That end of the year feeling...

Regular readers will know that this year has been a strange one for us so far, difficult for several reasons, frustrating for many. A lot of our time's been spent waiting for something to happen; not vague, always something specific. Our time out on the cut has been limited to just 36 days, and that's been a great disappointment. The 36 days were very enjoyable, however!

Now here we are in the middle of October with 12 jobs to do ourselves and one waiting for a mechanic to fix. All of the jobs need to be done to make Kantara ready for a much longer time out next year. Or rather, to satisfy us that she's ready. She'll be fully cruiseworthy as soon as the thermostats in the engine have been replaced. But there's no chance that we'll be taking Kantara anywhere now except the 30 metres to the service platform. And back. So it feels at the moment that we've already reached the end of 2017.

But it's autumn, not yet winter. And we've had torrential rain, phenomenal wind, everything that one expects from the season. And more. Today, the weather's positively hot, though the wind has been bad enough to postpone that trip across to the diesel pump.

A visiting boat tried earlier this afternoon, and crashed his stern hard into ours. We rushed out to see what was going on, and he was clearly struggling, though his approach to the problem was all high revs and big movements, and he lacked the experience that brings finesse with it. Having shaken Kantara heavily, he had a go at Emma Jane, too, and didn't miss. Eventually, with a good deal of noise and thrashing water, he high-tailed it out of the marina, and no-one ever found out why he was here in the first place.

It's going to be a very busy, exciting five weeks for Said the Maiden. They've just completed their last set at the Costa del Folk in Portugal, and they're flying home tomorrow.

Then their album promotion tour starts next Saturday.

Grace and I are combining attending five of these venues with some sight-seeing, and we've booked into hotels to give us a day or two either side of each of those gigs for... well, seeing the sights! Imagine Whitby at the end of November! The sea, the sand, hey-ho for the wind and the rain! We'll have a blast! The weather might, too!

I hope this post doesn't make you think I'm feeling down, but I have to admit that this end of year feeling isn't helped by the fact that I have a flipping cold. I haven't had anything worse than a snuffle for years, but I think I picked this one up from Naomi and Jess when we were back at the house last week, and they'd been nurturing it nicely for some time before passing it on! I'm glad to say that Grace is resisting it nicely.

Enough of feeling sorry for myself. I'll finish now before I become really maudlin!

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Please note that another update to "Hints and tips..." has been added to the Addendum Blog.