We were greeted this morning by a mixture of sun and clouds, so went up to the market to show Theresa a typical Saturday morning in Moissac. Found a stall that sold handmade cotton bedspreads, of just the type we were thinking about for the house. So we bought three, in shades of gold/brown, blue/green and mauve/red. We were hoping to get a fourth one in green/brown, but she had sold that one the previous week. We will need to keep an eye out for something similar. Then up to the Abbey Square to enjoy a coffee outside in glorious sunshine.

In the early afternoon as we were getting ready to head to Bordeaux for concerts by Andy Narell (one of the best steel pan players in the world) and the Bordeaux Symphony Orchestra, I heard a shout from Rita downstairs telling me to come and look at something. She opened the trap-door in the galley to show our “wine cellar” filling with a water and oil mixture! We had noticed some oil on the steel hull the previous week, but it wasn’t very much, so we didn’t worry about it too much. But is looked a lot worse when it was mixed with an inch or so of water covering the floor of the hull.

We had no idea of where either the water or the oil had come from, so I went over to ask for some advice from Iain. Unfortunately, it was Saturday and it was Iain’s day off, so he gave me a few clues and wished me good luck. I came back to the boat and followed his advice about looking at the fresh water tank in the bow, but it was dry where he told me to look, so we were none the wiser.

So I used our squeegee-mop to remove about a bucket full of water-oil mixture (mostly water with just enough oil to make it really messy), and then monitored conditions to see where the water was coming from. It seemed to be coming through a hull-level seepage hole in the baffle-plate to the forward section of the hull (where we could not unfortunately see).

I pulled up the carpet in the salon to see if there was another trap-door, but unfortunately there was none (sounds like a useful project to cut trap-doors above each section of the hull so that we can more easily check things out with futures leaks – of which I am sure there will be some).

We could not think of any way in which water was entering from outside the boat (and had absolutely no idea of where the oil was coming from), so we continually dried the water coming from the forward hull, and then ran some experiments by pouring lots of water (a bucket) down each drainage hole (shower, bathroom sink, kitchen sink) to see if there was a leak in any of the drainage pipes. Nothing was obvious from these tests. We then tried the hot and cold taps to each to see if there was a problem with any of the water supply inlets. Again nothing. By now we had reached decision-time for the trip to Bordeaux: delay any longer and we wouldn’t get there in time to queue for any tickets that might have become available through cancellations. So, since the water flow had reduced to a “trickle”, we decided to head off on the assumption that even if the cellar filled again, there wouldn’t be enough to cause any real safety issues. So off we headed to Bordeaux.

Luckily we had a good run, and arrived just before 6pm when the standby tickets would become available. We dropped Rita near where we thought the venue would be, then Theresa and I headed off to find the hotel which was a few kilometres away. Having got the TomTom GPS to work in the car on the way to Bordeaux, we let it guide us to the hotel. All was going well, until we got to the side-road that it told us to go down from the main-road to get to the hotel; but the side-road was blocked for some construction work. No worries, we’ll just go round the corner and come in from a different direction, except that around the corner there were no right-turns into that area. The GPS lady kept telling me (in French) to make a U-turn and try the original side-road from the other direction, but the main-road now carried “No U-turn” signs at all the openings. So we ended up going down the main-road by the river until we reached the intersection where we had turned to deliver Rita to the concert venue! So, there was nothing left to do but go round the “big-block” again, and try another way to get to the hotel from the main road. Luckily, while going round the block, we heard from Rita that she had been able to get 3 tickets, so at least our efforts would not be in vain. So round the block we went again, and this time I turned off before instructed to by the GPS and found the hotel very quickly. By now it was 6.30pm and the concert started at 7.00pm, and we were at least 2km away. We had seen that there were absolutely no parking spaces near the venue, so (after a very quick change of clothes) Theresa and I set out on foot in sprinkling rain for the concert venue. By good management, or good luck, we arrived at the venue at 6.59pm, much to the relief of Rita who had just been advised by the venue staff that she should really move into the concert venue NOW. So, in we went to find we had a choice of seats, including some behind the stage. This would put us directly above the orchestra, but more importantly for Rita and me, it would put us behind the pans of Andy Narell thus enabling us to see into the pans while he was playing (which the audience usually never sees). The concert was just fantastic, and fully justified the decision to come to Bordeaux, as can be seen and heard from the video snippet below.

After the concert, we went into a restaurant next door to the concert hall and grabbed some long overdue dinner. Then, even though it was lightly sprinkling when we came out of the restaurant, we decided to walk back to the hotel (unfortunately, the sprinkle turned to a drizzle on the way home, so we were slightly damp when we reached the hotel). About 100 metres from the hotel, I remembered the words that the hotel clerk had told me in his faltering English when I registered a few hours earlier “Remember this number on your registration form; you will need to key it into the keypad near the front-door if you are coming back after 8pm”. It was now 11pm, the registration form was safely in our room, and I hadn’t even looked at the number, let alone remembered it! To say that a somewhat damp and tired Rita was not impressed would be something of an under-statement, as she and Theresa huddled under the shelter near the front door. But earlier that evening, Theresa had keyed another number into a keypad near the parking area gate around the back of the hotel. Unfortunately, we couldn’t remember that number either. But I thought I’d go around and take a look, because something in the back of my mind was still saying that we were not going to be locked out in the rain all night (I am an optimist by nature!). When I got to the gate I saw that while one half was securely locked, the other half had just closed against the first half but not locked. I applied some pressure and found that the hydraulics in the closing mechanism were not all that strong and I was able to open it just enough to squeeze through. So far, so good. I then found the back door to the entry foyer that we had gone though earlier to get to the elevator to the 3rd floor and our room. Luckily, the back door was not locked from the inside (like the front door). So I just walked into the foyer, walked to the front door and opened it from the inside, much to the surprise of the girls who hadn’t seen me coming through the darkened foyer. I then just had to pretend that I knew what I was doing all the time. Up to the room, a quick shower to replace the one I missed before the concert, then off to bed. All in all, a very eventful but satisfying day. The Andy Narell concert made it all worthwhile.