I am turning into my mother every day, and with the expression I am wearing in this picture then I look just like her. This is my grumpy look, and the only saving grace is I do not show this face that often, but when it came to this project it was out in force.

Our contract at Bangor was due to expire at the end of March and we just had a lot of jobs to do to get Salty Lass ready so with 6 days left on our contract Beverley was outside sorting the Genoa car sheets, they had just gone green, so she remove them, making sure that she put a line in place so that she could easily put the line back later. Once she had removed the line, she put them in the wash, with a whole load of other lines like the Genoa sheets.

Meanwhile downstairs, I demonstrated how last weeks project got on, we are really pleased with it, not only have we removed the wobble that we had with the bottom step, but we have increased our engine access. I don't know about you but we think having good engine access is a good thing.

I also really got stuck in to repairing our spray hood cover, I had only been at the job two days and I was already regretting it, which is why I would recommend getting a professional to either make you a new spray hood or repair your old one.

With 5 days left on our contract, we were at last in a position to start putting the tools away and start tidying the boat, I have to tell you that there is a lot to do, but eventually the back cabin was looking good. The rest of Salty Lass needed a good cleaning, but the back cabin was done.

The day was sunny and I had a mix of machine sewing and hand sewing on the canopy, so I elected to do hand sewing, because that way I was outside.

While I did the hand sewing Beverly tightened up the guard rail and re-secured the side panels. This year she used cable ties for securing the side panel and amalgamating tape, for protecting the guard rail at the little section that went through the stanchions, so we will see how that does in the upcoming season.

We also had a taste of normality in that we were able to sit outside and have a bacon butty enjoying the sunshine. Later that day Beverley cleaned the dinghy and I went back to sewing.

On day three Beverley got into her wet suit and started cleaning the bottom of Salty Lass with a scrapper and a brush, when a boat is not moving it just gets messy with weed growth and slime. It takes her some time but eventually she got it done.

I explained one of my problems in that I was struggling to put the new bottom section on. Where the poppers go through the cloth there is also a layer of plastic in that area, to spread the load, well seing through plastic and four bits of cloth is really hard for a domestic sewing machine.

I was using a Gorilla double sided stick tape for the job and when it comes to sticking to canvas, it is pretty rubbish.

In other news, we have recieved some money via our Kofi account and we have used it to buy a back up disk and some chips for the cameras that we were given. It was at this point that Beverley decided to say what we produce our videos on which is a Dell Latitude E6430, running Kubuntu Linux LTS and KDE Plasma 5, while the videos are produced with KdeNlive 17.12.3. This is only interesting for the people who want to know, but because we are on Linux, KdeNlive is free, so no monthly costs there.

With two days to the contract expiring Beverley was out inspecting the sails and putting a little bit of PTFE lube on the slugs so that they could slide up the track easily. Meanwhile I was progressing downstairs quicker and the spray hood was at last taking shape. In fact I finished to bottom of the stray hood and progressed onto the middle window.

As a wee treat Beverley and I went out to Toms of Bangor and had a great meal, I love that they have a lot of gluten free options and the food is really yummy too. Other places that we would recommend in Bangor is the Bangla Indian restaurant and Bosun Bobs, Robert is so helpful and knowledgeable and that knowledge is really useful.

When we came back from Toms, we went shopping and I bought some washing powder which is "More concentrated = Use less", while Beverley read it as "More concentrated = Useless". Watching the penny drop as I understand what Beverley was saying is quite painful, but once we were back we had pudding and after dinner chocolates on Salty Lass.

On the day of our contract expiring we renamed our sewing machine Toyoda and Beverley said "Sew or no sew, there is no try" and I said I just want a bit more sew, I have to say naming the sewing machine really helped getting the job done because I found that I could really encourage the machine. The other things that were helping were PTFE spray on the foot of the sewing machine and talc on the plastic itself. I did manage to fit the last panel, so I was so happy.

We stayed that night and left Bangor on the 1st April

We were both really apprehensive because anything can happen when you embark on an adventure, and usually does.