We have some jobs to do to prepare for the Atlantic crossing of course. Apart from the technical stuff, a big thing is planning the provisioning.  We have gone into tropical mode as advised in our books, washing all fruit and veg on deck in (very) dilute disinfectant to avoid carrying in any beasties, it seems to be de riguer to have fruit and veg in a hanging net, I’ll probably make another before we go, and discarding as much cardboard and packaging as possible to avoid carrying cockroach eggs aboard and of course to avoid excess rubbish to get rid of later.  Steve seemed to get a bit obsessed about cockroaches – baratas in Portuguese – and we had to hunt for “cockroach hotels” in the supermarket.

Stop press: fitting of the galley saltwater pump just completed.  So we can save fresh water by pre-rinsing the washing up, also washing out rubbish jars and tins etc.

Have been practising making bread aboard  but having difficulty finding the required Harina de Fuerza (strong flour), eventually got some at LIDL, seems as to be a common problem though as there are blogs about this on line.