Dutch (not French) Leave

I’ve no doubt my many readers will have given up. For the remaining few, this post might be a bit of a shock and might alss explain why there has been a dearth of posts in the month or so.

Riff Raff and I had a couple of outings during light weather in April – nothing major, just pottering around in Chichester harbour. During the course of these, I was close to falling overboard on more than one occasion. A couple of these events were due to over balancing (and I hadn’t touched a drop all day) and others were due to “trip hazards” as the H&SE would call them – occasions when I had seen an obstacle but had misjudged my footing and caught the “offending” rope with my foot. None of these events caused me to get wet but it was a close run thing.

And these events got me thinking – they had happened in calm and dry conditions – what would have happened if had been a foul day? I’d have been cold and more stiff, the deck would have been slippery and moving about – the implications were that I would most likely have gone over the side and would have resurfaced (?) to see Riff Raff sailing happily away from me*.

So it seemed that it had become the time to stop sailing single handed or to stop sailing.

I decided the latter, place Riff Raff for sale on the Swallow Yacht Association web site and sold her almost immediately.

So, here I am boatless again.

Anyone need an experienced crew?

Riff Raff Out.

Notes

• And I was so pleased that I had finally got the rig of a BC23 adjusted so that the helm was almost neutral!