Battling technology and hoping to get out in the boat at last for a crisp winter sail
When I read the letter from the Maritime & Coastguard Agency, Registry of Shipping and Seamen department, my heart sank. They were going digital.
There’s a cartoon doing the rounds on Facebook: a woman at a railway ticket office, with the clerk saying something along the lines of ‘OK, you just go home, log on to our website, create an account, buy your ticket with your credit card and download it to your smartphone, then come back at your train time. Which bit of ‘easier and more convenient’ don’t you get?’
I felt like that lady as I burrowed under the piano for Karima’s grab bag. The letter included a lengthy list of documents that I must have sent them when I first registered her, so I didn’t see why they were needed again. It was easy to find the navy book which had her original registration and the list of previous owners, along with my own receipt. The Certificate of Registry took a bit more looking for, but it was in there, a laminated square with the previous issue date: November 2013. I knew where my passport was, and could reach it myself. All good.
I tend to put off scanning things because my scanner is a rarely used flat surface by my desk, and therefore piled high with other digital stuff, like dictation headphones and a camera box, as well as an Oxford dictionary and binoculars to inspect rare birds in the tree outside the window, or goings-on down at the marina. I managed to squeeze the documents in, found where the scanner now lived in the apps folder of my new computer, took a deep breath, opened Safari and launched in. I failed at the first page, trying to create an account using the login. Once I’d sorted that, waited for the confirmation email and logged in again, I put in Karima’s name as per the certificate, her SSR number and the date of expiry, which was on the letter. Ablur of red writing came back. I tried again: her name in capitals, the SSR with and without SSR in front of it ... and it was then that I realised (with my computer glasses on) that the 2013 date on the laminated certificate was its expiry. I must have another one somewhere –on board, maybe, or in the pile of “car stuff” papers in the kitchen with my RYA certificates.
The computer wasn’t going to like it. I neede
