the question is

 Will the dog fit?

autumnal (and a rubber dinghy)

I'm not fond of the year growing older, and for the first time in quite some years, feel like we haven't had enough of  a summer to justify the on-rush of winter. But I couldn't help feeling, as I walked Lottie around our local park yesterday evening, that autumn can be ever so pretty.

In other news, I took a trip back to Portishead with Dad the day before yesterday, to pick up a new tender from the chandlery there. A Honwave T25-AE; basically, a 2.5 meter rubber dinghy with an aluminium insert floor.

The idea is to trade the inconvenience of the extra weight involved for the additional stability it should give, and so make Petrella a little more accessible at anchor or on a mooring buoy for the less mobile members of her crew. I'm specifically thinking of Dad, Nikki and, potentially, Lottie. The dinghy's bigger tube diameter and inflatable keel should also make the ride dryer and more comfortable for them.

The chandlery in Portishead was able to source the dinghy for £100 less than I could find it for sale anywhere online, which was a nice change. Always prefer to support a local business if I can.

I've also bought an electric pump, an AIR NRG 6000; this admittedly from an online chandlery. It's not that I mind pumping up the tender manually, but it's a job Dad always insists on doing. Which always draws dirty looks from any boats surrounding: "why is that fit young man sitting there with a beer watching whilst that poor old man does all the heavy work?"

Which, I admit, simply amuses me. Both the idea that being a "fit young man" is only relative to the company I keep when sailing Petrella, and the idea that I have any say in the matter as to who gets to pump the tender up.

In fairness, the electric pump was, I think, his quiet suggestion. Because, as he puts it, pumping up the tender is such a nuisance. Which, of course, it wouldn't be, if only he'd let me do it.

All four of the above photos were taken within the space of about a minute with, of course, the phone in my pocket, on yesterday evening's walk, facing three different directions, the sunset to the left of Lottie, the moonrise over Robinswood Hill to the right. 

I think dusk is my favourite time of day. I just resent the fact that it arrives so early at this time of year.

a quiet autumn

Unless you count the band. Then it's been anything but. Six gigs in October, quieter than the eight gigs we had in September, but it still left very little time for anything else outside of work.

Dad and I did manage to get out of harbour for a day. Actually, thinking about it, that wasn't October, but rather the last weekend of September. A gig free weekend, we'd hoped to sail over to Fowey. But the forecast for the Sunday was grim; far to rough for us to consider sailing back in, which meant that any sailing was going to be limited to the Saturday only, as I needed to be back in the office for the Monday.

So we stayed on the boat for the weekend and took a couple of friends, Dan and Justin, out sight-seeing on the Saturday. In deep contrast to the Sunday forecast, it was a flat calm, so we put the main up just to remind ourselves we were really a sailboat, but otherwise motored the eight miles or so out to the Eddystone light, which proved to be quite a popular spot in the calm weather.

Happily, the wind filled in a little towards the end of the day. Dad muttered something about having had enough and supper calling, but with our two guests aboard he lost the popular vote, so we silenced the engine and had a very enjoyable couple of hours sailing back and forth across the Sound, just for the hell of it, before we returned to the marina.

That was the last time I managed to get Petrella out of her berth. We've been down a couple of times since to check on her, but haven't had time to actually sail.

In part because Dad's damaged himself. Some time around the beginning of October, probably gardening. He has a stubborn talent for disregarding the physical limits of his body, and we think he managed to pull something. Subsequently, he's been in a lot of pain and next to immobilised the last few weeks. He's improved a little, but he's still walking only with the aid of a stick, stooped over and in significant discomfort.

That aside, we're still hoping to take Petrella out west to Fowey and back again on my next weekend off, which is in a couple of weeks time. It will, of course, be very dependent upon the weather. Which is flat calm again at the moment, but always very changeable at this time of year.

In other news, my daughter and the grandchildren move out this week. Probably tomorrow. For reasons I completely understand. But, for reasons it would be indiscrete and inappropriate for me to fully explore here, Nik and I are deeply unhappy and more than a little distressed by the situation. In part, because of the timing, it's too quick and too soon. But mostly because of distance. 

