Back home AGAIN!

Oh dear, the best laid plans and all that....Well, here we are at home again. Anyone reading this recently after I've written it will know that the weather still isn't too good for sailing. We went back down to the boat on Monday, which involves a short ride in the dinghy as she's moored out in the river. Here's Vince with his trusty 'seagull' engine. It had been in his shed, unused, for 20 years. A little bit of tinkering and vroom, off it went. They don't make 'um like that anymore. Mind you they also don't make them as leaky, smelly and noisy as that anymore! We use the oars if we can, but sometimes we need the engine if the tide and/or wind are against us, so we are at times grateful for our leaky smelly engine.

 We set off for Fowey on Tuesday not without a minor drama as we needed to leave the mooring before the tide turned, and when we tried to bolt the trusty seagull outboard onto the bracket on the back of the boat it wouldn't fit! This meant leaving the mooring and pottering up to the pontoons where we had to get in and out of a tricky tight spot to drop the outboard off. We managed it with only a gentle lean against the (fortunately) plastic coated pontoon edges! We got out of Plymouth harbour and got the sails up without too much problem, and I even did some helming feeling more relaxed than I usually do. However Vince noticed that the engine was leaking a bit of diesel. Being a safety conscious person he didn't want the engine to pack up on us out at sea so we pottered back to our mooring. It then turned out that we didn't have the right sized spanners to do things to the engine, and as it was raining we thought we'd come home!
We set of home on Wednesday, by which time it was glorious sunshine and a lovely breeze ho hum!
Here's the dinghy loaded up with stuff to take home again (note lack of engine)

 and I finally remembered to take a picture of the boat on the mooring..

and in case you think I haven't been getting my crafty fix here's my anti seagull 'bunting'. There are a few boats near ours with buntingey stuff on them, so I felt ok about prettying the boat up like this. It also serves a purpose as it deters the seagulls from roosting (and pooing!) on the boat

it's made from scraps of ripstop nylon that I salvaged from the bin from the Moreton banners project that I helped with earlier this year, so they fulfilled my frugal tendencies as well.

Sadly we've missed the Shanty festival in Falmouth but, undaunted, we plan to set off again for Fowey on Monday, spanners at the ready!......