A bitter pill.

Maybe it’s time for me to ‘swallow the anchor‘ – or maybe I already have done and not realized.

Blog time, Easter 2025 : so, it’s mid April 2025 and my winter project leaves me with a viable boat for rowing and sailing on the local river, at the same time I have an agreement to base the Skerry at Cotehele quay and yet I can summon up no desire or find any enthusiasm to actually go sailing – in fact I have to conclude that my sailing life is over and done with.

I have to admit though, that at the same time it’s been a bad week in that iv’e had either a heavy cold plus mild chest infection – that or a dose of Covid 19 and either/or with the addition of early season hayfever courtesy of a high pressure weather system that puts at the downwind end of most of the country : up until now iv’e never been particularly susceptible to early season hay fever but, I guess, there’s a first time for everything.

This month I made a genuine effort to sell two of my three boats, the little Passagemaker and it’s trailer have sold although it’s still here, as I write, due to the buyer having not collected it yet why it’s now outside of our property while I try to move on with my next (and maybe last) hard work project. As I mentioned earlier, the CLC Skerry does have a new home for the summer and as soon as we tow it down there that space is earmarked for a builders skip to take the rubble and soil from digging out the workshop floor. I failed with the sale of the big Pathfinder even after having made a huge reduction on the asking price – so far, one inquiry but with a no-show and one serious discussion that got near to an offer but failed due to EU import tax.

Nearly the end of April, the workshop now has a datum line courtesy of a builders laser level, nearly all of the concrete is out courtesy of my big smacky hammer and cold chisel and iv’e started on the long haul of hacking out the sub floor clay and granite layer.

Anyway, back to my main topic of the day.

As many readers will know, the little Skerry is almost a last gasp attempt by me to have a way of getting out on the water and spending the occasional night out under canvas. One of my primary aims with the boat and trailer was to keep it right next to a slipway and with that to keep the whole affair light enough so that I can launch and retrieve on my own – as it is I can just, but only just, do it myself : my partner thinks that there will be days when I will struggle and i’m only just clever enough to believe her.

Iv’e been one sort of outdoorsman or other for almost my entire life – even during the years that what I worked at was a professional career – in fact it was during the latter part of that when I relied on my outdoor life to keep me at least halfway fit and somewhat free of stress. Well, now that whole way of life is pretty much over for me : I mostly knew about the hiking aspect after my third (or more) stroke but I told myself that I still had messing around in small boats as an escape – now I think that has also come to an end so it’s a bit of a bitter pill to swallow in itself plus it gives very little reason to continue with this blog and I already know and have said that iv’e abandoned any pretense of being a maker of videos.

You might say, as iv’e done – so what ? – after all it’s a common enough story, that one moment life is going well and in the next moment it’s all gone pear shaped and really all that i’m doing is bemoaning the fact that the fun doesn’t last forever and maybe iv’e already had more than my fair share. Although it might seem that what iv’e done is a thin but wordy celebration of an extremely minor sub genre of an activity that has had it’s day – I accept that because, when all is said and done none of it has been very important or particularly meaningful and there are days when I feel that I could have made better use of my time.

That I have to give up my lifetime obsession with boats and the sea is now slightly beyond a given : that I should perhaps have retired from sailing several years ago – after my Brittany cruise in 2019 – slowly becomes more obvious to me. My Brittany cruise of 110 days while living aboard the little Liberty was perhaps a high point of my sailing life, the trip itself was slightly beyond the capability of a boat that was really only rated for inshore and sheltered water – I got my butt kicked around by the English channel on the outward leg but then had some of the best times of my whole sailing life.