The twins are just a little over six months old now, and thriving. After all the stress and trauma of their early weeks, they've been an absolute joy to have in the house, to watch how they've developed and grown.

Arguing that it's the only place they can afford to rent, Tash and her new boyfriend are moving with our grandchildren to a place called Tonypandy. A Welsh town, a little outside of Swansea. I'm sure it's lovely, but the fact remains that it's eighty miles away. A two hour drive away from her nearest friends and family.

Whatever twist I put on it, whatever reassurances Tash or her boyfriend try to give, I find that distance, and everything it means that Nik and I will miss out on in the coming months and potentially years of our grandchildren's lives, quite heart breaking.

and that then was September

More or less. One more weekend to go. 

I'm off down south with Dad to join Petrella this evening. Weather is vicious on Sunday, but calm and quiet tomorrow, with the hope of a little sun.

So we may sail. Or we may not. 

I have to admit, aside from the flesh wound to my index finger, my confidence took a bit of a battering from our last trip, when I made a complete hash of bringing her back into her berth and ended up perching her on the shoulder of our neighbour.

Small consolation that no real damage was done, even my finger healed in time for the next gig. 

And the locals all consoled my by explaining that yes, the marina was particularly tight and an absolute peril (not the words they used) to come back to when the wind was in the west.

I still made a mess of it, and yes, that has me now double guessing myself. 

There is nothing for it really, except to cast off and come back and cast off and come back and keep doing it until it's as natural to me as drinking water. She is my boat, she was my choice, and there's nobody else to take her helm. 

Nor would I have it any other way.

So maybe we'll sail tomorrow. Maybe we won't. Something I've discovered, without somewhere in mind to go, it's all so terribly easy to find excuses why not to sail.

This is also the last weekend I have free between now and January to spend on the boat. I might be able to take a Monday or two off work in December if the opportunity presents, but the weather is going to close in soon. So between now and the end of the year, it's probably just the occasional Sunday day trip down to the boat and back.

Next year I am definitely going to be harder on myself when it comes to blocking space out of the diary and not booking gigs. it will have been 58 bookings this year, by the time we play New Years Eve. It hasn't let much time for sailing.

All this sounds vaguely bleak, but my mood isn't as black as it seems. Aside from gigs and work, it's been a fairly uneventful month. The twins are growing, five months old now and squealing, giggling and smiling at me when I walk into the room.

Lottie thrives. Though she was attacked in the park yesterday by a bull terrier type dog that was almost the same size as her. A misunderstanding over a ball. The other dog took her by surprise and pinned her to the ground but he had a pretty robust harness on, so I simply lifted him off by it and carried him spitting and snarling back to his quite distressed owner. 

Our friends in the park, fellow dog walkers, looked on bemused, a little stunned by the shock of the whole thing. Lottie was ruffled, hackles raised and very vocal once she was back on her feet, but backed off and gave the other dog space when I told her to. She was slobbered, but escaped unhurt as I was close enough to grab the other guy before he properly latched on and things escalated. Everything resolved peacefully. 

My fault for being incautious with a ball in proximity to a relatively unknown dog. Been a long time since I last had to intervene with squabbling dogs. It's certainly one way to get the adrenaline pumping. I really don't recommend it.

So, not counting whether or not I sail this weekend, that was the month's end. It began with the band playing a wedding gig. The bride was the daughter of friends and family; my brother-in-law's sister-in-law. I helped teach her and her brother to sail not so very long ago when they were both small, and gave their dad his first boat, an old Mk1 Gull that had been sitting in Dad's garden slowly turning green.

In other news, a friend has asked me to help move his boat "Amore", a Hanse 415, across the Atlantic in November 2026 and my wife and work have both provisionally agreed to spare me for the four weeks Mark thinks it'll take. We've holidayed on her for a couple of weeks in 2022 and I helped deliver her from Montenegro to her winter berth in Parga, Greece that same year. She's a lovely boat, and Mark's great company. It'll be a fun adventure if it actually comes off, but 2026 feels like a long time away at the moment.

