4th Dec 2009 - Onset of winter + Beginning of Day Skipper

Rose's blog

Moderator: Jeff

Post Reply
Rose
RNLI Supporter
RNLI Supporter
Posts: 16
Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:55 pm
Location: Plymouth, at the moment

4th Dec 2009 - Onset of winter + Beginning of Day Skipper

Post by Rose »

So a month into our time in Plymouth city centre and what has been happening?

Well I still love it here. I am such a country girl at heart but as we are only here for 5 or so months I have not really been missing the open spaces too much and have instead be making the most of and taking advantage of all the city has to offer us. There is of course the added bonus of being positioned right in the centre of town, literally a few minutes walk from bars, theatres, shops and cinema. We don't have to drive anywhere and we avoid all the nasty looking grey suburbs you would normally have to drive through to get to the nice bits. So far we have been to the cinema a few times, a rarity for us as we could never really justify the distance from our country flat, the theatre twice (which has been a highlight for me as I am such a theatre lover) and have lost count of the cocktails I have drunk (being very good about keeping away from bars on a school night though!).

I am especially glad that we are here as winter gets colder and the festive periods approaches. On bonfire night we walked up to the Hoe to watch Plymouth firework display which was pretty good but perhaps paled a little in comparison to their annual firework competition in August; fun nonetheless. We now find our selves at the beginning of one of my favourite times of year.....Christmas! Yes I am a child at heart and still get flutterbies at the thought of Christmas trees, tinsel, mince pies and mulled wine! In fact later today, after Lunar has been walked we are off into town to buy my annual Christmas dress! Bit over excited; I am sometimes surprised at how girlie I can be considering I am a farmer's daughter.

This brings me to the practicalities of life on board over winter. As much as I hate to admit to any difference between the genders it has to be said that on a practical level we both knew that Jeff and I would face different problems when living aboard. As mentioned, although I can muck in with the rest of them, grew up on a farm and am quite happy to rough it, after a while I do miss being able to be a bit stereotypically feminine. Don't get me wrong, living on our boat is certainly not what I would call roughing it - we are warm, comfortable, have TV and internet, a duvet, fridge and oven, but there definitely isn't room for a bath and I feel a bit of a clip wearing high heels aboard. So the deal was that we would do this and every now and then take advantage of our extra cash from renting out the flat by spending a night in a hotel. So that's the plan for this Sunday. We are booked into Kitley House for dinner, bed and breakfast. We can even take Lunar with us and I shall be wearing a dress and high heels after spending the afternoon soaking in a bubble bath! Brilliant. Perhaps even better because it has been so long since I have had this relatively simple pleasure. Love it.

Another issue that has arisen is the dreaded damp! Now to be honest I was quite concerned about this over winter. All very well in the summer when you can ventilate and the sun is out and so on. Winter in the UK is epitomised by the word "damp" and so even with Jeff's reassurance that we would be fine I was dubious. However it has to be said that until this morning we didn't really have an issue and even now I wouldn't say damp was a problem. Basically we have had a few occasions where the food cupboards have felt a little damp at the back and so we have opened them up and moved stuff out to air, put on the heater and opened the hatches and hey presto all is well momentarily. This morning we have noticed a slightly different issue in that the very edges of our bed sheets seem a little damp, just a little. So I think today we might try to get our hands on a dehumidifier as well as a Christmas dress and see how we fair with that. Not too big an issue I would say.

As I have mentioned before I really know very little about actually sailing and have only been in this for a year and only really getting out on Isabella from March to September this year so I have a lot to learn. We have booked ourselves onto a course in Jersey in March for me to do practical Day Skipper and yesterday I stared working through Jeff's old correspondence theory course material. I haven't get that far into it yet but I am pleased to see that I have picked a few things up from watching Jeff over the summer. At least I know my way around the boat and think I surprised myself and Jeff with being able to know the names of the different ropes, knots and part of the boat - would be a bit bad if I didn't though considering I live here! I suspect the course will get more challenging but it was a good introductory day.

Ah yes, we also gave notice of intention to marry at the registry office on Wednesday so if anyone knows of any lawful reason why we may not be married.................................please stay away from Plymouth.
To join our mailing list and receive notification of blog updates, please send an email to watchblog@yacht-forum.co.uk and we'll keep you posted. You do not need to sign up to the forum to do this, and we absolutely WILL NOT share your contact details, or send you anything but notifications of new blog entries.
Post Reply