10th July – Sunday
After a reasonably quiet night’s sleep, we awoke to a grey day and a weather forecast of strong winds. As we had now been on a mooring buoy for three nights, we decided it was time to head into a marina to top up our batteries and water tanks and use the shower and laundry facilities. Chris made a few phone calls to organise a berth for a couple of nights, without success. Eventually though, we were lucky enough to pick up an outside berth rafting up to another Bavaria at the Noss on Dart Marina recently taken over by the Premier Marinas group. We were met by one of the friendly marina team who took our lines and helped us raft up easily. Once we had finished getting our lines sorted and Chris had plugged us into the electricity supply, out came the kettle and toaster for some hot buttered toast and a nice cuppa. Hot showers followed which made us both feel human again. Carole then visited the laundry room and did some more reading while the machines did their stuff. Once back on board, Chris very kindly set up the TV so that we could watch Andy Murray win the men’s tennis singles at Wimbledon. Fantastic!!
Chris then rustled up some bacon, eggs, tomatoes and fried potatoes followed by buttered bread and marmalade and washed down with a really good cuppa. Carole then washed up while Chris pored over the charts for our next trip to Salcombe on Tuesday. The weather forecast had been for strong winds and they weren’t wrong. Being on the outside of the marina, we were being bounced around and by the time we settled down in our beds, we were experiencing a considerable amount of ‘slap’ from wind over tide, which was quite noisy. Chris seemed to get off to sleep OK, but Carole read well into the wee small hours until she was too tired to be bothered by the noise.
11th July – Monday
A long sleep was not to be had and by 6.30, Carole was wide awake, so after a cuppa and a biscuit, a trip was made to the marina’s facilities to do the last of the laundry and take a shower. Chris also had a shower, then visited the marina office to settle our account and pick up some gas.
Chris was busy sorting out some work related matters, so Carole ‘pottered’, doing a few cleaning chores. Chris then baked off some bread and heated up some soup for lunch. Once we had cleared away and Chris had filled up the water tanks, we chilled-out, watching a couple of episodes of a programme Chris had downloaded on his lap-top. We then prepared a salad for supper followed by an apple, lemon and raisin crumble and custard that Carole had cooked earlier. With the washing up done, we settled down for an early night to catch up on lost sleep. Fortunately, the wind had dropped almost completely and everywhere was peaceful, so we were optimistic for a good night’s sleep.