloft to grab our 3G signal from the air!

Many thanks to Bob Blues for recommending the kit we are now using for our Internet connection.