Wed 15 Aug

The first order of business (after a latte and cornetti in our favourite coffee place) was a shopping run. Now that we’re in the swing of things we usually buy more or less the same stuff, and the question becomes: Where do we spend the least amount of money? We’ve developed a quick benchmark to scope out the prices in the supermarkets here – the price of a bottle of water is usually a pretty good indicator of the general priciness of a shop. We found a shop with reasonable price-to-water ratio so went in. Drifting through the isles you can always spot the fellow sailors – who else drags a foldable shopping trolly around a super market? Just as we had packed everything away and were ready to make our way back to the boat, the skies opened and rain started pouring down. We haven’t seen proper rain in a couple of months, so it was actually kinda nice.

Back on the boat we packed everything away and continued on our savvy navvy todo list. Just as Camilla stuck her head out to see what the weather was doing, three very official looking men from the “Guardia Financia” approached the boat and asked for our papers. In my head the finance police always looked like accountants in uniform, not these guys though: buff, uniform, guns holstered. Their boat was moored a bit further down the peer, with a machine gun mounted on the bow. We gave them our papers, passports and everything and they disappeared into their boat – slightly concerning. When they came back they noticed with a very stern look on their faces that our insurance papers were old. We explained that we don’t have the current papers printed, but that we have a PDF file with the current papers and that we would send it to them via email. As it turns out, the electronic papers that we had were also expired. We’ve paid our insurance but never actually got the updated papers. Trying to get a hold of the Spanish office of our insurer proved useless – there’s a fiesta today so everybody is off work. Even the “emergency” number that is supposed to be available 24/7 ended up with a German woman speaking Spanish. She couldn’t help but say “Oh shiiiiiit, what are you going to do?” when we explained our predicament. Luckily I managed to find the payment confirmation, and after a bit of smooth talking to the police guys they gave back our papers under the premise that we send them new papers tomorrow morning. Let’s see if we can get a hold of our insurer tomorrow! It’s going to be an exciting day tomorrow, as we also expect the delivery of the paddle board to the harbour office, with the harbour officers not knowing anything about this delivery … we’ll see how that one plays out!

This afternoons exciting activity – defrosting the fridge!