I have not been wearing my pyjamas for two days. I have not been twitching around the boat, watching the news about St Vincent’s volcanic eruption in between passage planning, and learning about pyroclastic density current flows.

Ok, I have. Apparently, pyroclastic flows are like the foamy bit of milk, spilling over when you leave it to boil. The milk is the magma – getting hotter and hotter.

The pyjama bit is true too. The meaty thigh part of my pyjamas have become proper grimy. I’m grossly proud of them. Saying that, I was going to finally strip off and have a shower last night. Since nighttime on this mooring is the only time we girls shower like normal, inside-living people.

During the day we have to keep our cozzies on. Too much boat traffic to have a naked shower in peace. With this in mind, we girls know the first thing we will do when we get back home. For hours. No boat traffic or cold darkness or maximum five cycles of the water pump! We do have a lovely shower inside Quest, but it is strictly marina-use only. Cap banned us for using too much water when we shower inside. This is also true. We do use too much water.

Still, it got to sunset yesterday and I just lay prostrate on the sofa. First day back at school. Helping Lu revise for her Chemistry and Maths assessments. Plus, we never checked Delph’s homework list and she had three things she had to do by Wednesday. English, Maths and French. A shower took a back seat.

Plus the actual cockpit shower broke yesterday. Another thing which has broken before we’re set to leave. It’s getting spooky. The cockpit shower finally gave up the ghost and broke right in the mixer tap part. No way we’d find the part locally. This is an American outdoor shower system, used on RVs and American boats. We went on Amazon and bought the replacement part to ship from New York to Bonaire, hopefully before we leave.

What in the meantime though? We could revert to bucket and jug I guess. It’s pretty grim though. And an outside tap will be a really handy to have during the Atlantic crossing. Otherwise we’ll have to lug water from the inside. With this, Jack and I set ourselves to fixing it yesterday.

We used various squirts of Loctite glue and some gummy, sticky stuff Jack bought from electrician Jildert. It really worked too! No more leak.

In the meantime, my pyjamas announced they were perfectly comfy. Needed a bit more grime stains. And they wanted to hear Prof Robertson’s latest seismic report. He told Barbados yesterday they may need to brace themselves for ash fall for another year. Another year! Me and my pyjamas listened to their jaws dropping down. That’s not even poor St Vincent. A little pyroclastic flow would definitely get my pyjama’s grime stains out.