It was a beautiful day this morning, wall to wall sunshine, not a breath of wind

. 

Good thing because today we had decided to buy a pressure washer – to take back home!   Our old pressure washer broke down, gave out, ceased to exist, a couple of weeks before we left and we shopped around on the island to find a new one.  Hmmm, nothing under €250 in the spec we wanted. Then, low and behold, Lidl here in Diksmuide, had pressure washers on special this week for €89.99, even better spec than the ones in Faial!  The shop opens at 8.30 and we were determined to be there when it opened.  At 8.20 when we set off, although it was just 2C, in the bright sunshine it felt a whole lot warmer.  There just 6 pressure washers available so it’s a good thing we went early.  Mission accomplished we now had to work out how to get the great big box home on the carrier of a bicycle!  Ian managed to get it wedged in fairly securely and off we set with Ian driving with one hand and the other holding the box, and me following behind keeping a close watch in case it started to look precarious.  But we got it home all in one piece, no mishaps.

Then Ian went back to boat work, first coat of red anti-fouling on the underwater hull

Aha, a different view for a change - with such good weather they opened up the big entrance door to the shed.

Meanwhile I went off to find him a pair of gloves that fit comfortably enough so that he can work in them (Eureka, I found a pair of size 11 work gloves for just €1.85) and some food shopping. 

I got back to find that Ian has erected a scaffold walkway all around the boat so he can now sand and paint at a workable height.

And re-affixed the sign-writers tape to mark the waterline.

 Later  I got involved with the hand sanding of the curvy bits that a machine cannot reach.

This evening Ian is painting a coat of primer onto the hull

Doesn’t it look better?

At 9pm Klaas and Thijs were also still busy painting on the boat next to ours 

you see, Ian isn’t the only one that works ridiculous hours!