Not that the November blues caught up with us and the mood on board was bad, but the weather didn't make it easy for us to implement our intended plans. In the weather forecasts one low replaces the other and there is nothing to see of improvement. Thus it rains more or less every day and the individual dry phases are relatively small to work outside and make the painting of the antifouling almost impossible. Of course we could cover the whole boat with a plastic foil and thus create dry conditions, but the effort is too big for us and we prefer to wait for a better weather window. In the meantime, we are mainly occupied inside the boat. Gaby has rediscovered knitting for herself and now conjures up one colourful sock after the other. Only with the heel she has so her dear trouble, and if there one or other reader would have a good tip or instruction, Gaby would be certainly very grateful. When she's not knitting, she reads a lot, so her electronic reader has to be constantly recharged. It was only under strong protest that I was able to convince her to buy such a device during the preparation phase for our circumnavigation of the world. The security officer of Media Markt in Constance wanted to accompany us both out when I was able to convince her of the advantages of a Kindl. Today she hardly gives him up and reads one romance novel after the other. Sometimes I even think that she would rather go to bed with her Kindl than with me, but maybe it's just the weather. In the dry phases we walk a lot and I try to capture the whole thing in written and medial form for those who are interested.
Besides, we've been working on our anchor chain this week. The plastic clips sold by SVB don't really work. They fly away quite fast and get lost.
Alternatively you could glue them together, but we tried spray paint. It should be bright red, the Capitana said, and so I bought a spray can of pink paint. So we marked our chain at 5m, 10m, 20m, 30m, 40m and 50m and waited for the paint to dry. Fast drying was written on the can. I would have preferred the paint would not have dried so fast, but the adhesion would have been better. Unfortunately the paint could be thumped off the chain after drying, so there was no alternative. We have now attached cable ties to the individual positions, you hardly see them in the water, or not at all, but if the chain runs overboard, they are easy to discover. Until we come up with something better, let's leave it that way for now. Maybe we'll glue in the colourful plastic markings from the SVB after all. With these weather conditions Patagonia comes to my mind again and again, as we all know, the sun should not always shine there. The advantage in Patagonia is that there is always wind there. Here it is with the wind such a thing. Most often there is no wind here, or it is, if available, very gusty, which slows down the wind generator again and again. By the time it comes back to speed, the gust is already over again, which pushes our power supply to its limit. At least our self-sufficient one. At the moment we are hanging on to a shore power supply that covers our 220 V needs. Because we try to secure 12V need further on over alternative energies, thus solar energy and wind power. This is not quite easy with these light conditions as they currently prevail, not to mention wind power. 30W of power are not exactly tingling now and at this time of the year the day comes to an end faster, so the battery bank is not quite full.
As already mentioned above, we also take some long walks. There is no bad weather, there are only clothes that don't suit the weather. Whether this is the way along the canal to the next chandler, or looking at the sea and the wind blowing around your nose, we try to keep fit by moving and strengthen our immune system. Along the canal of Fiumicino there are numerous fish restaurants in all facets. It starts with the take away and ends with the finely laid table with white tablecloth and red rose in the vase. On the way to the sea we tried a take away and ordered fish & chips. Really a delicious thing. The restaurants are supplied with fresh fish by the fishermen. On the market, or with various fish dealers at the canal there are also freshly caught fish. This is a welcome change with the many pasta here in Italy.
Wednesday's movie day. On Wednesday, films in English with Italian subtitles will be screened in Fiumicino at the Parco Leonardo Cinema Centre. We haven't been able to watch a film so far and this week we made try again. Arrived at the box office, the title Zombieland didn't exactly inspire us. I remembered my teenage years when these films first came to the cinemas. My girlfriend at the time dragged me into one of those hams. Whether it was my girlfriend, who knows, but as far as I remember, the dialogue in this film was quite poor. The "Learn English easy and with fun" announced on the poster seemed a bit out of place to us and so we decided to do without it again and see what the next week would have to offer.
The next week we will write what we are going to do and whether the weather god will give us a good weather window to get on with our boat project. Until then Fair winds and keep your ears stiff.
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