It’s the waiting

The old proverb that a coward dies a thousand times while the brave die once has always seemed to me to be back to front. Apart from the fact that cowardice is an outdated concept, courage is about knowing it’s going to be nasty but doing it anyway. I’ve been sitting here pondering this silliness as we wait for our moment of furious activity getting out of here and thinking about everything that can go wrong. Catastrophising madly and watching every tiny change in wind direction and strength and the turmoil of waters a quarter of a mile out. It usually helps to have thought through foreseeable disasters but it doesn’t alleviate the slightly corrosive dread that comes with the anticipation of possible nastiness. Anyways, we’re all poised to heathfart wildly into whatever the ExaminerShe who asks awkward questions of the crew and tests them with difficult tasks. chucks into the harbour entrance at about 1230. So far, it looks a bit better than yesterday and we’ve turned VG around to the other side of our jetty so she doesn’t get pinned like yesterday. Our Narrows window opens at about 1300 which is, in theory, slack water but we’ve noticed some deviation from the current predictions we are able to access. We’ll see. In the photo VGs roller furlerA device fitted around the length of the forestay(s) of a sailing yacht that enables the crew to roll the headsail partially around the forestay and so make its effective area smaller (the same as reefing) or to roll it up completely (furling it). The sail would be furled when at anchor or otherwise not being used. There is a full description here . is just visible against the buildings far left and there are a couple of tugs pulling a huge log raft towards the Narrows in the distance. Narrows entrance is half a mile to the left of the photo