Weekend Britain

This weekend Britain is what everybody expects Britain to be - cold and damp, the drizzle dripping off every tree and blade of grass and a cold that seeps right into the bones. We have deserted our London nest to visit East Sussex where my mother normally lives although at present she will be striding the decks of a luxury cruise ship on its final approach to Rio de Janeiro.

We took the train down from London yesterday evening after work and the bus from Wadhurst station. It was a cold and rainy evening, so arriving in the dark meant a struggle to read the station bus timetable to work out whether the bus turned round at the station or went on somewhere else. It turns out the station is a terminus so all we had to do was wait but even the driver seemed a bit perplexed when he did finally arrive. Instead of opening the doors we could see him struggling with some sort of control panel inside as he attempted to get the display at the front of the bus to change from 'Wadhurst' to 'Ticehurst'. Clearly he wasn't going to succeed and finally he gave up so we could climb on board. Barely had the doors closed when the bus shot off like a rocket, blasting long dark roads we could see nothing of from our brightly lit interior.

Somewhere along the way we figured out that the driver was foreign, Polish maybe, and it was his first day on the route. Maybe this was also his first time driving in this country, maybe he had high-jacked the bus, we thought, as he blasted down the winding country lanes.

We escaped at Tickhurst, as he pronounced it (which we rather thought was a better name for this place), beside The Bell pub in the village centre. Sadly, however, this was guarded by a wooden hoarding, as if being refurbished, so our hopes for a warming drink and a meal were thwarted. Not knowing about other pubs nearby we trudged off in the dark towards mum's cottage until Kate spotted an Indian take-away. All was not lost and the food turned out to be well cooked and tasty, if rather lacking in 'edge'. Once again my theory on Indian food is proven - the smaller the town, the less spicy is the food.

Finally, the Cruising Association's home beside Limehouse basin (and Cirrus Cat) is featured in December's Yachting monthly magazine, in case anyone is interested.

Life with Brian

Living aboard a fibreglass yacht in winter has its pros and cons, most of which represent a new experience for us. But we are learning, every day, how to cope with things, some of which are expected or predictable and some less so.

Over the first few weeks when the British climate was moving slowly from late summer to autumn then into winter we had such variations of temperature, sun, wind and rain that it was difficult to do much apart from react to whatever was thrown at us. In the course of one week we would have a sudden cold spell, a few days of rain then warmth with daytime sunshine warming the boat and drying things out. But we are so sheltered by the surrounding buildings here in the centre of London that only rarely is there sufficient wind to air the boat in the way that we have become used to in other marinas and mooring locations. We miss the wind's drying effect which normally, over time, will keep the air fresh and regulate the moisture level of everything inside the boat.

Of course we have our Taylor stove with its impressively shiny chimney drawing air in at the bottom and taking it up and away above decks but even with this going steadily most evenings, after a month or so we began to notice that the interior of the boat was gradually absorbing moisture from our bodies, principally from our breath, and from daily cooking, washing, and so on. The drying effect needed to achieve the usual moisture balance just wasn't happening; it needed to be significantly greater and clearly just airing the boat when we could wasn't going to achieve this. The moisture in the air inside our boat was condensing on any cool surface it could find and there are plenty of these when the temperature plunges 10 degrees Celsius in the space of 12 hours or so.

Fortunately man's ingenuity with machines and our salary-laden bank account came to our rescue in the form of Brian (the name just seemed to work for us) who sits in one or other of the hulls humming away to himself, making our lives happier. He is sort of short and dumpy (although I wouldn't tell him this directly) with a plastic reservoir for catching the moisture he keeps busily extracting from the air around him. For Brian is a de-humidifier, a machine built to serve but one purpose, to make things dry. It is hard to believe where all the water comes from but he just keeps producing more of the stuff and we have to empty him out regularly to keep him happy. He even has a smart accessory which we use occasionally, a clear piece of pipe to take his extracted water directly into our bilges from where the float activated pump can squirt it overboard. Brian has transformed our lives. Suddenly the windows, which used to drip moisture every morning, are clear again and even the ends of the hulls, those awkward to reach bits where air circulation is negligible, are smelling sweet again.

We suspect that being on a relatively poorly insulated fibreglass boat we might be experiencing more condensation than one might get, for example, on a wooden boat but now we have the situation under control, thanks to Brian, we don't let this bother us. We come home from work and step inside to find the air as sweet and dry as if it were summer and we can get on with the routine of life on board. Tonight is washing night, which means a trip to the facilities block armed with our machine tokens and powder. Just another day really.

Families and young children

We have had a weekend of delightful family visits, us to them in different parts of London.

