Nick Burnham: The weekend was the predicted washout but at least the boating wasn’t a complete write-off after all
Y ou might remember a column I wrote at the beginning of this season all about Operation Afloat, Marianne and my determined bid to get far more use out of the boat than we had been doing.
Jobs had been changed for increased flexibility, the marina berth had been switched for access to better cruising grounds, this was going to be The Year Of The Boating.
Well, as I sit here at my desk at the beginning of August, looking out across a grey, chilly and windswept Torbay, I’m reminded of the famous Robert Burns quote – “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley.”
Which in nautical terms roughly translates, as far as I can tell, to ‘yeah but you can’t control the weather’. The irony that our enjoyment of last year’s long, hot summer was frequently doused by climate experts’ dourly prophesying that what we were sweltering in would be the coolest summer of the rest of our lives is not lost on me!
That said, the boat has not been idle, and Project Afloat has not been without merit. No, we’ve not tried working from the boat yet because it’s just not been the weather for it, and the halcyon ideal of pottering gently down the coast for a week or two, logging in to work during the day, boating early and late and just enjoying life afloat has been a complete non-starter.
But take last weekend, for example. The forecast was near gale force for Saturday through Sunday, with more heavy rain forecast (did I mention that we’ve got a hosepipe ban here in Devon!?). So we flexed our flexitime, made some sandwiches and headed for the boat on Friday instead.
The wind was
