A Herbie Christmas Message

Merry Christmas dear readers.  My, haven't I been neglecting you lately! Sorry about that, and sorry not to have got round to the usual Herbie Awards this year.  The only (feeble) excuse I have is that it's hard to type when a cat is sitting on your keyboard.

The only stay we had on Herbie recently was something of an adventure because it was during storm Darragh. Unsurprisingly we didn't leave our moorings. Well we did a bit, because the wind was blowing us off our pontoon as far as our mooring ropes would allow and the boat was rocking as if we were out at sea.  being on a pontoon at the end of a row means that we have open water on one side and it so happened that the wind direction was pushing us away.  Gertie the ship's cat was somewhat disturbed as were Kath and I. Here she is looking out of the window at the storm while hanging on for dear life.

I had to get up in the middle of the night to tie up the swan neck because the rudder was baning against its stops as the waves crashed into it. 

You probably can't make it out from the photo but one of the boats in tha backgrounsd is called Tranquil Waters.  Ha!!

I'd made a mock up of Herbie's name to try out on the side of the boat and stuck it on with little magnets.  In that wind it was not a trivial task so it's somewhat (ok, rather more than somewhat) skew whiff, but it gave me a better idea of the dimensions to aim for. 

I think it might be a bit too chunky. It's scaled up from Bookman Old Style font, but I think it was from the bold version. I might try it again without the bold.

The reason we were staying on the boat was that the  Marina had scheduled a moorers Christmas bash with mince pies, mulled wine, carol singing and boats decorated with fairy lights.  In event, no one was surprised (but many were relieved) when the  do was postponed because of the weather.

I popped back to Herbie yesterday to fit a safer way of tying up whilst allowing the boa=t to rise and fall in flood conditions.  The week before we were there the water had risen by over a foot and staff had to rush round loosening everyone's ropes.  That sounds like something worthy of a Herbie Award. For some reason the mooring ring on our pontoon seems to be positioned for a 40 foot boat even though the pontoon is about 56ft long.  Herbie is 50 ft. So here is my solution for now.  Not ideal but it should hold.

And so dear reader, we look forward trepidatiously to 2025.  This has to be the year when we get Herbie's exterior paint work back up to scratch (mm that's an inappropriate choice of word, but you know what I mean.) Another non trivial task but I've been assembling the right tools and have a plan of sorts.  Let's hope the weather allows it to go ahead.

In the meantime have a lovely Christmas and New Year and we'll see you on the other side.

Neil & Kath & Gertie