And so to 2021 …
2021 dawns bright and sunny … and yes, we are still locked down … was it tier 4? I know the Isle of Wight went from the loosest of restrictions to the tightest almost overnight … but it’s all starting to blur!
Mid January we re-located Ægle from the outside of Shepards Wharf marina (pretty unpleasant in a northerly – of which we had had a number) to her new home … East Cowes marina. We pottered in the Solent a couple of times, anchored in Osborne Bay, and basically started to get used to sailing a 53 foot metal cruiser … we did lots of bits and bobs on the maintenance front … and we sold Jumblesail2. We had a fabulous night at anchor in Alum Bay and suddenly it was June and my 50th birthday was upon us!
We hadn’t been able to make plans until very late on as we were still in that phase where numbers getting together were restricted but my brother Simon, sister-in-law Albina and my two nephews – Alex and Andrew – came to stay on the island and visited us on Ægle in Yarmouth … we had a fabulous beach BBQ in the sunshine followed by dinner at The Hut … wonderful!
Finally the world started to open up again and holiday plans began to be made … mum and dad visited us on the boat in the Hamble and as (yet another) gale blew through Mills joined us in Yarmouth for a fantastic (and very fast) sail to Alderney … we arrived feeling energised (in contrast to a number of others who had bounced across in the – fairly rough – seas) flying our Q flag and tied up on the “quarantine buoy” in Braye harbour … we were absolutely loving sailing 20 tonnes of cruising machine!
It was also Alderney week when we arrived so we took the opportunity to “dress overall” 🙂
Next it was down the Swinge to Guernsey where Mills hopped off to visit family and Rob and I spent our time fixing Trevor (the toilet) and Jenny (the generator)! Matt, Lisa, Ed, Daniel and Emily took us out for a rib trip to Herm … wonderful … and we generally decompressed!
It was time for the holiday to come to an end and for us to try a bit of the “live aboard life” and some “working from the boat” … we bobbed home to collect laptops via Studland and Weymouth … and then it was back to Hamble, then Studland and off to Salcombe … we were now restricted to sailing at the weekends and ensuring we had a good mobile signal so we could work during the week … but all went swimmingly well and we continued further to Falmouth clocking our first 1,000NM of sailing!
We needed to find somewhere to leave the boat and after much to’ing and fro’ing … Pendennis couldn’t accommodate us, nor Mayflower … and some kind offers of a mooring buoy under the watchful eye of a family friend were almost taken up … but eventually Plymouth Yacht Haven beckoned and we jumped of, leaving the boat for a bit of racing in Corsica on Cloudy Night (a CNB 76)
Back in the UK and with the nights drawing in we reluctantly conceded that we might need to start to head back home to the Isle of Wight … so back we went via Salcombe, Dartmouth, Weymouth and Studland … dodging gales, occasionally commuting into London and getting in a bit of SUP’ing in around the edges!
Throughout all of this we had become friendly with the Nightjar crew – who were also now Cowes based – and the wider Nightjar family and had started racing with them. 22 October and we are back in Cowes and due out for dinner with the Nightjar team … I was wrapping up a conference call when Rob sat down next to me and said … “do you want the good news or the bad?” … never a good start to a conversation!
We had had a little bit of water collecting in the engine room bilge and Rob had been trying to find where it was coming from … suffice to say he’d found it … and in finding it, it seems it had suddenly got a lot worse …
“Are we sinking?” … it was a touch unclear!
Dinner was off … friends Nat and Dave kindly pointed us in the direction of some underwater epoxy on their nearby boat and lent us some dive weights to weight it down while it set … the Nightjar crew many of them RNLI crew members checked in to see if we needed the lifeboat and offered up the lifeboat’s emergency pump … it was pretty stressful! Long story VERY short … the epoxy slowed the water ingress, we hauled out at Kingston boat yard, White’s shipyard got to the bottom of a cracked weld around the rudder and a LOT of work ensued to fix it … maybe that’s something for it’s own blog at some point later!
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