Well, here we are a week after the big departure, still in Falmouth. They say bad luck comes in threes and in our case the extended stay in Falmouth was caused by a dead engine, no weather and wet socks.

The dead engine was quickly fixed by James the day after our arrival in Falmouth. The problem turned out to be air in the fuel system, and after much manly swearing, cursing and using every screwdriver on the boat, the air was purged and the engine sang again. And, before you all cry out - I didn't fix it because I am not that sort of engineer!

"No weather" does not mean that we were stuck on the boat while gale force winds raged around us. On the contrary, the weather has been gloriously sunny most of the time. The problem was with our laptop and weather fax machine (SSB). As I am that sort of engineer, I was determined to make the two bits of electronics talk to each other so that we could receive a weather picture at sea. But, despite lots of knowledgeable clicking, girlie hurghmphs, and talking very nicely to both machines, all I kept getting was noise like in a badly tuned TV, instead of a crisp clear weather picture.

After a whole day of being sucked into the void that is faulty software, James finally pulled me out and I realized it was time to contact the Hewlett Packard help desk. There followed an hour long call to the HP call centre in India. It was like playing a computer game. I quickly got through the first level by stating that yes, I had switched the computer on and yes, the two things were connected. I was impatient and grumpy, which earned me entry to the second level. Here I had someone who knew a little bit more but was at a loss when I told her I had tried all the things written on her screen. She had to get the supervisor; this was serious. The supervisor held the key to level three - the top level in this game, which is the hardest to reach. I was put through to a UK call centre! There I spoke to someone who actually listened to me, and didn't just ask me questions written on their screen. Within 10 minutes I had arranged to have the laptop collected and fixed. 100 bonus points, 3 extra lives, GAME OVER!

The last bit of bad luck was discovered one morning when James reached for a new pair of socks, and pulled out a dripping wet ball. We had a leak - salt water had got into our cabin somehow and soaked all of James's underwear. We then stripped out most of our cabin trying to find the source of the leak, and traced it to the anchor locker forward of our cabin. There was a crack in the fiberglass, which let water in each time we took a wave over the bows. So, we have spent the rest of the week sanding, grinding and drying, stripping back the paint in the lockers so that we could fix the crack. And while we were doing one locker, we thought we may as well do the one next door... We have now repaired the cracks, so we are nearly ready to sail again!

All this activity has made us have a rethink about our plans, and our big rush to get across the Atlantic before the hurricane season starts in June. We have decided that we will probably not make this weather window, and it will mean pushing us and the boat too hard which defeats the point of cruising!

So, we are now planning to take it easy, potter down the coast of Spain and Portugal, visit Morocco and possibly the Western Mediterranean, before setting out across the Atlantic in October. We still plan to make landfall in Brazil (the Amazon), then head up South America to the Caribbean in time for Christmas.

This will mean that for the next 6 moths at least we will be within reach of most budget airlines if anyone fancies a holiday!

Looking at next week's weather forecast it looks like we may be stuck in Falmouth for another week waiting for all these Arctic storms to pass... Well, it means we can keep eating fresh pasties!