Friday 24 March
This morning was definitely a two-handed job, as Skipper fitted the AIS ‘mushroom’ to the aerial tree on my stern arch: Mate prone in the cabin below with an arm right into my nether regions to pull the wire through on a mousing line so Skipper could connect it into the wiring panel behind the navigation seat.
If you think the British have an obsession with the weather, you should listen to sailors (of any nationality) – watching the weather becomes all-consuming, especially at the beginning and end of the seasons, when it’s very unsettled and therefore difficult to predict with any certainty. It seems my crew prefer to cruise under blue skies, in pleasant breezes and preferably sunshine, and today produced none of any of those, so they decided we’d stay on the river one more night.