We were in Carrickfergus for two nights and we were determined to make the best use of our stay, so one on the things on our list of jobs to do was repair the anchor locker. The piece of wood under the bow roller was rotten causing the anchor roller to wobble. We decided that we would sure up the anchor roller by removing the rotten wood and replacing it with a piece of planking that we had left over from the making the fender step. As with all boat jobs there was a lot of work that had to be done, just to get to the rotten wood, so we:-

• Removed the anchor - Beverley joked that it is very hard to do a bowline when people are watching, which is why I did a round turn and two half hitches. That way Beverley had a way of removing the anchor from Salty Lass safely
• Removed the chain - Seeing as we were going to repair the section under the anchor roller and we had to remove the anchor, it seemed sensible to remove all the chain out of the locker
• Cleaned the securing hole - In our anchor we had a securing mechanism which a pin goes through a hole in the anchor which secures the anchor to the boat. As the hole in the anchor was never treated properly, every year we have to clean out the hole, then treat it with cold galvanising spray. The spray protects the anchor to some extent, but it is an item that gets bashed on a regular basis, which is why we have to treat the hole every year
• Cleaned the anchor chain - Although we spray water into the anchor locker on a regular basis, it can never get your chain as clean as when you remove your chain and give it a good cleaning. So we sprayed the anchor chain with clean water and gave it a good scrub with a boat brush
• Galvanised the chain - After the chain was dry we used cold galvanising spray to spray the chain. This will act as an anode and protect the chain. It will also help when we are putting chain down as we did not spray the 10m and 5m areas so it will be very easy to see where they are.
• Repair the anchor roller - It was the wood under the anchor roller that was rotten, so Beverley used an old cornflakes box to create a template of the piece of wood that she needed, then it was just a case of fitting it. For which she needed wobbly bits and a socket out of a set of sockets that we hardly use, but she wanted one today, so we were quite happy with that.

While Beverley had been fixing the anchor roller, I was shopping. My first shop was around Tesco for all the things that were cheaper than Sainsbury's. Then it was Sainsbury's for the rest of the shopping. Once I had bought all the stuff I needed, I removed all the labels, marked them up so we knew what they were, then put them down in the bilge. After we had such a busy day, the only thing that I wanted to do was have a bath.

Sailing to Ballyholme Bay

The next day, Beverley did some video editing while the weather raged outside in the lough. We had hoped for an evening lull, but we had no such luck, so we had to leave Carrickfergus with fairly bouncy conditions and incredibly cold conditions. We had an appointment for the boat to be lifted the very next day and we wanted to be as close to where we were being lifted out as we could. We eventually sailed all the way across to Ballyholme and we anchored in the dark. On the way over, I had a major wobble, but I let it wash over me, so that it was done. It's crazy the way it works, but sometimes you have to release your emotions, which is what I did