Day 1 of the Rally and what an inauspicious start! It was raining quite hard and the forecast was for rain almost the whole day. Fortunately, it was far better for the coming days and moreover, the Rally proper started in the evening with a currywurst (sausage with a curry sauce) and fries in the pub in the harbour, so even if it was still raining it wouldn't matter.

That day then we did very little apart from venture back into town in the rain, which was torrential at times, for some more supplies and then back to the damp boat. Thankfully, we’d put the cockpit cover up and so we could divest ourselves of our wet gear in the cockpit, leaving the interior of the boat nice and dry.

At 15:30, Andy & Pauline Smith from Odile, with Andy’s sister Catherine & husband Tim Reynard came on board for Julie’s lemon drizzle cake and a chat. Now we know that the Smiths are good company and it was a great pleasure to see that it runs in the family, we very much enjoyed the time that we spent in the company of Catherine & Tim, who would sadly be leaving us on the Sunday. As the afternoon progressed, I was periodically logging into my mail as today was the day that, at last, the completion of the sale of our house was due to happen. Sadly, by the time it was sausage-time, there was no news so we went to the pub, my thoughts perpetually returning to the computer on board and what news it might contain.

Oh Joy!! Later that evening we got the news that we had been waiting for, our house is no longer ours. We’d had 18 good years there, have lots and lots of fond memories but having said that, we had made the decision to sell 4.5 years ago and at last, it is done. We are grateful to Chris Oakes of Huntsmere Developments, for his faith in the project and for his ever-willingness to communicate the progression or otherwise of the sale to us. Without his preparedness to do this, I’m sure I would be quite bald with pulling my hair out as the phrase 'responsive solicitor’ is an oxymoron! Anyway, we were invited to Odile and I came with bottles of champagne to celebrate, to be joined by Derek & Jean Lumb who kindly supplied whisky and port and finally Janet & Horst & Peter. It was, as you might expect, a jolly occasion and by the time we got to bed, we were most definitely in a frame of mind to enjoy the Rally!