What now?

Well the decision to call off the long weekend on the boat was certainly justified given the awful weather over Sunday and Monday.

I am, it has to be said, getting a bit fed up with how much sailing time we're losing to adverse weather conditions. OK, it is, to some extent, the nature of the beast and something that has to be accepted philosophically but only up to a point.

The March Maintenance Weekend was weather affected - although we managed to get the new engine in and the mast down, masthead refurbished and mast back up again as planned the working conditions were far from ideal and we lost most of a day out of the four days on board to high winds and rain.

The Rigging Weekend later in March went OK but was rain affected to some extent

I got in a couple of days sailing in April, including my first night sail, crewing on Sabre which doesn't rightly count towards Brigantia time!

The Scrubbing Weekend at the end of April had to be called off due to absolutely foul weather and that led to our having to lay out over £350 on having her craned out so that we could use what should have been our first sailing weekend as a maintenance weekend.

The "Yet Another Fit Out Trip" weekend in early May went well weather wise ... but only because we were ashore in the yard. If we'd been afloat on the pontoon or the mooring there were two days when the wind and waves would, once again, have made life difficult.

We'd have lost the first two days of the Spring Cruise to high winds if we hadn't already been ashore anyway. We lost most of the back end of the week to high winds. We managed just two days sailing, and even that was just pottering around on the river, and came home a day early.

Our next weekend on board was once again affected by adverse winds and rain. That was just a potter down to Burnham and back but it could have been more pleasant than it was.

Then we come to the big summer cruise. I had high hopes for the fortnight aboard with a committed crew. The first blow was Mark dropping out due to work. Oh well, perhaps it would have been a bit crowded with three aboard for that length of time anyway.

The first day out was characterised by a lack of wind, the second by too much of it towards the end of the day. Fair enough, so far. That's the way of it. Having to turn back off the North Norfolk coast in the early hours of the morning when conditions deteriorated and the forecast suggested it would only get worse was a bitter pill to swallow.

We then lost what could have been a reasonable sailing day by staying in port to recover from our exertions before setting off back Southwards only to be defeated once again by rising wind and building seas. A hairy, and if I'm honest probably ill-advised, entry into Southwold avoided ending up back in Lowestoft again.

Three days in Southwold was not part of the plan. Two of the three days we would not have been keen on going out to sea even if we hadn't had the damaged prop problem.

The second week was much improved though and we had conditions and days much closer to what one imagined would be our usual lot. Four decent, albeit relatively short, days saw us back to base at the end of the week.

Mark and I then had a weekend on board at the beginning of the month but due to my feeling a bit under the weather managed only a modest potter down river under sail and back on the Saturday. Bit of a wasted trip really.

So far we have only managed 14 days of actual sailing (and some of those have been short days) this year. Virtually every trip to the boat has been at least partially affected by adverse weather conditions. Totting up, we've arguably lost 7 or 8 potential sailing days due to high winds,

Even with a couple of weekends left in the diary, we are going to fall well short of the minimum 21 days sailing target this year. Of greater concern is how little time, as it turns out, Jane will have spent on board.

This is giving me pause for thought.

On the one hand, the received wisdom from experienced East Coast sailors is that this year and last year have been unusually poor weather wise. Hopefully, the cycle will be broken and we'll get a decent summer or two but with all the current concern about climate change (howsoever caused) is the current weather the shape of things to come?

If, and it has to be said it is starting to look like a big IF, we stick with Plan A. we're talking about shelling out over £2k on a trailer this winter. No question, in the long run, it makes both financial and practical sense to do so but only if we keep the boat for another three or four years minimum.

That outlay would certainly be followed by another big spend, probably next winter, on new sails. Again, worthwhile if we're going to get the use out of them but ...

So I'm now left pondering options and struggling to come to conclusions.

I really don't want to give up on the dream after just two years. However, I can't help but face the fact that we're spending a lot of time and money, and will need to continue to do so for some years to come, and currently not getting terribly good value for money from it.

We've got to get more use out of the boat to justify the costs.