Below the Surface

 

A bewhiskered snout silently surfaces and scents the air. Curious eyes study me. . . .

. . . . from the still surface of the sun trap dock.

The seal swims over for a closer look. Now confident to reveal the full length of his body above the water.

Then, wary once more, he takes a last deep resonant breath and stealthily slips below the surface. There to hunt the marina mullet.

Stargazer is still up on the hard - even though we had originally planned to relaunch last week. Three weeks of chill and changeable weather have slowed progress with the usual annual spring refit program. On top of that, it became clear, once she was lifted, that the ravages of time had caught up with her, unseen and unsuspected, below the surface of the sea.

Over the past ten seasons Stargazer's antifouling paint has built up and started to crumble, leaving an uneven, drag inducing surface. This year, before we can apply fresh antifouling we must first sand and scrape her hull smooth below the waterline. With a run of warm spring days this week, Stargazer's port side is making good progress.

Each year, as soon as we are out of the water, I check the rudder. I hold the bottom edge of the blade and throw my weight back against it. This time there was movement. Only a millimetre or two - but too much for such a highly loaded, critical component. The Hallberg-Rassy yard in Sweden have sourced and shipped me replacement rudder bearings. Today, heart in mouth, I dropped the rudder to fit them.

Helping hands emerged from around the yard to manoeuvre the substantial rudder and shaft back up through the new bearings and into the boat.

Pleased with progress, I relax in the cockpit. Allowing the Easter sunshine to unknot my tensions - built up ahead of tackling the rudder removal. Relishing the end of the stay-at-home lockdown law. Savouring the start of a new season. 

From my vantage point, I gaze out over the river. On the banks, the trees are beginning to bud. On the water, boats are on the move.

Stirrings

 

Stargazer's familiar tiller comes to life beneath my hand; lifts my heart. I feel her rudder bite as she gathers momentum, leaving the berth. A short burst of ahead, with the tiller hard to port, checks the stern way and brings her head round. We motor through the marina and down between the dressed granite walls of the old naval dry dock . I swing Stargazer through one hundred and eighty degrees (Wayne-the Crane is set up to lift boats port side to, head out) and slot into a space on the lifting pontoon. Ahead of us lies 'Walrus,' a 2001 Rassy 39. Inbound from points south, at the end of last season, we threaded the shoals of the Copperas Channel together. 

I return home across the park, pocketing my woolly hat in the warming sunshine. Treading warily around the bright bold crocuses, which peer up at me through the grass. Spring is astir. My spirits are high. Feeling Stargazer afloat and in motion; going through the familiar routines of rigging up, casting off and docking has stirred deep emotions. Re-awoken my desire to cruise, from its lockdown lengthened hibernation.

What cruising opportunities will 2021 bring? I wonder as I walk . Local day sailing is permitted, even now, as 'daily exercise.' From the twelfth of April the right to overnight stays and travel, at least within the borders of England, is reinstated. On May the seventeenth a review of the cross border travel ban is to be held. Progress on vaccination will be the key to developments there, I reflect ."I wonder when my turn, to be vaccinated, will come?" The answer arrives as I open the front door. An invitation to book my COVID jabs lies before me on the mat.

A joyous excitement mounts within in me. I reach for calendar, tide tables and almanac - and begin to sketch the outline of a cruising plan for 2021.

Stargazer and I will complete our spring refits together, before Easter. Her in the form of engine maintenance, fresh anodes, antifouling (we're trying Shogun 033 this year, after some speed sapping growth during last year's cruise) and perhaps precautionary new rudder bearings; myself in the form of my first inoculation. The tides turn fair on April the twentieth, for a Suffolk Rivers shakedown cruise, returning in late May. Returning in time for my second shot and any work required aboard Stargazer.

Then we will be free to head out on our main cruise, at the end of May. French or Irish borders could be open by then. In any event the West Country beckons. If French ports are open to us, the post-Brexit entry formalities and ninety day maximum stay rule, make Dartmouth to Roscoff look an attractive opening gambit. Picking up where we left off in the corona curtailed season of 2020. If France is any or all of: forbidden by the UK government, closed by the French government, poorly vaccinated, in dispute with the UK over proof of vaccination - Ireland may be more accessible, because longer standing (than the EU) treaties govern our relations with the Emerald Isle; and a cruise via Scilly may be possible....

My cruising juices are stirring. My mind revitalised, juggling pleasurable possibilities for the season in prospect.