Neyland to Swansea
Escape on CAPE
David, Sarah and Bryn Smith
Mon 7 May 2007 10:10
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51:36.97N 003:56.1W
Monday and Tuesday
were spent languishing on the hard and chasing Dino-man to get on with fitting
the radio. We were shifted from the cradle and parked in a corner of
the yard on Acro-props. It's really soul-destroying living
suspended over what is basically a car park -- you can't even wash up
as this sends a cascade of washing up water out of a hole in the side of the
boat! To make things worse, the hoist men didn't level us, so the
pointy end was about a foot higher than the blunt end. This meant
that we all had to sleep the 'wrong' way in the bunks, none of the
doors would stay shut, and you felt slightly drunk when you moved about the boat
(carefully, as there was a bit of play on the Acro-props). Sarah even
stopped playing in the lockers. At least the sun kept shining! The monotony was
broken when Lawrence caught two mullet with one shot from his spear gun! We
will be publishing '101 things to do with a dead mullet' in due
course.
On Wednesday Dino-man gave in to our pestering and
did a bit more to the radio, which meant that we could go back into the
water. Once back in the water, Dino-man disappeared without testing the radio,
never to be seen again. Not sure quite what will happen with the radio now, but
at least we can get Radio 4 with a helicopter in the background, and the quality
of the static we can receive is really quite exceptional! The other good news
was that flat dinosaurs don't impinge on wine storage, so we can replenish the
cellar at some point...
Thursday was taken up with packing lockers, getting
ready for sea and chasing Dino-man. We are taking quite a lot of 'stuff' across
to Brian (David's Dad) in Ireland, so this stuff (a large bag of tools, an A3
printer, a box of pictures and photo albums, and a long tube of old
prints) has to be moved around when we want to sit at the table and has to
be wedged in somewhere when we go to sea. The printer was sea sick
at some point so is not allowed to travel on the settee any more.
After having made the booking for the fitting of
the SSB radio at least a month in advance, we ended up leaving Neyland with a
radio that was not tested. We will not be recommending the services of Dale
Sailing to anyone (that was the edited version of what David said, as children
might read this blog).
We set off for Swansea early Friday morning and had
a misty, calm (so we didn't get a chance to try out the repaired
mainsail) and uneventful trip down. Bryn and Bethany were only sick a
couple of times so we must be getting used to this lark! We thought that we had
fixed the leak in the children's cabin, but we obviously hadn't, so all the
bedding got soaked (again). We didn't see much of the Gower coast, but it
was very exciting to see Mumbles lighthouse on the horizon and to come into
Swansea by sea. We were given a swanky berth among 200 gin palaces --
the one in front was 65 foot and has its own jet ski and RIB parked on its
bathing platform at the back.
Ruby spent the day with us on Saturday while we
pottered about, dried the bedding from the forward cabin and assembled our new
'car' -- a 10-foot rigid boat that can be rowed, used with an outboard and
sailed. Lawrence and David then spent the rest of the day sailing it into a
corner of the marina and getting stuck (Lawrence disagreed with this
bit, he says that he and Bryn got out but David and Bethany didn't, and they
broke the rigging). Sunday the weather broke. We did a spot of shopping,
followed by football on the beach, and Ruby joined us for tea.
My friend Jackie wanted to know who Lawrence is, so
for those of you reading this who haven't met him, Lawrence is just some guy we
met in Aberystwyth who just fancied coming with us...Only half joking! We met
Lawrence last year when we were involved in the Celtic Challenge (rowing race
from Arklow to Aberystwyth) as the support boat for the Aberystwyth
Ladies team. He is 28, a roofer/fisherman/ex-lifeboat helm with a broken
heart who is looking for sun, adventure and game fish. He also doesn't seem to
mind the fact that he has a Bryn-and-Bethany-shaped shadow. At some point I will
work out how to upload suitably sized photos so that you can see what he looks
like -- and the sea gypsies that we are all rapidly turning into! Don't worry,
Lawrence has seen this and will get his own back at some point with the chance
to do a pen sketch of each of the Smiths for his friends and
family...
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