Saturday we met with Adrian and Lucy who celebrate their return from a recent adventure sailing around Britain in their 30 foot sailing boat, Moondance. We take much inspiration from this with our own plans for 2009 being much the same. Setting off from the West Country they passed along the west coast of Ireland then Scotland, rounded Cape Wrath before coming south to the Caledonian Canal. For some reason that I still can't quite make sense of they passed through the canal twice so that they could come south down the east coast of Scotland, then England, to meet their own friends who live somewhere on the Essex coast. Finally they navigated to Southampton where Adrian's brother, himself a part owner of Moondance, lives. Although slightly less ambitious than this, our own plans for next year will take us through much of the same water so we were keen to hear of their experiences.

We met the pair in Islington, close to where they had been staying with family, with whom we spent a delightful afternoon chatting over a pub lunch. Stealing the show, of course, was Ava who at the age of 8 months totally captivated us all as she was passed around the table. We all had a turn at amusing this wriggling bundle of baby who calmly accepted our attention with complete insouciance. It was an honour to earn the trust of both Ava and her parents to be allowed to do this; for us it was an experience to be treasured.

Then on Sunday we met with more friends, another family about to depart on their own adventure. 

Adrian (another one) and Jill are emigrating to New Zealand with their young children and as I write this will be taking off from Heathrow. Adrian is a work colleague but we had not previously met his wife or any of his three children so once again we found ourselves spending time with smaller people. To gain the trust of strangers, particularly children, can take time and patience. It needs to find its own speed and cannot be hurried along but once again we were delighted to be taken into the confidence of this young family. Of course it was Dan, at 3 years old, who was particular captivating as he first exhausted himself trying to keep pace with his older sisters then recovered his energy again during the day. We had travelled across London to Kew Gardens to see our friends, arriving in a torrential downpour which soon cleared to give us glimpses of sunshine for the rest of the day.

It was a cold day which started with a layer of snow on Cirrus' decks so we left ourselves open and vulnerable by planning a day outside in these conditions. In hindsight I suppose it could easily have been a disaster if we had been caught in a heavy downpour but somehow we managed to keep everyone happy and arrived at the warmth of Kew's hothouse just before hypothermia might have started to be a possibility. Adrian's three delightful children hardly know what lies ahead as they leave Britain to take up a new life on the opposite side of the earth. We treated them in the Kew Gardens shop so that Ellie, aged about 7, could examine the ground through her plastic binoculars looking at where New Zealand would be if the earth wasn't in the way.

Finally we all refreshed ourselves in the 'Greenhouse', a cafe serving mountainous cake slices with tea or fruit juice and located en route to the underground station.

Dan, as 3 year-olds are wont to do, liberally covered himself with cream from his cake but we knew from bringing up our own children that this would soon be absorbed into his body by some kind of osmosis and give him just enough energy to keep going for the rest of the day. It was late when we left them alone for their journey back to the hotel where they would spend their last night in this country.

The cold snap

October hasn't yet ended but we have a sudden cold spell, the wind descending on us from the northern end of the North Sea, where it is almost certainly considerably cooler than here, and bringing with it some snow, some frost and a rapid change. This, so soon after a balmy mid October, has taken us by surprise, taken Britain by surprise, but with Kate and I so recently having taking up residence on the water we find ourselves both surprised and only lightly prepared. Warm clothing is a habit generally acquired slowly as the Summer draws to a close and Autumn creeps in. When it comes with a bang we cannot cope. We find ourselves wearing too little or alternatively over-compensating and putting on too many clothes. Our minds and bodies just need time to adjust.

So instead of being a comfortable transition from the warmth of our apartment to the cosiness of our boat we have gone straight into our first Winter on board Cirrus with a shock similar to stepping under a cold shower. They grit the pontoons here, and they have to as there is a thin layer of ice when we stagger off to shower just after dawn.

But the water in these showers here is endlessly hot, leaving a warm glow that carries us back to the boat to dress for work, and when the sun shines it warms Cirrus' decks and dispels the cold and damp. We might come home to a cold boat after a day at work but our small electric heater and, as soon as I can get it going, our Taylor diesel burning stove rapidly heats our small cabin to a liveable temperature. Life here carries on under a different set of rules but we have our own world here around us, one that will soon be off travelling with us inside it.

Saturday, 1 November, 2008
A couple of days of cold then, as ever, you can expect Britain's maritime climate to produce something completely different. And it has. The cold has relented, giving way to torrential rain. So, it being a weekend, this has called for some imaginative construction work to give us a little more shelter in Cirrus' wide cockpit. An ancient but nevertheless serviceable tent flysheet is now strung up between the backstays and the shrouds, floating just above the boom and giving us a delightfully orange shelter to huddle under. The rain drenches everything it touches and runs off our decks in streams but now we have a pleasant covered area from which we can stand and watch the world.

By evening the rain had barely stopped when the fireworks started. Whistles and bangs echo around the marina, coming from all directions at once although rarely seen clearly as we are so enclosed here. Then suddenly our neighbours in the top floor of flats to the West of us brought the head of every live-aboard above decks by setting off a series of powerful set piece fireworks from their balcony. I felt I should applaud such profligacy as I'm sure we had a far better view from the boat than they did.