Casting Off & Falling In

Where to start...

This is the story all about how,

my boat about damn near ran aground,

but I'd like to take a minute so sit right there,

I'll tell you how I lost my marbles and I'm losing my hair.

I could start at the real beginning and all the butterfly-wing beats that lead to the hurricane that is my current life, but I fear that would take the rest of it to explain and even longer to justify.

For now, I write from the sun-baked shores of Tunisia in the city of Bizerte.

The desert wind blowing the cinnamon-scented fragrance of the desert into my open window and bringing with it a torrent of bastard mosquitos to add itchiness to the growing list of discomforts my still-smouldering flesh must endure.

But lets drift back from these shores, back across the cerulean waters of the Mediterranean, skimming by the jutting rock of Gibraltar and through the strait, up the undulating coastal waters of Atlantic Portugal, down the highway of the English channel and into the gentle tug of The Solent, where, upon the chalky waters of the Itchen, this journey all began.

Up on the hard, gently nestled in a cradle, in a waiting slumber she lay, Hugr.

15 tons of dreams made real, her mast tickling the sky as her bone-white sides glistened gently in the warm summer sun.

The figure of Andy, the yard handy-man can be seen wandering his way through the fibreglass-and-steel glade as over the calls of winged rats (see seagulls) and drone of traffic, a sudden squeak and trundling grind signals the opening of the yard gate.

Through, shudders a car, pulling to a halt by the quayside and out of it, laden with blankets, tools and board games come staggering a motley crew of misfits, steaming onward with the fuel of adventure.

She needed a bit of work.

Well, a lot of work.

More than was implicated by even the fairly even-handed survey.

Her previous name (Feo II) had been fairly apt and should have served as an indicator as to what we should have expected as we peeled away panels revealing beds of ancient rust around the windows.

But that was merely the beginning of our issues.

Crusted polystyrene filled every wall like the world's most depressing jigsaw, the toilet, only lightly stained (Helpfully signposted with a warning that it had been cleaned by men) hid within it a fountain of sorrow that only a new pump could remove; the GPS co-axial hung forlornly above, sadly unable to mate with its long-unused partner; the sails yellowed and stained from sun and rain and the less said about the junction box the better, just to mention a few issues.

But determination was high and so, scraping, switching, smoothing and swearing we set to work on reshaping her from the inside out.

The windows needed to go for a start. The rust, having settled into its home around the joins had decided to roll up its sleeves and DIY itself a tiny window.

It hadn't got through the paint yet and I'm sure it was very proud of the work it had done so far, but I wasn't even sold on the windows we already had so the addition of one that would definitely let in more than the breeze when heeling was less than welcome.

So, with the help of the local welders (Thank you so much APS, you are brilliant!) we replaced the panels and did away with the old bulkhead windows in the hopes of never having to deal with that again (Oh the folly of youth).

After that, the polystyrene was the next to go, as piece by piece as it exploded into a million little buoyant bubbles with each brittle panel removed to check the walls.

We replaced it with bubble-foil style insulation which has worked a treat so far.

The rest will have to be delegated to other posts as the methods used would take too long to explain here, but by the end of it, nary a snippet of clothing owned was free of dust, must or glue of some variety and we were well and truly knackered.

Having passed several months and aged several years we were finally ready for the water,

We booked our place on the crane and after a delightfully short wait on a chilly November morning, the time came for the lift.

We were excited beyond reason. The sensation of watching our angel drift heavenward, carried on wings of steel before settling gently to bob on the waters of the Itchen was beyond comparison.

Once in the water, aboard we hopped to check her for water ingress and, upon seeing none, we sparked up the engine and with a single cough and gentle hum, she was off!

We pulled around the marina, Hugr herself seemed delighted to be back in her element, drifting gently through the waters and coming swiftly and securely to rest in her berth.

We tied her on and took a rest, each of us beaming, the ecstacy shared among us charging the air around us as Gods of the waters we would surely become.

The world beckoned and, in silence, we basked in it serenely.

Then a noise.

What the hell is that trickling?

The seacocks it surely wasn't, I had checked those myself.

There were no holes, I knew that much.

The engine?

No leaks there either, that had been checked and checked again.

Lifting up the panel at the foot of James' bed, I felt my stomach lurch.

The only place I had stupidly neglected.

The transducer was letting in just a trickle of water.

But a trickle too much.

Swearing at myself and clipping my shin I set to work, pulling out the plug for the transducer hole and loosened the old pulling it from its fastening.

The river, happy to find a warm place to escape the winter, flooded in, bypassing my face shield and giving my a wet kiss on the entire head as I slotted the plug in and tightened it up, much to the assumed dismay of the water outside.

After a few tests and of soggy cursing, we discovered the problem.

Somehow, the O-Ring on the transducer was too slim and wasn't able to plug the hole completely.

We had many spares courtesy of my brother who had decided (Much against his better judgement I am sure) to join us for a while, so we affixed a new one and after a brief reacquaintance with the river, the plug was secure.

From there, we planned, plotted and played.

There was still work to be done, but it was mostly home-making and that would come in time as we picked up pieces from our nomad wandering to incorporate into our new abode on the sea.

The world was our oyster.

That was in 2019 and as 2020 rolled in, we would fairly quickly find out that it may have been an oyster, but it was out of date and underdone.

But that is a story for another day.