To be honest, I feel like hiding in Borth. For about six months. Winter could turn to spring. We could sleep through the storms. Cardigan Bay sea salt would blow over us and on the really blowy days it'd rain detergent-looking sea foam. We'd go into Aber and run into a minimum of five people to stop and talk to. We’d drink in Vronnie’s comfort. Cuddle Grandpa who may still be by the toaster and the aperitifs. We put him there when we brought him home on Thursday. Not on purpose. It just happened. We could handle his kitchen gadgets. The vegetable spiralizer, the microwave chicken-cooking mould, the old-filled spray bottle for crispier toast. We’d find endless laughs in the idea of Grandpa’s own shopping channel (sponsored by Poundland:) and reminisce over the items that are no longer with us; the prolific Magic Bullet, the halogen spit roaster, the very fleeting presence of a spurious pasta-making machine. 

We’d note sunrises and measure sunsets. Quest would be in our minds but far away. Like a dream. And there’d be cousins! And trips to London to see our Poles. As Grandpa always said, ‘The Germans had nothing over you…’. Lulu would dance and love it, Delph would dance and hate it. The Captain would go machine-like with his work. We’d become non-stop in slow motion, a sort of reality-checking deja-vu. I’d wave to my old car as my sister-in-law drove it to work. 

And instead? Well, we hear that Fin has been drinking out of the water glasses of the Calabash Hotel guests, one of the most exclusive hotels in Grenada. Bad luck since all beaches in Grenada are public! She’s been digging enormous holes in the sand too, point-blank refusing to ‘drop-it’ and is currently being pampered to within an inch of her life by William, Ollie and Millie and their mum and dad on S/V Higgins. 

And Quest? According to our friend, Phil, a watermaker flushing block (1st one so far) filled up Quest’s bilges, sending us a photo last week that made our hearts temporarily stop. Phil’s bilge pumps and double checks have brought things back to normal but something tells us that this high-maintenance plastic racehorse is straining at her dock lines. When are we going? You cleaned my hull every week, changed my propellor, gave me solar energy that gives you guys no room to complain. Didn’t you promise we’d go North? The windlass failure was only a little rotten wire. These things happen. You’re not going to punish me for one little rotten wire? Are you?

I remembered something on the train yesterday. I remembered that when we left home for Quest last July, we got about a mile and a half down the road before we realised we’d forgotten the boat keys. Big yellow floaty thing attached to it; not exactly small. What could we do? We threw our hands up in the air, turned around and drove back home. We found Grandpa in his conservatory wiping the tears from his face. He looked at us and cried, 'These are tears of relief!’ 

So with the heavy kind of shoulders that you don’t really understand, we’re going back to our Quest. And to a sulky, Mediterranean dog with a penchant for only being happy when she’s breaking the rules. Oh boy oh boy. Here we go.

Love from Quest and her land-based crew xx