Friday, March 08, 2019

And we're back!

Finally! We returned to Kantara on Wednesday with a cargo of most of what we'll need for the year ahead (though we already have a list of important things that got forgotten. You'd think we'd have this off to a fine art by now, wouldn't you?)

The marina was wet and galeforced - Freya's last stand? - and the boat was cold but dry. I lit the stove straight away, and ran the engine to charge the batteries. The mains electricity supply was down, had been for some days, and the solar panels had been deprived of light by the cloud cover. "The electrical fault'll be put right tomorrow." Yeah, right. John from Lyndsey Ann next to us had managed to purloin an extension lead, and had plugged that into an outlet on a pontoon further up our rank that hadn't suffered from the power-out. There wasn't such a lead for us.



Slowly, Kantara warmed up. It takes a while for the heat to soak into the walls, ceiling, floors and furnishings after it's been empty for a winter, but we kept ourselves warm bringing in and unpacking the cargo. The rest of the day was very windy, very chilly, very dull and pretty windy, but we were warm now, and very much at home.

We went to bed warm and woke up cold. The gas boiler wouldn't fire up, so we had to use the Bubble stove again, and that takes quite a lot longer than the Alde to heat the domestic water. Shower cancelled. The day was very windy, very chilly, very dull and pretty windy, but we were warm and very much at home, and spent the day odd-jobbing, reading, writing and finishing a jigsaw puzzle.

Power was still a problem. The vacuum cleaner battery died after two minutes of use. I ran the engine again for an hour or so, and did so again just before dark, but we finished the day with no mains electricity. We saw that coming!

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 A windy day on board Kantara
This is the tail-end of Storm Freya, and it’s most impressive. Sitting in front of the stove, watching the flames rise and roar as the gusts outside draw air up the flue, I can feel every movement of the boat under me; bucking, rocking, bumping against the pontoon, jerking against her mooring ropes with not a pause. Constant movement.
The stove chimney wears a cowl. It swings continuously to keep its back to the wind, and it rattles and squeaks in the process. There’s a constant tapping, too. Is it the zip of the cratch cover against the hull, or is it the aerial cable across the roof shaking under the onslaught from Freya? I’m not about to go outside to find out. 
The water seems to be getting the worst of it. There are waves across the marina, foam-flecked and frantic, slapping against boat hulls, splitting noisily around pontoon legs, breaking up recklessly in the reeds. 
The birds are silent, though. In fact, there’s only one to be seen. For the past half-hour a single black-headed gull has been sitting lonely in the middle of the marina pound, facing into the wind, paddling continuously to stop himself from being forced backwards, riding the waves as they tumble towards him. Gone are the resident geese, swans, ducks and moorhens. I imagine they’re sitting it out in the depths of the thrashing reeds that line the banks. Where the blue-tits are, the great tits and long-tailed tits, the robins, reed-buntings and warblers, I don’t know, but it wouldn’t be good for tiny birds like these to be out in this, and the heaving trees offer them no safety whatsoever. 
The weather forecast says that the wind will have abated by tomorrow, the marina will return to normal. But, in a strange way, I’ll miss this.

3 comments:

  1. Bet you’re happy to be back on board ��

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    Replies
    1. Steph, for reasons I don't understand, I didn't see this post until today (23/04/2020!) I do apologise. Thank you for your comment. We were. indeed, very glad to be back!

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  2. Ooff, Roger, I know the feeling. It's been like that here for more than a week. I'll be exceptionally glad to see the spring sunshine and calm days. This has been frightful, as my mother would have said.

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