Monday 7th December.
Rising at the crack of dawn as captain Ant wanted to be ‘underway’ early so he and Charlie could spend a whole day down in the engine room tinkering (about 9am – the previous nights fast food Spanish style was catching up) The sky clear blue but a fresh wind and the sea a little lumpy for the likes of some of the crew. 4 out of 5 managed breakfast on the journey back to Rota from Santa Maria. On arrival the two yachties wasted no time in getting their overalls on rolling up their sleeves and disappearing below deck to muffled grunts of excitement.
On the other hand Julia, Alec and Vivi set forth to Sanlucar de Barrameda (well we are now practically qualified tour guides) to show Julia where and what we’d been doing. Apart from a bowl of disgusting fish soup which the waitress assured us was the best thing ever, the day passed uneventfully and we returned to the boat at about 6pm to find the two yachties still tinkering and mutterings of ‘avast there’ and ‘ere she be’.
After supper Alec and Vivi returned to the town square and the nativity scene, to check on the baby Jesus. Mary has been looking pretty fed up for 3 days now and Alec is convinced he must be going to put in an appearance soon. Julia has bet Alec that Jesus won’t show up until the 25th December, how does she know that – woman’s intuition?? Well I’m not so sure she’s right this time.