Washing our thick duvet...

Life is not all exotic beaches and Greek food in Cyprus...

I have written before about the difficulty of washing our thicker (9 tog) double duvet, which I like to do each summer. Cyprus is a dusty environment, and cats sleep on our bed.. and I've read all kinds of unpleasant articles about dust mites, and the like.

Although our single duvets, and our thin (4.5 tog) double one will go, one at a time, in our washing machine, there is no way that the thick one will fit. At our old house I would struggle to wash it in the bath, which was near the back door, and then lug it outside to the line. No fun at all. At this house, our bath is upstairs, but we do have an outside sink by the washing line.. however the sink is not big enough to take the duvet. So, if anything, it's even more difficult to wash.

However.. this year, a friend mentioned that she had discovered that a double duvet would fit nicely in one of the washing machines at the Larnaka Marina. Since Richard is a member there, we decided to try it ourselves. Of course, being good at leaving things until the last moment, we had not got around to doing this during the summer when it would have made the most sense.

Last week, when the weather turned chilly, I found myself feeling extremely cold at night under the thin duvet. So, finally, on Sunday, we decided to take the duvet to the marina. We even remembered to take some washing powder with us.

Unfortunately, we had not realised that it would not take coins. Richard called the friend who had told us about it, and she told us that we would need to buy a token at the office. But the office is closed over the weekend.

So we came home, and found a single quilt which I have not yet washed this year, and placed it, without a cover, over our light-weight (covered) duvet, for Sunday night. Cleo was happy:


I was too, as it was very cosy, and I slept well.

Richard had the day off on Monday (yesterday). So, mid-morning, we returned to the marina. Just before leaving ,I wondered aloud how we would get the duvet back when it was still wet... and we picked up a large black bin liner. I was rather glad to have remembered that.

This time - after a brief hiatus when we were given the token for a different machine - we managed to get it working. Even with this big machine, the duvet only JUST fit inside:


We went for a walk while we waited for it; the cycle lasted about an hour. It wouldn't quite fit in the bin liner when it was done, but most of it did. We sat it in the back seat of the car:


I wanted to put a seat-belt on it but Richard thought (correctly) that it would be fine.

Rather than lugging it up the stairs - it was still fairly heavy, despite a powerful spin - we hung it out downstairs on our guest flat washing line:


Despite it being a sunny day with a little breeze, it gets dark around 5.00pm now, and the duvet was not fully dry by then. I did manage to flip it over onto another line to allow the other side to dry, but we decided to leave it out overnight and keep the same arrangement with the added single quilt.

This afternoon, about 4.00, I went down to check again. This time, the duvet felt perfectly dry, so I bundled it up in my arms and brought it upstairs. I was going to put a cover on it, and put it on our bed, but this is what I saw:


I didn't have the heart to disturb them. Nor, if I am honest, the energy to try and fight with a clean duvet cover. Wednesday is the morning when I usually change the bedding anyway, so I put the sparkling clean duvet in Tim's room with the door closed... the temporary arrangement will stay in place for another night.

Out of Cyprus: afternoon in Brighton

While staying in Sussex, Richard wanted to visit the Chandlers at the Brighton Marina. I remembered going there some years ago, when we parked at one end... then walked what seemed like miles before we found the Chandler. Richard assured me we could park a bit closer... and indeed we did. But sadly, not a lot closer.

So we still had quite a walk along the marina - restaurants on one side, boats on the other. Lots and lots of dinghies and small yachts...


Not terribly interesting to me, but Richard loves looking at boats of all shapes and sizes.


After about a mile - I suppose - his mother was tired, and the weather was surprisingly warm so we sat on a bench while Richard went the last distance and browsed around the shop which we would also have found rather dull.

Then we went to Asda's to get some shopping, and drove through Brighton in a fair amount of traffic although it wasn't as busy as we'd expected:


After being out of the country for so long, I enjoy seeing the typical Brighton buildings which I would scarcely have glanced at 12 years ago:

And of course one has to spot the bizarre palace built at huge cost by the Prince Regent in the 18th century:

I'm not sure who this statue is... but it demanded a photo:

King Malu is now in the water at Larnaka marina

Although Tuesday was a slightly frustrating day, with King Malu unable, at the last moment, to go in the cradle, it all worked out well yesterday. We're not at all sure how the boat did get in the cradle... Richard and Tim arrived there about 10am to find she was already there. But there was no sign of the next-door boat having been moved at all.


