As usual first are the basic expenses.
£137 Mooring Fee
£180 Insurance.
Close to last year. Just small increases.
Apart from that, about £20 in incidentals. For instance the bit of wood to lift the roof. No fuel, no toys and not many visits. No sailing at all. The sails have been safely tucked up inside the cabin most of the year avoiding UV damage.
Total for the Year: £337.
Despite being one of the warmest years in recent times and a long stable warm period, I did no sailing. As I've already said we visited friends and family in Dubai and then Australia just before Christmas and that trip took up a lot of money. But it was a once in a lifetime trip.
The Australia trip was fantastic, so worth the privations it caused during the year. The lack of parking space down at the boat thanks to the traveller encampment really put a downer on trips to the boat. There were several days where all the available parking spaces were full and cars filled the grass verges. All I could do was drive there and check the boat on a drive-by basis. Now they've been moved (the CCTV camera van has stayed there all this time to enforce parking) and as long as they stay away everything should be back as it was in previous years.
But Sprite really needs some TLC spent on her this year.
Hopefully I can get the money together in 2019 and start getting her back up together.
The window seals and the mast beam are priorities definitely. Tides suggest that the weekend of the 17th & 18th of Feb is the first time that tide and sunlight allow putting Sprite on the beach and work to be done.
That date may be a bit too soon to get the money for the window seals together, but I can at least drop the mast and clean the hull.
Well done, you deserve the title 'Skint Sailor' and as for 2018, a floating 'Man Cave' is an asset not a liability.
ReplyDeleteAs for Travelers - you may or may not have heard of the escapades of about a dozen UK Travelers who have been causing mayhem here in New Zealand over the last week. A number of them have been given deportation notices - deport the lot (to an uninhabited island) I say.
Yes Alden, news of that family has been all over the internet, although the mainstream media haven't reported on them much at all.
ReplyDeleteIf they do exist then I can confirm it's typical traveller behaviour. Shoplifting, refusing to pay, aggressive behaviour....
Down at Eastney people were threatened, signs put up to show prohibition of camping were torn down and property stolen.
I'm surprised NZ hasn't deported the lot of them. Sadly, if you don't you'll end up looking like a soft touch and there will be more families arriving next summer.
I forgot to add, we'll see if they abide by the deportation notices. It's a traveller trait to ignore the law.
ReplyDeleteWell, we are a soft touch in this way - a couple of them were convicted in the courts for theft and most of them were issued with deportation orders - but these orders come with a 28 day appeal period (go figure that) - anyway because of their high visibility on the news and being subject to a bit of public pressure (there behaviour challenged around the country) I think the whole lot of them have scarpered back to where they came from.
ReplyDeleteBut we Kiwis generally have no problem at all with Brits and know this lot don't represent in any way the general UK public.