Right-ee-ho! or らいちほう. Which is the same thing in hiragana. But, as it is a japanese depiction of an english term, it would be written in katakana thus: ライチホウ。The recuperation is all but complete. I feel as though I have a mild bruise under my skin near the operating site...and below the scar, there is a thickening as though there is a pencil just beneath the skin. This is diminishing by the day and should be gone within a few weeks. Otherwise there is still a little numbness caused by the severing af a nerve...I am told this will repair itself with the passage of time.

I have just begun the job or refinishing all the timber on the deck of the boat. Hatches, bulwarks, dorade boxes and various other little items are made from teak and need to be cleaned, sanded and coated with several layers of oil. It is not a tedious job, but it will take some time.

I have also just bought a new power inverter for the engine room. An inverter is a clever little electronic gadget which can convert 12 volts of DC electricity (such as I have in the batteries) into 240volts of AC, at 50 hertz. This is the same as domestic power in Australia and means I can use my boat batteries to power 240v domestic appliances such as the microwave oven, toaster, TV, DVD, power tools and other such necessary things as a vacuum cleaner and of course, the computer and battery chargers for telephones etc.

Isn't technology wonderful!