That’s what we’ve been doing since 29th April and it’s now 8 May 2014. This morning Yannis came to help with the sails and ropes. Then the electrician came to be paid for the work he’d done on the main board. And now the marina specialists, who were originally here to change the oil in Peperuka’s engine, but over an hour later they are still here – the boss, the actual work expert and the gopher, as Bob calls him.

       The impeller needed changing and was in pieces, the toilet pump was replaced making the process of emptying the bowl and filling again with sea water much easier on the muscles of the arms. And then they climbed into a bow locker to change some bolts there. In between I managed to have a chat in Hindi with the ‘gopher’ or engineer’s assistant who is from Bangladesh. I’d mentioned to Bob that the boy didn’t look Greek, he looked Indian. He is from Dacca, Bangladesh having left there four years ago to find work in Greece. It’s for the money he says, jobs are difficult to find in other parts of Europe so he’ll be here for a while.

       The boat is now messed up again. We have invited everyone to join us when they have time but I hope we’ll have tidied up by then.

       The excitement of the morning for everyone was a line of VIP Mercedes cars and 4x4s with huge, mean looking minders ranged along them. They waited for nearly an hour before a long, sleek black and white boat driven by uniformed Navy-type men brought four women, three with little dogs in their arms and a VIP man who all climbed aboard the cars and drove off. The sleek boat with three white-uniformed men left and returned in ten minutes bringing a teenage girl to the one car, and one bodyguard, that was left. I said to Bob, ‘She must have been the one who needed more sleep!’

       In the VIP cars that had waited for an hour was a family of a young couple and two little boys who we thought were going to the yacht that the others had come from but no they went away in the cars with the bodyguards (more of them than there were VIPs). It seems they were wealthy Greco-Russians whose large yacht was moored in the bay.