We’re back at Umag after a rushed 48 hours – the camper and trailer are now safely parked in our warehouse in France. Our trip home was a bit eventful as we discovered that we had a power cut at our warehouse while we’d been away and the power was still off …. unfortunately we had two large commercial walk-in freezers full of bacon and sausages, which we import each season for the English breakfast we provide in our ski chalets. Everything had defrosted and the whole warehouse stank to high heaven. We had no time to sort the problem out as it would take days to dispose of everything and clean up the mess – so we had no choice but to turn the power back on and freeze it all again. It will have to wait until we get back after the summer ….. grrrrr.
We’re now preparing to untie from the place which has been home for what seems like an eternity! It’s been months of work – and although we have found our favourite places in the neighbourhood, including the Villa Punta Restaurant which serves the best steak in town! We’ve made some friends here and in some ways we’ll miss it 
– but we really can’t wait to get out on the water.
Before we can leave, we need to get the boat straight and clean it inside and out. We also need to hoist the dinghy in the davits … which proves to be a bit of an issue as it’s been laying in the water for a few weeks without any anti-fouling. The bottom is pretty bad … but we’re not sure how we can clean it! The only option is to dive in the water (marina water …. yuk!) with the jet-wash and clean it from underneath. Without thinking, I dived in the water from the side of the boat and managed eventually to get the dinghy clean …. my “without thinking” was that I hadn’t considered how I was going to get back out of the water again! The marina does not have any safety ladders (not good!) and so there was no way of climbing out onto the quayside – the dilemma gave us the opportunity to try out the “emergency ladder” which is provided with the boat … a small collapsible rope ladder that is stowed in a small hole on the transom. Easy, we thought! Those ladders are impossible to use and no matter how hard I tried I could not climb aboard with it – as soon as you put your foot on the bottom rung, it disappears under the boat and you simply can’t climb to the next rung.
Eventually with the help of ropes and winches, Ed managed to haul me back on board – which created a bit of a free cabaret for the marineros as parting gift 🙂
Finally we’re all ready to go – we pay our marina bill and say our goodbyes – tomorrow we are leaving.