Strutter

The GPS console display, estimating our time remaining to arrive in Piriapolis ("Piria´" to locals,) is reading about three hours.

We've finally arrived and park up behind Wolf's Santa Maria. It's now seven days later and I've been on the wagon for seven days. I suspect that'll be the longest I've been on the wagon for some years. To be honest, I didn't miss it at any point, not consciously at least. Nonetheless, the first beer is an absolute treat. I've also been without a shower for these seven days. The first shower is a well plumbed, well powered delight.

We're in Piria' because it has dry dock facilities. Pelagic will be put on sticks whilst some work is done, and for the duration of the off-season. The boatyard has about twenty-five boats on sticks now. These boats are anything up to seventy feet, maybe eighty, and probably up to thirty tonnes.

The Uruguayans lift the boats out of the water and set them down with the keel on a couple of sleepers and with struts, every metre and a half or so down the length of the port and starboard. The struts look like no more than a random selection of unwanted tree trunks. At the top and bottom of the struts, an equally random assortment of wooden wedges are hammered in, to match the angle between the strut and to the boat surface or ground. There´s no uniform diameter to the trunks. I can wrap both hands, touching, around some. Some have cracks down their length. Some have bark peeling off. Others have the stumps of branches that have been snapped rather than sawed off. Most have bent rusty nails protruding, left and right. I´m sure it´s fine, though. It looks nice. Well... it looks rustic. 

Photo: kiriwina.com

In the evening we're joined by Roxanna, a sailor and a good friend of the entire high latitude sailing crowd. Our restaurant meal  is almost exclusively meat, and in no small measure. With my new found appetite, I wonder how much I could eat. Looking at Piria' is not all that much cheaper than I'd reckon in London, so I won´t find out tonight.