After months of browsing Ebay and a mysteriously named site called Apollo Duck I finally made the decision to buy another boat.  For the first time in my boating career I let experience triumph over hope and actually went shopping for something sensible - a dinghy, which I could sail occasionally and store inexpensively at a local sailing club.  I then spent weeks trying to work out what kind of dinghy and even made an offer on a type of boat called a "scaffie", only to realise just in time that it would actually be too heavy for me manhandle.  To cut a long story short I ended up making an offer on a Cornish Cormorant which was kept down in Christchurch on the South Coast near Bournemouth. Having got a tow bar fitted to our little Fiat Panda I drove down to Christchurch to pick up the boat in early April, my first long car journey since the first lockdown in March 2020.  Here it is fully rigged in our front garden.  It has a little bowsprit and a traditional gu...

Since the early 90s I've been going on an annual St George's Day bash organised by friends that I knew when I lived on boats in London.  These days I make it about one year in four and my relationship with the event is increasingly ambiguous.  It's great to meet up on old Thames barge and see Tower Bridge open for you. I don't even mind the faux patriotism, as they're a mixed bunch from many walks of life and many of them have a pretty balanced view of what patriotism is and its relationship to nationalism.  Actually what I find difficult is the drinking and the fact that since I first started going my life has changed quite radically, whereas most people's hasn't.  I think many of them see me as a much more serious person these days, possibly dangerously thin with an unmentionable disease.  The fact is I can't bear getting sick with booze anymore and I have less need to say things in this group setting.  I no longer have a desire to entertain or...

Sue and I made our way to South Dock Marina on the morning of Wednesday 19th March to meet our old friend Pedro Lewis, who had laid on a workboat.  It was a good place to start as the marina is on the site of the old Surrey Commercial Docks where dad guarded the gates for much of his PLA police career. We headed out onto the river at about 10.00am with the tide still making.  The thirty or so minutes down to Greenwich passed quickly as we talked of people and boats we had known, some now dead or sunk.  As we headed downriver the sun began to shine. I remembered the spot where dad and I had scattered mum ashes twenty two years before and gave Pedro directions: "its just after the entrance to the Greenwich foot tunnel on the Isle of Dogs side, where you can see up through the naval college to the Queen's House and the Royal Observatory. On reaching the spot Pedro stemmed the tide while I opened the little tin box containing dad's ashes at the stern of the workboat...

With time on my hands following my return from Raleigh International in Sabah, I've decided to spend some time exploring Sarawak.  Sue had arranged a weekend of luxury at the Marriot Hotel in Miri, so I resolved to join her by getting boats and buses from Saratok.  My plan was to travel by boat up the River Rejang from Sarikei to Belaga, where I would get a four wheel drive taxi to the main Sibu-Miri highway. On Sunday 21st July I got a lift to Sarikei then a ferry to Sibu, where I changed for a boat to Kapit. The Kapit boat was packed with people returning home after the weekend.  The ferries on the Rejang above Sibu are battered steel tubes with two stonking diesels at the back which hammer the boats through the water at an ear-splitting thirty knots.  Inside the passenger compartment has a similar atmosphere to a meat cold storage warehouse as the a/c units are always set to "max" for some reason. The mighty Rejang was actually more of a trickle due to t...

Looking back over this blog I realise that a landmark in my life has passed almost without a mention - at the end of December 2011 I finalised the deal to sell "La Fulica", so I am without a boat for the first time in about twenty-five years.  She's going to a good home I hope - a British engineer working in Montenegro, just across the water from Brindisi.  I bought her in late 1999 with the intention of using her for long-term cruising in the Mediterranean.  With her very traditional gaff cutter rig she was hardly the most practical choice, but she looked so pretty sat in the boatyard in the shadow of the Humber Bridge. She became our home when we sold our house in Blackheath in May 2002.  They were exciting and anxious times, preparing for our journey and trying to squeeze in as many of our possessions as we could into her slim eleven metre hull.  She looked after us well over the next two and a half years before we moved into our house in Puglia.  We...

Peter and his wife Jude were going to visit us last August but it was not to be. We had met them in Porto di Roma the previous winter and after leaving Rome they did some cruising around Corsica then headed south. Peter had previously had a brain tumour and was ever conscious that it could recur. They set off from Northern Sicily for Puglia and then Peter starting having fits. Jude sailed the boat on her own for two or three days and ended up in Preveza on the mainland of Greece, basically because that is where the wind took her. She sent us text messages of her progress which confused us, not being aware at the time of the depth of the crisis on their boat.  They left Preveza in a hurry to get back to the States and to medical treatment. Peter was fined for having an out of date visa and Jude was told that their boat “Flight”, must be out of Greek waters within six months. It was only later, talking to Jude that I understood the full trauma of these events, with Jude ha...