Photo: Cricketer Ben Stokes is the new King of England

Well, we had a great summer back in England, I've not had a summer in my home country for nearly nine years. So we left Sänna tied to one of Bill & Jean's mooring buoys in the Bahiá Del Sol, El Salvador to head home.

It's the wet-season in Central America and, I tell you, it gets wet... it's not a jungle paradise there for no reason. The monsoon torrential downpours have to be seen to be believed, every single afternoon the thunder clouds build, the mind-numbing humidity climbs to levels that make you sweat like a rabid dog and thunder & lightening storms make you wish you'd been born with the ability to tunnel into the ground like a blind deaf mole. Stuck on a sailboat, it can be a debilitating experience sheltering almost naked down in the hold, sweating buckets with all the hatches closed in torrential rain... Not unlike England without the heat, I hear you say.

But, in an English summer there's cricket, there're farmer's ploughmans lunches and Branston Pickle, there's real cheese and homemade marmalade, pork pies and English cask-brewed beer drunk in musicless pubs with only the background hum of chatter to disturb your thoughts, whilst you while away your drinking time reading your pristine-ironed beer-stained newspaper. My favourite pub is the fabulous Vat & Fiddle. A summertime in England means music festivals, trekking the green hills of Derbyshire and Dorset, girls in pretty summertime dresses with curly blond pigtails in their hair. Of course, in reality there's Brexit and Boris Johnson, there's the scourge of British Gas and Virgin Trains, there's Vodafone, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nicola Sturgeon and the continuous venereal drivel of the Daily Mail.

Cricket - that fantastic sport which nearly half the world loves and no one else gets. Five riveting days of tantalising bat and ball that, more often than not, produces the wonderful result of a draw. Brilliant... nothing epitomises an English summer like cricket. And this year was a cricket feast, the One Day World Cup, the England v Australia Ashes series and warm summer evenings watching Nottinghamshire Outlaws pit their skills against the likes of the Yorkshire Vikings, Essex Eagles and the Leicestershire Foxes in the T Twenty/Twenty Blast.

We got ourselves down to the Trent Bridge beer-fest to watch Notts, we got tickets to see England win the One Day World Cup with a fantastic display of overpowering cricket by Ben Stokes. We spent four fantastic days at the Black Deer Music Festival in Kent, three days at the Camper Calling Music Festival, numerous days walking in Derbyshire, warm summer days at Marie's fisherman's cottage on the coast of Norfolk, fantastic quality time with my grandkids and worked on my house I've not lived in for nearly twenty years. How good is that?

Meanwhile, back in El Salvador....
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Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.

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