This morning at 9 we had an appointment at the boatyard to haul out Pitufa. We were quite nervous, because we had to take her into the berth stern first (so that the forestay wouldn’t be in the way of the crane). Unfortunately our smurfette doesn’t like going backwards–she usually goes unpredictably either sharp left or right… Not so this morning: she turned like a lady in front of the berth and went stern first without a hint of a complaint!
We spent the rest of the day scraping off barnacles and trying to remove the skeg to get hold of the rudder. After grinding away lots of filler we got hold of four giant bolts and after some more hammering and wiggling we had the skeg off.
Leeloo remained inside the boat during the whole haul-out procedure (craning, high pressure washing, moving to a space in the workyard) and was quite frightened. In the evening curiosity took over and now’s she’s happy with all the new smells and sights. I’m sure she thinks we took out the boat only for Leelootainment 
Unfortunately we had to abandon our other pet (the remora suckerfish), but we hope that he won’t be homeless for a long time. Maybe he’ll pick a shark next, now that he’s discovered that boats aren’t reliable companions.
