More patience needed

It's been more than two months since we're in Marina Lanzarote in Arrecife. And it looks like we're staying here for another few weeks. This past week the rules of lockdown loosened up a bit here, we are allowed for walk or run every morning or evening. We did it only once, on the first evening it was allowed. But we make a pretty long hike every time we go grocery shopping, and we don't have to go at specific times. 

My biggest success of the week was my visit at hair salon and to get my hair cut. Although it said on the sign it was unisex salon, there were only guys inside, but they agreed that if I only need cutting they can do it. And they had a free slot in 20 minutes. Normally one would need to make an appointment for days ahead, so I thought I was really lucky. And they did a good job and I'm quite glad that my hair is shorter, as the days are getting summery and warmer.

From tomorrow more shops and also restaurants (only terraces can be used and there are rules about distances between tables, disinfecting the tables etc) are opening and we're allowed to move through entire island. I think my goal for this phase is to get to a good pizzeria and have a nice meal. There is a huge debate here among cruisers in marina if we're allowed to go sailing around the island already, the most of translations and interpretations of the Spanish rules say we could, but the local police says we can't. One of the cruisers is particularly eager to go and is sailing out tomorrow, so we will see if he's allowed to sail to one of the islands anchorages or he'll be coming back to marina escorted by Guardia Civil.

Otherwise not much is happening here. It is getting warmer each week and the summer is definitely coming. Probably due to lots of rain that we had in April, many plants started to bloom. I think this is Crassula, we've always had some in our house as pot plants, but I've never seen it bloom before.

The mama cat is doing fine, her name is Flora now. Argentinian family, that adopted her, are taking good care of her and only her shaved belly reminds us of all the drama with babies and her surgery.

Argentinian family dog is now her best friend (the dog on the right), and she goes for a walk with him every day. She actually likes all the dogs. The white fluff ball in the middle is also a dog, he belongs to Swiss couple that adopted one of the baby cats. The baby is also doing fine.

Flora is quite young and wants to play all the time. The dog is also eager to play...

...but he's already 17 years old and can only run so much.

I'm glad this story has a happy ending.

We're also working on some boat projects. Captain repaired our grill...

...that is pretty old and falling apart. We tried to get the new one, but none of the shops have what we want.

So we're keeping the old one for now, we just replaced the cap of the burner...

...with a small stainless pan that we had. We already tested it and it works fine.

There is a French guy in marina that is repairing sails for people, so we asked him to make us some hatch covers. This will protect from the sun and keep the boat less warm and it can also prevent the rain from coming in through the slightly leaky hatches.

He also repaired our sprayhood that was leaking also. We applied some waterproofing stuff on it, but it didn't stop the leakage, now he put another layer of fabric over the top area and this should fix it. He also replaced both side "windows" that were cloudy and stained with new plastic. This is how sprayhood looked before...

...with cloudy plastic...

...that got brown and stained at places.

This is how it looks now - the top part is double fabric now...

...and the side windows are more see-through. He didn't have enough material to replace the middle part as well, but that part is still ok.

One of the things we did was replace the lid on inspection hatch on one of our diesel tanks. This one we converted from one of the water tanks to diesel already 8 years ago. Captain studied materials and all the specifications of the tank thoroughly, so we were sure we can do it, we also replaced the filling and breathing hoses, so they were diesel proof. But we forgot the seal on the inspection hatch lid, and after filling the tank with diesel before leaving Antigua in 2013, the seal got soaked with diesel, swell up and broke the lid. Before our return from Caribbean we then had to pump the diesel from the tank and repair  the lid. It was an improvisation, but it held through several years. Only last autumn, as we got our tanks full again in Gibraltar, we noticed, that the lid was leaking diesel again. After using up most of the diesel from that tank, it was time to do something about it. We tried to get new lid, one from the chandlery here in marina was almost the right size, but unfortunately just a little too big. We mailed the manufacturer, but got no answer (it is a French company and honestly I wasn't surprised that they didn't react to our mail in English, it was not the first time that it happened). So Captain studied materials once more and came up with a solution. This is the inspection hatch...

...these are the two parts of old lid - we joined them together with epoxy resin in 2013.

Now Captain made some additional plates that go on the bottom part of opening, sealed it off and put the lower part of the lid to tighten it up. And while the tank was empty, Captain cleaned it as well.

There are still lots of things we can do around the boat to pass the time.

When it's allowed we'll go sailing a bit, and we would still like to sail to Madeira, once the Portugal opens the borders and ports. If it doesn't happen soon, we will maybe sail to mainland Spain when it's possible and then see from there. We're trying not to be too impatient, because it doesn't really help. But I'm really looking forward to the pizza and a beer...