After picking up the workers and dropping them off at home, I loaded up the last few odds and ends of gear into the car and set off on the journey to the boat about 7:00am. Two hours and two cups of Wild Bean coffee, not to mention a bacon and cheese roll, later I arrived at the moorings.
Conditions were as forecast, quite warm, dry and breezy. A reconnoiter wander down onto the pontoon led to a quick ferry ride down to Brigantia as the ferryman was ready and waiting for passengers. As I expected, she was somewhat down by the stern due to the cockpit well being full of water. Fired up the bilge pump and that was sorted in a matter of minutes whilst I hand sponged the water in the port cockpit locker out (for some strange reason, the starboard locker has a limber hole to drain it into the well but the port locker doesn't).
That brought the stern back up where it should be but she still had a bit of a list to port that needs investigating.
The smoke machine fired up on the third pull and settled down nicely to tickover. I set up the mooring lines ready to go alongside, cast off and motored gently up the inside of the pontoon. Executing a neat drift turn on the tide followed by an inch perfect ferry glide into the space between two other yachts, I flicked the long bow line over a bollard and then stepped ashore to complete mooring up. Of course, it goes without saying that NOBODY was watching!
Desperately hoping to catch the end of the England v. Argentina rugby match, I fired up the little laptop and my new USB digital TV stick only to find that I couldn't get even a hint of a signal. Oh well. Next step is to try an omnidirectional aerial hoisted up to the spreaders. Haven't got one to hand so that will have to wait!
Next task was to clean the weed off the stern and boarding ladder - the latter having folded itself down into the water and acquired a veritable garden. Having done that I started carting my kit down from the car to the boat and getting squared away.
By the time I'd sorted my gear out and got the kettle on and so on, it was heading into the afternoon and lo and behold, as I went up to the car for the last few bits and bobs, Rik arrived.
Rik spent the afternoon fitting the "new" radio/CD player whilst I amused myself trying to watch the match on ITV Player. The free wi-fi wasn't fast enough, the picture kept pausing, and watching it on my new mobile broadband dongle thingy (a gift from my mate Tony) was an exercise in frustration as it kept dropping the connection every few minutes meaning I'd have to refresh the page and watch all the adverts again before I could pick up where I left off. My frustration levels increased even further when I realised that only the first half of the match was available on-line! I was left hanging in suspense with England trailing 9-3.
We spent a happy half hour getting somewhat damp putting up the cockpit tent and then changed into shore rig as the pub beckoned and off we went for a pie and a pint. It really was only one pint too as by the time I'd eaten and quaffed the first one, I was all but falling asleep having had very little kip over the previous 36 hours. Back we went to the boat and I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. I vaguely remember Rik popping up on deck to frap the halyards which had come loose but I don't remember him coming back down below again!
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