Out and about at last! (Landlubbing)

Yayy! We've booked to visit National Trust's Upton House Gardens on Thursday. Visitor numbers are controlled by the allocation of a limited number of tickets for arrival slots at half-hourly intervals. It'll be the first time we've been out for anything other than for shopping since we arrived here on March 3rd! Needless to say, we're looking forward to it very much. We'll only be allowed in the gardens, not the house, but that's fine with us. We've been there twice before, and have a huge collection of photos of the interior. This time, the sights, smells and sounds of the gardens will be plenty enough; a panacea to our souls.

(Preview)

The local swallow community have got a new trick when it comes to catching flies to eat. It seems now that there's a number of them who have learned about out-sourcing the job. At least, the wet part of it. For now, not wanting to get their beaks/faces/heads (depending on the height of the waves on the water) wet, they swoop around looking for some other mug who has got wet and got a fly. And when they see such a bird, they fly in and snatch it from their beaks! It's crazy, but it's what it really looked like, though I have no idea how often these fly-snatches succeed.

I've been very pleased to be re-acquainted with Rona House. Rona did a solo circumnavigation of the globe in her yacht, Cacique, in 1990-93. She introduced herself to me by email while she was reading my first book, Life with our feet under water. I was intrigued by what she told me of her solo journey, and she sent me a copy of the log she had kept in the form of letters sent as she travelled. These are now available on the web, and I do recommend that you read them. It's fascinating, and very scary in places! There's a link there that takes you to her Flickr collection of photos taken at the time, but click here if you want only to see them - or to see them first. 

Now retired from yachting, Rona is spending half of each year in NB Patience here in the UK, and loving it. (What is there not to love?)  Photos and videos of her canal and river experiences are also on Flickr.

 NB Patience

And from me, clouds!

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Circumnavigating the globe

No, not one of Grace's crazier ideas!

I've recently been contacted by one Rona House, who messaged me via Flickr while she was looking through my "Life with our feet under water" gallery there. What followed was a series of messages and emails between us in which I found out that she is a yachtswoman of some decades' experience who sailed around the world in a 27 foot Vancouver Yacht, Cacique, back in 1990-93. She sent me a Kindle document, not publicly available as yet, which is a series of newsletters she wrote on the voyage. Some of what this lady reports very casually is, frankly, scary!

Fourteen days in, her engine "ran away with itself at full throttle", and the new radio, essential for weather forecasts and direction finding, "packed up". 10 days out of New Zealand, she encounters "Winds 55 to 60 knots sustained, gusting higher. Seas PHENOMENAL", when she really believes she's going to perish. "Six feet of very black, very mean-looking snake" tries to nest in Cacique's exhaust pipe. There are menacing pirates around Indonesia. Later, the yacht collides into the side of a freighter while Rona's below deck, sleeping, damaging her boat and breaking several ribs. Shortly after that, she becomes ill, delirious for several days. She loses over a stone in weight. A rope gives way, and she falls overboard, is able to pull herself onto a jib, but can't get any further onto the boat than that. Her only option is to let go, let the boat carry on without her, swim, and hope to be rescued by a passing boat. (She is, and she retrieves the boat.) Then an 18-foot whale crashes into the boat, injuring itself but, amazingly, not the yacht. And corrupt officials abound.

But it's not all catastrophe. It's a very human document, with fond tales of meetings with lots of friends on the way, meals and celebrations, and encounters with many other people in her several spells spent on land. It's not a long document, and not ready for publication as a book, which may never happen anyway. But it's a gripping read, and a fascinating insight into life at sea. Rona's currently reading my book. It's not anything like as exciting as her story, but will give her a look into a hugely contrasting life on the water, as hers gave me.

(Photos from Rona's gallery)

Rona's pictorial record of the three-year adventure can be seen here.

After the circumnavigation, Rona sold Cacique, and the boat's now available for hire, with or without a skipper, in Brixham Harbour.