You don’t need to be on Mariadz very long to know that there is very little compromise if something isn’t working quite right.  We have a theory that the last thing we want to be doing is to be fixing something in the middle of the Pacific or on a remote island if there is any chance of avoiding it.  Other items just don’t look how we want them to.

A perfect example of this later case were the reading lights in all the cabins.  These were original fit and so 15 years old, tarnished, held together with tape and just not what we wanted.  I had already swapped these to replacement LED bulbs but they were still not what we wanted for the place that will be our home for ten years.

But we couldn’t find what we wanted. None of the standard chandleries had the combination of quality and features that we wanted.  We stumbled upon Calibra Marine Equipment at the 2013 Southampton Boat Show.  The first time we looked we loved their selection but they are not cheap.  The lights we liked were LED, touch control (so no prominent switches), adjustable for brightness and looked very nice and modern.  However, we decided to keep looking and couldn’t justify the cost. A year went by with no luck in our search, we returned to the Southampton Boat Show the following year and met the charming South African lady we’d met the year before.  Once again, these were the only lights that we liked.  This time, we decided to bite the bullet and buy a couple for our bedroom. We would have to find a cheaper solution for the other cabins.

The following year we returned to the boat show and bought two more for the fore-peak, but showing lip-service to the concept of a budget bought cheaper units for the bunk room. We are really pleased with the results, although anyone who has been on the boat will also know that the above picture has a glaring omission….where’s Bonnie! One other thing about these pictures, we have to say a big thank you to Anna Chatburn for our gorgeous Mariadz pillow.  As you can see it always has pride of place on the bed. The blue pillows get a pirate and RNLI teddy, Anna’s one gets a cat!