Tuesday November 20th<\/p>\n
Long ago, I decided that if I was going to live on a boat, then it had to be all the year round \u2013 otherwise it would just feel like a holiday. Admittedly, I still have family commitments so I shall be going home this week for ten days \u2013 and then again over Christmas and New Year. But the house in Woodbridge is beginning to feel like a place to visit whereas life aboard Samsara<\/em> is rapidly becoming \u201chome\u201d.<\/p>\n And today I have had my first taste of what that means. It was, in a sense, a test: The forecast was 25kt winds, a real winter chill of 30<\/sup>C and driving sleet.<\/p>\n In fact, when I awoke at 0830 with the boat heeling to 30kt gusts whipping across Kirby Creek, the thermometer above the chart table registered 70<\/sup>C. This seemed encouraging \u2013 until I considered that it probably had something to do with the fug released by unzipping two sleeping bags, one inside the other.<\/p>\n But who needs to get up at 8.30 on a day like today? I climbed back in, taking with me the Kindle and Neil Hawkesford\u2019s A Foolish Voyage.<\/em><\/p>\n Incidentally, this book is staying in my library along with Moitessier\u2019s The Long Way. <\/em>Even though it\u2019s self-published and largely unknown, I think it\u2019s up there with the great sailing books. Just like Moitessier, Hawkesford digs deep into his emotions \u2013 here is a man who spent his whole life wanting nothing more than to live on a boat and go sailing\u2026 and eventually he managed it. I can relate to that. I\u2019ve just written a glowing review and downloaded the sequel\u2026<\/p>\n In the end, of course, I did have to get up. I mean, you can\u2019t stay in bed all day, can you? Even if there\u2019s no parent to come barging into your bedroom with a basinful of adult responsibility\u2026 even if you\u2019re so grown up, yourself, that you\u2019re retired and really don\u2019t have to do anything ever again\u2026<\/p>\n So, I emerged for a second time at 10.30 \u2013 and found the cabin still wasn\u2019t any warmer. For a moment I hankered after one of those automatic forced-air central heating systems where you poke one finger out from under the duvet, push a button and wait for the boat to reach a sensible temperature.<\/p>\n Of course, I could have roused myself to get up and light the charcoal stove but that seemed like a slippery slope \u2013 pretty soon I would have it running it all day as well as all evening and, while matters might yet come to that, I don\u2019t want to start down the wimpy route until I have to.<\/p>\n The answer was to keep moving: Without going outside into the cold and wind, that meant rubbing down the bulkhead ready for painting (and clearing up all the dust that produced) carving a new knob for the heads door\u2026 you can imagine the kind of thing\u2026<\/p>\n It got me as far as a late lunch and a second cup of tea but after sitting still for an hour finishing the book, 70<\/sup>C didn\u2019t seem so homely any more. I lit the stove at 3.30.<\/p>\n By 9.30 I was sitting so close to it that I was beginning to singe.<\/p>\n By 10.30 I was a back in the two sleeping bags \u2013 now with Hawkesford\u2019s second book A Foolish Odyssey<\/em>.<\/p>\n Odd really, I wouldn\u2019t swap places with anyone\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ___________________________________<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tuesday November 20th Long ago, I decided that if I was going to live on a boat, then it had to be all the year round \u2013 otherwise it would just feel like a holiday. Admittedly, I still have family commitments so I shall be going home this week for ten days \u2013 and then … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":630,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions\/630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racecoast.net\/omstest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}