Shortly before 2pm Tim's wife came to collect me, so we, and Tim's mother, could go to watch the launch. At least, we hoped that's what would happen... we got to the marina to learn that (a) the tow-boat was out of the water, having repairs, so Tim had had to borrow a friend's motor boat and (b) another large boat was waiting to come out of the water, so rather in the way... but these minor considerations were soon solved, and at last the crane started its ponderous path to the launching place.


I suppose it was around 3pm by the time she was finally lowered into the water:


By that stage, I was on the video camera since Richard was in King Malu. So I filmed her being towed away by Tim on his friend's motor boat, then rushed around to the place where she would be taken. Part-way there, I noticed that she was sailing across a patch of water in the harbour, so I stopped for a quick photo:


.. and got to the new place just after she arrived. She still had to be brought in, carefully, so as not to bump into the neighbouring boats.


Richard has written a great deal more about King Malu's launch on his blog, and linked to almost ten minutes of video, if you want to see how it all happened.

The day that King Malu did not, after all, go in the cradle...

I must preface this post by stating that Cyprus is a wonderful place. The people are great, and in many ways it's an ideal place to live. Even this winter has been remarkably mild, at least so far.

But one has to learn that in some things Cyprus simply doesn't operate like mainland Europe. People are not good with times, for instance. We - and they - joke that two o'clock 'Cyprus time' is really anything from two thirty onwards. If someone wants us to arrive somewhere between ten and eleven, they might say 'Oh, about ten o'clock Cyprus time'.

King Malu, the boat in which Richard was given a share, and on which he has been working extremely hard for the past few weeks, was looking very smart, ready for being moved into the water on January 13th. Tomorrow, in fact. There's still plenty of work to do inside, so she probably won't actually be sailed until March or even April, but the underneath is all now painted and sealed, and ready for launch.


Other than the very bottom - the tiny strip of the bit sticking out underneath (which I am reliably informed is the keel) that is actually touching the ground. While the boat is still standing with those props, it can't be painted. So Richard spoke to the people who operate the crane that moves the boats in and out of the water. No problem, they said. Today - Tuesday - they would bring the crane when they had finished their other jobs for the day, and lift King Malu into the cradle. Then Richard and Tim could do the necessary sanding, priming, painting and anti-fouling at two-hour intervals in the evening and/or early Wednesday morning, and they'd move her into the water around 9am (Cyprus time) tomorrow. It would cost more, of course, but seemed worth doing.

Richard thought the move into the cradle would be around 5pm. Then, when he popped down to the marina this morning, they said 2pm. So after lunch, since the day was overcast, I accompanied him down to the marina. We wandered around for a while and learned that the crane-moving people weren't going to be around until 2.30. We weren't surprised.. so we went for a walk to find out why my phone was refusing to send texts. We were assisted by a very helpful man at the MTN shop who fixed the problem in about five seconds, and got back to the marina around 2.30. No sign of the crane-moving people, so we sat down for a while.

Around 2.45, we saw the crane start to move. Was it coming our way? Apparently not, since it moved instead towards the place where boats go in and out of the water. Perhaps another job had come up. Richard went to ask - no, apparently they needed to put some extra bars in the crane, and it was then coming to King Malu.

About twenty minutes later, the crane started on its way again. It stopped temporarily when a car was in the way, and for a bit longer to fill up with diesel. But at last we could see it coming down the little aisle where King Malu has been sitting for the past eight years. Richard started filming with the video camera.


It wasn't long before the crane was in position to turn around, and then move slowly in alongside the boat. So we moved to the back of King Malu, to photograph and shoot its careful progress:


The crane moved very carefully - which is a good thing, of course. It got to about half way. And then it stopped.


The men got out, and started gesturing, and walking around. We could see it was a very tight fit to get it in place. The boat on one side is not centrally placed in its parking slot, and the crane was perhaps an inch away:


On the other side is a large lamppost, which may even have been put there in the past eight years, since King Malu arrived:


Could the crane be angled carefully? No, they had already tried that. The man in charge of the crane said he really didn't care about the lamppost. That could be knocked down. But the base of it is made of concrete, and if the wheels of the crane went over that, the whole thing would tilt to the side and probably damage the boat on the other side.

Here's the video Richard made of events to date, with annotations:



It's a good thing they care so much about the boats. But it meant that there was no way that King Malu could go in the cradle tonight. The crane operator said that he would get in contact with the boat next door, since they would have to move it further away, and so it can't be done until tomorrow.

So the plan is now that, around 10am (Cyprus time) they will first move the nearby boat a few inches further away, then they'll put King Malu in the cradle. Richard and Tim can then prime and anti-foul the base (apparently the epoxy layer isn't so vital) with a couple of hours gap between, and she can then be put in the water at some point in the afternoon.

Perhaps.