And, meanwhile, I have my own boat to sail. Once I can work the courage back up to take her off the dock.

meanwhile, somewhere in Eastington

Probably our last outdoor gig of 2024 as the evenings are drawing in and the weather turning. Actually, the weather didn't really get here in the first place. This year's summer has been a bit "So that was it?" It was the last race of the Wednesday evening series at the lake last night, and the first time I've managed to sail the Laser in an absolute age.

Spotty, shifty, light wind, but a pretty sunset, and nice to out racing again. It's been too long.

After having had a quiet August with the band, September sees normal service resumed, with seven gigs in the book, of which the above was the first. Two more this weekend, three the weekend following. Will try to get down to the boat this Sunday.

so that was July

Another month of summer gone.

Six gigs, a bit of sunshine, some welcome warm weather. A lot of Wednesday evenings spent running the safety boat to cover the racing at the lake and not much time racing myself. 

Some worthwhile work done on Petrella, but no time spent sailing her; at the end of this month I will have had her a year and I feel like we've hardly spent any time together yet.

Random metric: not counting her purchase price, marina fees or insurance, her upkeep and maintenance for the year has cost £5,295.37. Some things didn't necessarily need doing, some other things I could possibly have done cheaper, especially had I more time. But all of it was worthwhile.

The babies are growing like weeds, the house is full of noise and the clutter of the paraphernalia associated with the raising and nurture of them both. 

The dogs are well. Dad is well, although continually complaining about the aches and pains and inconvenience of growing old (though better than the alternative, he tells me) and nagging me to book fewer gigs and spend more time on the boat. 

With 54 gigs in the band's diary for this year, I clearly failed on that score this time around. But it's an ambition for next year. We currently only have 12 gigs booked for 2025 and only 1 for 2026, so a good start so far.

I feel like the year is running away with me and the evenings are already drawing in too fast. Planning the next couple of weeks hopefully away on the boat with Dad and Nik (if all goes to plan we head down on the evening of Sunday 11th and sail west Monday 12th) I was dismayed to realise that dawn is now gone 0600 and getting inevitably later as the year creeps on.

Postscript: I wrote the above at the beginning of August, then, planning to add a little more plus a few photos, have since left it in draft. So, on the grounds that that ship has now sailed, as has August, I've added in a few of July's photos but am now just going to hit "Publish" and be damned. 

So then, that too was August.

In other news, since writing the above, the 2026 gig cancelled, 2024 is now up to 56 bookings, and 2025 currently stands at 26. We did sail for a week last month, absolutely determined to leave more space for sailing next year.

democracy

A party that considers the ex-Tory MP Natalie Elphicke to be a good fit, but a fair and moral man like Jeremy Corbyn to be unsuitable is not a party that represents me. Nonetheless, I'm very glad to wake this morning to find that Starmer won and the corrupt, duplicitous, divisive, self-serving shower that have abused their privilege of governing our country for the last fourteen years are finally out on their collectively irresponsible ear.

I find it hard to reconcile voting Tory (or Reform, for that matter) with anything resembling a moral choice, but that choice is a necessary freedom of democracy so I try hard not to judge people too harshly on their political views. As individuals, at least. Despite differences in our moral perspectives, what unites us is greater than the sum of what divides us. 

I'm sure I stole that from somewhere.

On a similar theme, I particularly liked the now former Chancellor's parting words this morning:

"This may seem like a tough day for our family as we move out of Downing Street, but it isn’t. We are incredibly lucky to live in a country where decisions like this are made not by bombs or bullets, but by thousands of ordinary citizens peacefully placing crosses in boxes and bits of paper."

kids

Walking the dog has become something more of an exercise in logistics, of late. Still, it's nice to have company for our daily evening romp around the local park.

The twins are growing like weeds and my daughter appears to be positively thriving on her new responsibilities.

meanwhile, somewhere in Upton-St-Leonards

A barn dance. In so far as we were playing in a barn, and some dancing was definitely done.

