Sitting and Waiting...

That's all I can do at the moment. It seems we've had storm after storm, all of which seems to know when it's the weekend. Only 1 casualty this winter: one of the guys on the Solent Sailors Facebook group has reported a little fishing boat has turned turtle.

So far Sprite has been ok. I went out before Ciara hit and took the boom and mainsail down and put them in the cabin to reduce windage.

Other than that, that's all I've done. I've lost yet another mooring buoy despite all the shackles being wired up, so I'm looking into something I can keep on the boat and inflate and attach to the mooring chain when I leave the mooring. Maybe one of those big exercise balls in a net bag.

I've not got around to 2019's expenses yet, but they are pretty much the same as 2018 apart from the fuse box bits which I've already documented and that cheap laminate sail.

It seems that a few salvage yards have started getting supplies of French hardwood sleepers, which may do for a mast beam. At £19 I'm tempted to make the journey (collection only) to Sussex or Devon to get one. Certainly worth checking out as a source of cheap oak. If they do turn out to be oak that is.

I have a new cockpit cover I got for £20, but I've resisted fitting it until after storm season. I want to use some old tent poles to hold the cover up so I can have decent working room in the cockpit but still be enclosed. Something for the spring.

The wife has booked us on a cruise on the Ventura in June, so that's another expense for this year and two weeks out of my summer season. Lets see if the lure of the sea is the same when someone else is driving!

Hopefully I can make some progress by being a bit canny with money again. My money-saving mojo has begun this year with finding the existence and source of those sleepers. There's enough wood in one sleeper to make two mast beams. The plan is to make one up and test it to see if it is load bearing.

Fingers crossed the mast beam will be sorted this year at the very least. Then the only other major jobs will be the window seals and antifouling.

Hopefully The weather this year will be conducive to getting some work and some sailing done. It looks like the last spell of good weather was back in 2017, so we're due a nice long sunny spell surely.