Having received another non-committal response to my email to Singapore Airlines yesterday, I was left in a position where I had to make a decision based on incomplete data. Do I just hang around till the day of the flight, hoping to be able to get a seat, or do I pull the plug now and re-book for a future flight? Each option had it's pros and cons, so in the end I just tossed a coin, and it came down tails and said that I should bail out now. This was despite the fact that SingAir were saying on their website that the earliest flight that could be booked was late-March 2022. If I stayed that long, there would be little point going home and returning to France in May-June to get some cruising done next year. So really, I was thinking of staying in France till September 2022. Rita agreed that this was probably the most realistic option, given the continuing uncertainties about the Australian border closures, and we started to plan what we might do to make the most of our situation with our extended time over here. Staying on the boat all winter did not seem overly attractive, especially since we had our car in which we could escape, so we started thinking about some real winter in Switzerland over Christmas/New Year, and then maybe a trip south to Portugal in early 2022. Who knows? We decided to wait another week before making a final decision.

After our trip last week to Saline Royale with Phil and Kathy, Rita decided to go for a little visit with Sarah to the companion town of Salin le Bains, where the salt came from that was refined at Saline Royal. The prospect of the warm salt baths was also behind this decision. So she headed off in late morning, leaving Phil and myself to consider design options for re-affixing the bimini to the wheelhouse roof.