Riding out the Cold Fronts … Saturday 2nd March 2013
We awoke to grey skies and windy weather so we planned to take the dinghy to shore and go for a walk. But before we managed to get going it started to rain and then the wind picked up and our trip ashore got postponed and finally cancelled. So we spent the day hanging out in the boat, reading, doing some email and calling family through Skype. By early afternoon it was blowing really hard and we were very thankful that we had managed to secure a mooring inside the channel rather than on the exposed outer edges. The boat was rocking and swinging on the mooring, the incessant drum of rain lashing the decks and the sound of the wind howling in the rigging. Whenever we looked out we could see the other boats dancing wildly on their moorings, but we didn't see a single person take to their dinghy and go anywhere today. Everyone is just hunkered down. We are lucky that Tash bought us a selection of excellent books for Christmas that we have been reading with gusto. This morning I finished "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", the story of the lady from whom the HeLa cell line was developed, what happened to her and her family and how these cells contributed to so many scientific breakthroughs in the past 50 years. Gloria and I both thought this was an excellent book. We would also highly recommend "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon - an outstanding novel that takes place in Barcelona with great characters and an interesting plot. I've now just started Bill McKibben's book, "The End of Nature", which highlights how global warming is changing the world around us. Written in 1989 , this landmark book now has an introduction that was added in 2005 and it seems that pretty much everything that was forecast in the original book has come to pass. It's well written and thought provoking, but rather depressing. It's now 7.30 pm, the wind is still blowing but perhaps not as strongly as before, and the rain seems to have stopped. We just finished a fine dinner of Flemish Beef Carbonade, with couscous and cabbage, which we ate in the cabin with the lantern warming us and casting a soft yellow light around the boat. Tomorrow we hope to get ashore and walk some more of the trails.
Mike
A multiple exposure shot that tries to capture the motion of the boats in the bad weather
The prow of "Cotinga" as other boats swing around. We later added a 3rd line to the mooring just as a failsafe
A rare photo of the Mike taken by Gloria
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