Mirror.Dinghy"Tilman"

I was all set for a great salty Easter weekend. My tow vehicle had its scrubbed out and worn bar treads replaced with a full set of Pirelli Scorpion mud tyres, TILMAN had been sailed and tuned-up over several months of weekend cruising and all  her weaknesses addressed, I'd coaxed my son with  massive block of chocolate to keep me company, but fate had something else in mind.    On the way out I got a flat tyre. So change it right? Well, normally I would, but the tyre shop had no tubes in stock and couldn't repair my spare. So I was buggered on Easter Saturday afternoon (shops closed for the day). A much used term came to mind,SNAFU (Situation Normal All F#@+ed Up), but in the spirit of Tilman we accept this as normal and just work through it, learning and benefiting from the experience.    The good news is that I met a fellow Land Rover enthusiast who donated an already repaired inner tube, learned how to change a tyre by hand, and got the rig, dog, my s...

Today, a short sail only. Not for want of trying, just that wind and tide were against us.    I launched at my favourite beach and as usual it was quiet ( only one other trailer in the car park). Getting off the beach was tricky as the 8knot SE wind was directly onshore, and the bottom shoals for 30 yards or so.To stem the leeway I put only light pressure on the hull by trimming the jib only, set the rudder blade flat across the surface and tailored along. Once out enough, down went the board, rudder blade and on with the main sheet. We shouldered a healthy breeze on the nose and despite slow headway to windward, there's pleasure in having any vessel doing her best, slicing along into wind and wave. A rather strange humming vibration came into play each time we hit top speed to windward, and it was such that I could figure whether it was coming from aloft or below the waterline. It did remind me of a noise surfboards would make if a bead of resin had been left on the fin...

It's difficult to determine anywhere near accurately, why, how I wanted to go do guy cruising. My father randomly bought a Vaucluse Junior dinghy for me and my brothers when we were barely teens. The early life experiences bite deeply, but in more recent times, reading the Swallows and Amazons series was an inspiration too. "Houses, are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable not the animal world, rooted and stationary, incapable of gay transition. I admit, doubtfully, as exceptions, snail-shells and caravans. The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting-place. It is for that reason, perhaps, that, when it comes, the desire to build a boat is one of those that cannot be resisted. It begins as a little cloud on a sere...

At 1030 hrs. launched at the top of the tide, at the same place as last time, Lemon Tree Passage. Sailed E of Bulls Island in 8 knot NE. With ebb flow we crocheted along.    Adjacent Soldiers Point we bumped into some localised rough conditions caused by ebb racing into the teeth of a 15 knot seabreeze. To make it worse the largest of the yacht racing fleet were jockeying for line position, so it was a mini-maelstrom.    Tilman would have persevered, but I had other ideas, I ran free on a beam reach and ran into Fame Cove, a well-known "cyclone hole". At the furthest shore, I hooked the hook over the side, but not before I ploughed into a mangrove bush quite painlessly and comically. I dug out a thermos of coffee, an apple, radio and camera. Today I was practising carrying some electronics in scalable sandwich bags. A short break t  recharge and tale a quenching dip.    Off downwind to leave the cove then a turn N Into North Arm Cove, a much bigger ...