Well, here we are, sitting on Ultima Life in St Katherine's Dock, in central London. We had wanted to depart this past weekend, but due to finding a problem on our forestay, we have stayed at our mooring whilst trying to solve the problem. The above photograph shows what I am talking about - the wire on the forestay has been twisted with some force and is compromised and needs to be replaced. For those who do not know, the forestay is the cable from the front of the boat to the top of the mast, which keeps the mast up together with the side shrouds.

Now, trying to find a rigger in central London is like trying to find gold bars lying in the streets of Johannesburg! It just will not happen. So, our plan is now to stabilize the mast and motor to the largest marina in England, Brighton Marina, a 175 nautical mile trip of motoring. At least 50 nautical miles will be down the River Thames. Then through the straits of Dover and along the coast to Brighton. And the pot of gold at the end of the trip is a rigger by the name of Tom, who works for Sussex Yachts. If all goes well to plan, Tom should be aboard on Monday morning, stripping our roller furler and forestay and rectifying our problems.

London, for the past few days, has been cold and with a lot of rain. In fact, there has been a quite a bit of bad weather, especially over the eastern and northern parts, with a lot of flooding and some very high winds. A poor New Zealand woman was hit on the head over the past weekend by a falling branch off a tree in Kew Gardens and died from her injuries. There have also been many photographs of people being rescued from the flooding by the fire and rescue services in rubber ducks. Yep, nothing better than shooting down the main street of some little town in your rubber duck! 

But life does go on and sitting in the cockpit of the boat with a nice cup of coffee each morning is quite entertaining. Tower Hill tube station is just next door to the marina and thousands of people on their way to work walk past the boat. The British dress code is quite strange with people wearing clothing that nobody would be seen dead in, especially the young lady folk, trot past and keep the mind boggled.

So, as the rain comes down we hope for a better day on Friday when we depart. Once in Brighton I will do another update of the blog. Best wishes from Jason, Dylan and myself, John.