We turn the key, fire Mary*Lou back to life after a couple months of inactivity and leave home at 15:45 making a short detour to Asda to fill with fuel. It's an uneventful ride to Plymouth with the odd bit of drizzle and across the Torpoint Ferry at 17:30. Although the tow bar scrapes on the ramp as usual, Michael's work to reposition the plug proves successful and it remains undamaged this time.

We eat our pasties before check-in starts and are first in the queue, where the check-in lady has a problem. To indicate we need parking by the lift she needs to put a sticker on the windscreen, top-centre, but she's only about 5'2". Ali has to climb on the bumper step to do it for her.

Customs man asks Nick if there's anything nasty on board. He resists the temptation to say 'only the other half', [just joking].

On the car deck we cause mayhem. The marshal waves us into lane 2, stops us right by the lift doors and disappears, leaving us like a traffic island on an almost empty deck. Ali jumps out to sort out our lift to find six motorhomes queuing in lane 1 not knowing where to go. Eventually they all swing over to pass by in lane 3.

We get to the Guinness deck in good time and end up chatting to couple number one from the motorhome queue, who also saw the funny side.

Later, when we turn out the lights in the cabin, we can see large flocks of sea-birds gliding alongside the ship. It's much smoother than our last crossing and we are soon asleep.