Petrella: refloated

We successfully relaunched Petrella at the beginning of the week. I got both my weekend's gigs out of the way on the Saturday, as previously reported, then Dad and I headed down to Plymouth to complete a few jobs on the boat.

There wasn't actually much to do. Some antifoul on the foot of the skeg and some preliminary investigations into the loose floorboards in the main cabin. The later could have actually waited until we were afloat, and the remedial work that still needs to be done will do just that. Basically, most of the coach-bolts holding the wooden spars in place that cross the bilge and support the floorboards have corroded away, leaving the spars, and therefore the floorboards they support, decidedly wobbly.

Dad, who knows about these things, was highly vocal in his disgust that anybody would consider using bolts of such an inappropriate and inferior grade of metal on a boat, let alone in the wet and potentially salty environment of the bilge. 

To my way of thinking, as they've apparently lasted the last 45 years or so, they couldn't have been that inferior or inadequate, but I will bow to Dad's far more qualified opinion. The bugger now is going to be getting those old corroded bolts back out so that we can replace them with new (and appropriately graded). We removed one, but the rest are a job that will keep for now.

Anticipating an early start on Monday, and the marina being two and a half hours away from home by car, we might have broken a rule or two Sunday evening and stayed aboard whilst the boat was still on the hard. I'm not sure. I didn't ask, figuring it was safer to seek forgiveness than to risk having permission refused.

With a brief pause with her in the slings so that we could apply a bit of antifoul to the base of the keel, Petrella was lifted back in without mishap on Monday morning at 0900. It was a calm, warm morning, and hardly any wind should've made putting her back into her berth simple, but I still managed to overshoot the final turn, which led to the need for some jockeying back and forth on the throttle to get us realigned to enter our berth, and Dad managed to fumble getting the bow line onto the dock cleat. 

However, the calm conditions meant that whilst my mishandling did result in us coming to rest briefly against our neighbour, the fenders were more than adequate for their job, and I was able to manually push us back off, which then put me easily within reach of the cleat at the end of our finger pontoon that I needed to get my midship's spring onto. Once that's done, we're home and safe, regardless of whatever might be going on with the line at the bow.

So not the most elegant of landings, but one achieved without any damage to ourselves or anybody else or any great embarrassment. If only through merit of the fact that it was early on a Monday morning so nobody else was watching.

With Petrella safely back in her berth, we retrieved her freshly laundered genoa back from the local sail makers, stopping at the café opposite their workshop for a quick breakfast, then back at the boat I bent it back on to the forestay, reattached the sheets and furled it away. An easy job as it had been neatly flaked and rolled, and whilst the wind was astern, it wasn't strong enough to actually fill the sail.

Once I'd refitted the repaired binimi and put the cockpit tent back up, Dad jet-washed the decks. Finally, with everything squared away, we were on the road by mid-afternoon and, the traffic light, were home again by tea-time.

There is some kind of juniors' regatta running at the lake this weekend, so the routine Sunday racing has been cancelled. The weather looks very light anyway. We could slink off down to the boat for the day and potter around the Sound, but I'm actually free of gigs the weekend following, so I'm thinking that if instead I spend this Sunday at home and pretend to be domesticated I might actually manage to wrangle a pass for the whole weekend the week following.

So likely just two gigs, tonight and tomorrow, and no sailing for me this weekend. But I did race the Laser this Wednesday evening just gone. A fickle, occasionally boisterous wind and 30°C so no wetsuit, just rash vest, buoyancy aid, gloves, boots and swimming trunks. A lovely evening.

Which made the unexpected capsize both comic and inevitable. It wasn't the warmth of the wetsuit I missed, so much as the padding and protection. In vaulting out of the water and onto the dagger-board to effect the recovery, I managed to take about an inch of skin off my right shin. Just a flesh-wound really, and the capsize didn't cost me a place so much as my poorly managed start had already cost me a few. 

Despite the swim, I still managed a creditable fifth place, out of the twenty-eight boats racing. Which is fine. I was only sailing the Laser because Amanda had been unable to make it this week, so not being in the Albacore, with which we're actually completing for this series, I had no real skin in this race. 

Aside from the that which I left on my dagger-board, that is.