Well, what a week (two actually but that’s another story!). After previous ‘near death’ sailing experiences in such places as Naxos, Abersoch , Corfu, Paxos, Stamford Park Boating Lake, it was with great trepidation when we accepted Dave and Gill’s fantastic and more than generous offer to join them on their once in a lifetime (watch this space) ‘Voyage of the Unemployed’. My previous seafaring exploits would explain my nickname for the week (tee shirts kindly supplied by the wife, ‘Deckhand’ Lindsay!) ‘Below Deck’ Ken, as for the safety of the rest of the crew it was thought it may be best to keep me ‘Below Deck’! Much to my surprise (and everybody else for that matter), thanks to calm seas and a steadying Captain i was soon promoted to ‘fendering’ and rope duty, port side, docking AND embarking (is that the right sailing terminology?) and i even got to ‘drive’ the boat at one point! I’d now like to think i’ve passed my sailing ‘preliminaries’ and put all my sailing demons to bed (below deck lol). The week itself was amazing, from one secluded, gorgeous bay/cove to the next with major decisions to make such as ‘shall we have lunch at Butterfly Valley or tootle across to Cold Water Bay’? The beer ‘Low’ level in the fridge was constantly monitored by ‘Captain’ Dave and how we kept afloat with the wine onboard i’ll never know, mind you that would explain the Captain’s quaffing of at least 2 bottles per night purely for ‘ballast’ reasons. In between lovely meals provided by ‘Vice Captain’ Gill and ‘Deckhand’ Lindsay (or should that be meals provided by lovely Gill and lovely Lindsay?) and putting the world to rights, all conspiracy theories covered (Gill was the only one who still thinks we landed on the moon in 1969!), checking the boats around us for ‘surveillance’ cameras (private joke, ask Dave) we had the odd game of Perudo which went ok as long as Dave only, could touch the dice and when i started getting any good he put the game away!! Lindsay didn’t like Perudo because she didn’t understand it and didn’t fare much better at the beach game Kubb where ‘Lads’ v ‘Girls’ the lads ran out convincing winners. I’m sure Dave and Gill are more than glad they took the plunge and did the ‘Voyage’ and would like to thank them for letting us share, albeit a little piece of it, their ‘once in a lifetime’, it was for us too.
Ken and Linz