You might want to sit down. The shock might be too much. Yes, this is a blog update.

OK, so it’s been more than 2 years since I did a proper blog update – I don’t think a photo and caption to record being away for 7 then 8 years really count. B&B have done their share of blogging in the intervening years but I only have the usual excuses I’m afraid – boat maintenance, boat school, work, partying, laundry, getting things dirty, cleaning things, breaking things, mending things, unpacking and repacking lockers, food shopping, cooking, melting in the heat and humidity, meeting up with old friends, making new friends, playing music, not writing the blog...

We have done some other more exciting stuff too, including visiting the UK, spending time in Jamaica (Beth and Bryn) and the USA (David and I). These outings will be the subject of future flashback blogs, hopefully before another 2 years are up.

Anyway, for now, fast forward to May 2016. Bethany is 18, has some IGCSEs, got herself a job and has left home. Bryn will be 17 in September and is studying for more IGCSEs. David and I are a little greyer (well David would be if he didn’t shave what’s left of the hair on his head), with a few more wrinkles and some new laughter lines. CAPE is on the hard in Power Boats in Trinidad...

The myth of the quick bottom job

We always said that we would stop cruising for a while when B&B needed to sit exams; they sat their IGCSE English and Maths in May 2015. With those out of the way the 2015/2016 season was going to be different and we had plans to cruise a little further north again. We hauled CAPE in September 2015 for a quick bottom job before setting off. This quickly mushroomed (literally) into something much bigger when we found dry rot in the floor around the mast. So we stepped (the boatie way of saying took down) the mast, threw out the table and ripped up the floor in the saloon to investigate just how serious our problem was. Luckily, the damage was not structural. However, with a soggy starboard hull, the mast already down, no floor in the saloon and a regular work contract for David to provide the funds (ha!), we made a start on some major maintenance and an internal refit. To be fair, CAPE hasn’t been out of the water for much longer than about a month at a time since we launched her 10 years ago and bears the scars of four of us living on board for 9 years, so she was ready for some heavy-duty TLC.

From rotten cabin sole – to no floor (yes of course I fell down the hole) – to new floor.

Christmas 2015

Meanwhile, Bethany flew from a summer racing ROWDY in France and Italy to join the crew of TWENSE MEID (formerly AQUAMARIJN) in Grenada to sail with them to Bonaire and Curacao. Bryn joined them in Curacao for the sail to Jamaica for Christmas and to help celebrate Marijn’s 18^th birthday. David and I flew to Miami over Christmas to restart my Trinidad visitor visa ‘clock’. Sadly, in our consumer-driven, fuel-frittering society, it was cheaper to fly to the USA than to fly to any of the other Caribbean islands – even Grenada, less than 100 miles away.

B&B.

The spanner in the boat works

The spanner in the boat works arrived early in 2016. David was due to go back to sea on 12 January but on our way back from the US he heard that the contract that he was working on hadn’t been renewed. There has been no work since, partly due to the low price of oil (which means that the merchant seamen normally employed in the oil industry are filling positions in the non-oil sector) and partly due to the continued bad weather in Europe that has delayed the start of the offshore wind farm work. So, for the last 4 months we have lived in the CAPE tree house (climbing up and down the ladder to the loo), doing the jobs that we could but with no money to push the big boat jobs forward. It hasn’t been all bad – we are cool – we have air conditioning and the BBQ set up under the boat! I’ve had plenty of work; enough to pay our living costs but not for major boat projects.

The CAPE tree house, BBQ area and beer garden.

‘Bye Beth!

Meanwhile, with her 18^th birthday looming, Bethany continued applying for jobs and we were all delighted when she was offered a trainee deckhand position on the 196 ft/60 m gaff-rigged schooner Germania Nova. http://www.germania-nova.com/ She joined ship in Antigua in mid-February, turned 18 in March, sailed east across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean in April and is now in Palma in Mallorca where the ship is having a refit before doing the charter season in the Med.

So for our 9-year anniversary of leaving Aberystwyth, we were down to three for a BBQ under CAPE (and a glass or two of something judging by the photo!).

9 years since leaving Aberystwyth; Bryn is now officially taller than his Dad.

Moving swiftly on

Bryn trundles on with school – working towards his IGCSE exams in Physics, Biology and Geography in November. When he isn’t doing school, he plays music, sails dinghies (420s and a friend’s 12 ft/4 m Hobie monohull), races on C-MOS, and is about to start building himself a 9 ft/2.7 m fiberglass sailing dinghy.

Bryn staying out of trouble sailing and playing music.

Things on the work front for David are looking up now – he joined the shoalbuster tug (SMS Shoalbuster – imaginative name huh!) in the Dominican Republic on 4^th May to tow a barge to Vitoria in Brazil. SMS (so Google tells me) stands for Seiner Majestäts Schiff (not Short Message Service) and is German for His Majesty’s Ship. I’m sure that you feel much better knowing that. We aren’t making any predictions about how long we will be out of the water as that would be tempting fate; for now, CAPE’s soggy bottom is drying out slowly. And I’m not making any promises about the next blog update!

The humidity readings on CAPE’s soggy bottom are coming down slowly.