Indelible

The lull originally forecast for Sunday has moved forward to Saturday.
Sunday isn't that much better, but at least there's the tease of some
movement in the air. Probably just as well. Whilst I'd entertained
thoughts of a day off sailing, walking dogs, catching up on the thousand
and one little jobs around the house that I typically neglect in favour
of escaping to the boat, I was reminded this week that Sam (boy_v2, my
youngest) needs photos of sailing dinghies for school by Monday.

Apparently, I'd mentioned it as a possibility to his teacher when we met
at the last Parent's Evening as she said Sam needed photos on the theme
of "movement" to work with, and she's got little sympathy with the idea
that the wind has since not seen fit to blow enthusiastically enough to
make the photos worth taking whilst Sam's been around with a camera.

So Sunday it is, and the boats will have to perform for the Sam's lens
wind or no wind. Not that I mind; you don't exactly have to twist my arm
to force me out on to the water, and in the absence of my usual crew
this week, Ben (boy_v1) has offered to drive home from Uni on Sunday
morning to come sailing with me.

It should be a fine day.

Of course, that's only the accumulation of a whole weekend.

I have no plans for Friday evening, but once I've walked all the dogs,
that'll be an irrelevance because Friday will be all but done for.
Saturday morning has a further dog theme. We're picking up one of our
rescues that has been living in kennels for a few months and moving her
to a foster home. Hopefully the penultimate step on what has proven to
be a long, long journey to a home and family of her very own.

Once all the doggy themed travelling has been done, I'm back off down
the motorway to a gig in Bristol. Nothing fancy, just a good old
fashioned pub gig in what's proving to be a lovely venue to play at; The
Trident in Downend, Bristol. This will be our third time there, and I'm
quite looking forward to it.

Gig done, then it's the afore mentioned racing at Frampton on Sunday
morning.

In other news, Calstar has been out on the hard for a little over a week
now whilst our man in Swansea, Pete, works on her bottom. He's scraped
back the antifoul and found a couple of layers of epoxy that he's also
removed. The lower layer proved to be really manky, a total "bodge job"
in Pete's words.

With the antifoul and epoxy removed, a week later and the moisture
readings from the GRP below the waterline match the readings above, and
according to Pete, the hull looks exceptionally sound. It's going to
take a little longer than originally planned, but it's all really,
really good news.

The picture at the head of the page is of Ondine, moored outside
Polperro harbour during our last visit to Cornwall, back in September.
I've stolen it from Dad's iPhone (and cropped and prettied it up a
little) as my own phone at the time had, if you'll recall, met an
untimely death on the pub floor the day before this.

We've been visiting Cornwall regularly since about 2008, and I've grown
to utterly adore this part of the coast. With Calstar, we're going to be
exploring different waters next year. I'm going to miss Cornwall; i
wonder if the Bristol Channel, Somerset, North Devon and South Wales
coast will have left as indelible a footprint on my soul in the years to
come as Cornish waters have till now?

I hope so.