After the previous night’s festivities, I took the opportunity to stay in bed a little bit longer until my head cleared. The weather was still overcast and rainy, so I took the opportunity to catch up on some reading.

The Port suffered some bad news today with the death of one of the live-aboard owners. Huw had been sick with cancer for some time, and today his heart gave up. Local paramedics tried frantically to revive him to no avail. A death in port is a strange event; we only knew Huw and Jane by sight, but the port is such a close-knit community that all the regulars in port are feeling Jane’s pain. Luckily, she has quite a few close friends in port to help her through this time.

During the afternoon, I received a text from SFR saying that I had used up my entire 4GB monthly data allowance in the four days I have been in France!!  I find this hard to believe, as the only data intensive activity I have undertaken was watching the AFL game yesterday. From last year’s experience, this should have taken up about 1GB of data, so I have no idea where the other 3GB went to. I will go up to the SFR office after they re-open after Bastille Day on Monday to see if I can find out how the data allowance was used up (I later found out that the resolution of the footy game stream was set at high-res, which is extremely data hungry; I should have reset it to medium-res, as it was last year when it only used 1GB per game).

Given that I had no data allowance on my phone, I went over to the Capitainerie to get the password for the port wifi so that I could watch the British Speedway Grand Prix from Millennium Park Cardiff that evening. While I was over there, Iain asked if I would like to see the catamaran that he had brought to my attention over winter. It is an ex-hire boat owned by an old gentleman who lives over the garages just near the Capitainerie. While his wife was seriously ill at the time, he was happy to show Iain and myself the boat. It is a small catamaran (just 2.5m long by 1.6 m wide), but could be ideal for our purposes as a dual dinghy/sailing boat, since it will probably fit on the cabin roof above the dog-box, replacing the fly-tent that Nico put over the dog-box over winter. The boat comes with all fittings (masts, two sails, seating board, two paddles and two life-vests), and is in reasonably good condition. Subject to some final measurements to ensure it will fit on the cabin roof and over the dog-box, and still allow adequate forward vision when cruising, I think we’ll buy it to provide a unique dinghy for getting to and from shore when anchored mid-stream, for exploring small side waters, for doing maintenance around the sides of the barge, and for having a bit of fun on the Tarn and the Lot (if we get back over there). Now we’ll just have to work out a system for getting it on and off the barge easily!

For the Cardiff SGP in the evening, the streaming reception was not great, as it had to be re-routed via Spain to overcome local blackout restrictions, but I managed to watch bits and pieces until the transmission cut out just before the Final race. Australian Darcy Ward took out third place in the Final, behind American Greg Hancock and Brit Tai Woffinden.