Hunkered Down

With gales blowing in the English Channel every day this week we hunkered down in Newtown River for a few days. There were just a few other yachts so it was delightfully uncrowded. Crisp and clear, it was cold enough on deck for winter hats and gloves, but also bright enough to need sunglasses. Sheltered in the cockpit behind the sprayhood it felt warm.

We tackled a few admin jobs and some minor maintenance. Nicky even braved the biting wind to start the post winter scrub-up of our very grubby deck. It’s a great start but the whole deck still needs a bit more of a clean and polish after the work on the windows; maybe a job for when it gets warmer!

To keep our brain cells ticking over we dusted off our notes on astro-navigation and started to work through them; without practice it’s easy to forget the detail and get very slow at working out your position. Mostly, however, we just enjoyed the new luxury of time. Ultimately this whole game has been about engineering our lives to make more quality of life time; something we felt we had precious little of in the ‘rat race’. Time will tell if our gamble has paid off but so far it feels good!
  

For clothes washing, internet access, shopping for some supplies and a change of scene we also spent a night in Lymington.

Lymington Town Quay