This mornings we woke again to flat calm and what promised to be the hottest day of the year. Our plan was to head to a spot called Pirates Cove; a good six hour day at our planning speed of 3.5 knots. We woke early and aimed to get off and get as much of the cruising done before the heat of the day. Hauling up the anchor we motored off, but then after just twenty minutes the alternator belt snapped on the engine. Without this we weren't charging our batteries and so risked running out of power to be able to start the engine the following day so we had to fix it.

We turned back towards Maple bay and pulled into the first small bay we could find. We tried to drop the anchor but it was deep and rocky on the bottom and couldn't get it to set. As we made our feeble attempts to drop anchor the family on shore that owned the house on the bay came down and told us that there was little chance of being able to get the anchor set but we could raft up next to their boat which was on a mooring buoy. Another first for us, after some messing about we finally managed to get alongside them and tied off. Whilst I busied myself with switching out the alternator belt (at least we had a spare this time) Heidi chatted with the owners of the other boat who had come out. Soon the new fan belt was on though and, with a long day still ahead of us we thanked our temporary mooring friends and left at around 10:30. It was already hot though and, after motoring slowly into a head wind we again hit flat calm conditions as we headed up Stuart Channel, shelter still up on over our deck

As we drew up with Thetis island we still had a good two hours to go. It was scorching hot and we had been dunking clothes in the sea to keep cool. Heidi had been helming through the midday heat and although we had the shelter up, it provided little protection for the helmsman and she suddenly blurted out that she felt unwell. She went to lie down in the cabin out of the sun and I frantically tried to work out where we could stop as it was clear that she had 'a touch of the sun!' We quickly pulled into Preedy Harbour by Thetis island and, tried to find somewhere safe to stop quickly. At this point both our GPS and depth sounder thought it would be good to stop working so we ended up dropping the anchor blind, hoping we were in a good spot! As soon as the anchor was set we both jumped in the sea to try and cool off. The rest of the day was spent lying around and collapsing into the water whenever we got too hot. That evening we were treated to a spectacular sultry sunset after a baking hot day.