It’s been a regulation Saturday here in Nelson Marina. 

• Get up.
• Drink tea. Drink more tea. 
• Cycle to my hill.
• Walk up hill in a sprightly fashion. Morning is good for this as it’s still pretty cool.
• Cycle to market and buy freshies for the week. Summer is here so plums, cherries, apricots, strawberries, raspberries are all crying buy me, buy me.  I’m delicious. They have a point. 
• Continue with sewing project. (Dave is rebuilding the hatch garage as we have had a leak.)
• Feel disappointed and frustrated with my level of sewing incompetence.
• Forgo tennis as I want to finish my project.
• Do finish. It’s a 6/10. Much effort but glitches, errors and imperfections abound.
• Head out together for an evening off road cycle ride. Much more fun than sewing.
• Come back and have to move the boat as the marina have erred in the berth they have given us. We decided to move this evening rather than leave it till tomorrow morning.
• Dave cooked veggie stir fry and we drank a couple of the free beers a fellow cruiser gave us (unnecessarily) in return for us lending him our car.
• It’s now 9.55pm and the day is almost complete. 

We have done a little day sailing recently and have decided the bottom end of Tasman Bay collects square waves. 

We’d committed to meeting some friends on New Years Eve up in the Sounds about 30 miles away from Nelson. It was one of the worst sails ever. The wind was maybe 20 -25 knots but the square waves lined themselves up at 4 to 5 second intervals with a vicious metronomic evil streak. We very nearly turned back but having Grace to live on when we arrived was a big incentive. I felt grim, green and ghastly. Far worse than any recent sailing ‘icky memories. 

I know the UK has been drowning recently and now it’s proper chilly. Summer has definitely arrived here in NZ. (Slight gloat). We went to the beach last night and it’s felt ‘reet summer-y’. A couple of bands were playing in the park, folk were still in the sea, the pub garden was full and I very happy to ride my bike there.

Some **** nicked my back wheel this week. We found a discarded wheel with a bald tyre and a flat tyre in bush a few hundred yards away. Reckon the perpetrator decided my wheel looked better than theirs and purloined it. Their wheel (which turns out is a better wheel than my original) fits okay. It’s a little bigger than mine so I have a knock off chopper now. Cost me a few dollars for a new inner tube and tyre and a bunch of irritation but it’s good to have wheels again. 

I am now on the look out for a bike with my old wheel on it. Mis Marple is on the case.