Book 2, Chapter 53

If anyone, it was Bill and Ian who were red-face at being caught out by the trick which cost them the race. As much as my family didn't want me to be an embarrassment they did also enjoy seeing me standing up for myself and ‘dishing it out’ appropriately on occasion.

“Next time! Next time!” said Ian inspecting carefully my arrangement that released the windward spinnaker sheet free from the sail ( I'd replaced the short hand-pull release cord with a longer one tied to the boom end so that releasing the sheet transferred the strain to the quick release cord.) “You didn’t learn this trick in Cardiff.”

I had to agree with Ian that there were things to learn from other places than Wales (like Bilbao for the quick release tip).

Having the family together allowed Beth and Aunt Sophie time to chat and I wasn't surprised a little later to see Beth in tears being cuddled my her mother. The experience of violence and near death seems to effect people differently and there are arguments in the papers about any number of conditions given medical names like PTSD and CFS that I thought might develop on the return from a brush with life’s harsh reality to a domesticated world that naïvely insisted that all problems could be dealt with by hard work and enough money.

Had seeing Sophie’s heart attack made Beth aware for the first time that she could lose her Mum at any moment. Might cutting herself off from her mother been her way of protecting herself from further pain? Seeing them together with Aunt Sophie looking much fitter and not a little lighter and Beth smiling made the theory persuasive.

I didn’t lose my running partner though because after the race we combined forces, including Ian and Serena, to have dinner at Bill's house where Mum, Sophie! Litara and I came to the conclusion that being away from home was, at least for now, doing Beth good. What with our runs, the exercise class she had instigated and a generally slightly more helpful attitude around the house we were relieved to find she was now growing up without getting pregnant or STDs as far as we could tell.

Looking at our rambunctious, extended family gathering it felt comfortable in this rambling house. Too big for Bill and Grandma Tina alone yes but for a couple with several children and lots of friends who liked to visit…? I looked at Litara and wondered why she hadn’t made a deposit on a house for the future. The flat I’d stopped at with her was large and beautiful but she insisted it belonged to a friend and surely she couldn’t afford anything that luxurious. Jean Luc lived on a boat when he wasn’t travelling, Rupert, aka Bruce from WorthIt II, told me he bought when prices were low, as an investment, but in truth I couldn’t think of anyone near my own age ambitious for the middle-class dream of a semi-detached house with 2.4 children. It wasn’t even faintly financially possible for most of my generation, even in a booming economy, without a mortgage that would become a millstone for life come the next depression which we’d learnt at school inevitably came. Dreams cost nothing though.

The week ahead was to be busy for me as Dumblebit neared completion. Bill came up with the idea that I would singlehandedly sail Molly to Swansea, about 40 miles to the west. The distance was too great to guarantee being completed in daylight hours so the plan was that I leave Cardiff on Wednesday evening and arrive on Thursday in daylight. There’s a lot of shipping along the coast and no way I would be able to sleep en route or devote much time to cooking so I planned to thermos-flask-cook a stew and porridge for the morning. This was a tip I'd picked up in the Caribbean where those on cruising boats sometimes didn’t want to use propane heating their boat for hours in the already tropical heat. As well as work and preparing Molly I did have to ring and apologise to John and Judy for missing a dance class but they were more than happy that my Mum and Dad had become permanent enthusiastic helpers.

Knowing my working day on Wednesday would be short and that I would need to sleep after arriving in Swansea on Thursday I did as much work as possible on Dumblebit early in the week which included picking up the cushions and seat backs from the upholsterer. Something I had noticed with yachts is the very drab, usually blue or grey upholstery, chosen by men for men. Dumblebit’s upholstery was very different and grandma Tina's hand was very clear in the vibrant colours, the palm trees and the pink flamingos. I'm not sure whether Bill winced or not when he came down to see the effect but as he said, I was the one who was going to have to live with them.

"You forget Bill, in three weeks you and I are sailing her to Milford Haven where you will have to justify the choice to visitors."

"I’d best ask your grandma to tell me what I think about them before then!"

At 4:30pm on Wednesday Molly and I slipped out of the marina and into the lock. The breeze was light and from the North-east making the manoeuvring very easy as we dropped to sea level and motor-sailed first South toward Flat Holm and then West past Barry with the setting sun. Bill had told me that there were often wind changes at dawn and dusk and with the light from Barry Harbour flashing of Molly's starboard beam a wind gust of about 30 knots hit us out of the North.

“If in doubt, reduce sail,” Bill had repeatedly told me. The sky was still clear and the weather forecast unthreatening but it wouldn’t hurt to lose some boat speed so I mostly furled the jib and put a reef in the main before thinking further.

“Come on Molly, what should I do?” I asked looking up at the sails pulling well in 20 knots of wind still from the North. A gust of 25 knots answered the question and I completely rolled up the jib and went forward to raise the small staysail. Molly had an unusual rig having both a jib and a staysail like Dumblebit but with luffs that weren’t parallel so they couldn’t both be set at the same time. A single masted yacht with one foresail was called a sloop, if it had two like Dumblebit it was a cutter and Molly being somewhere between was called a slutter.

That was the sail-plan going into the night until 2 hours later when I put a second reef into the main so that sail area was reduced as much as was possible while still having enough to make progress. Bill had maintained Molly as well as any yacht reasonably could be but she was small and sailing close to the wind to make Swansea in the North-west. That was asking a lot of her until I remembered that Cardinal Vertue, a yacht just like Molly, had circumnavigated via Cape Horn . Bill had shown me the details but what stuck in my mind through my night on Molly was that Cardinal Vertue was dismasted at one stage during her voyage.

I thanked my lucky stars that I had pre-prepared the stew when I ate at midnight because although the seas close to the coast were small, they were very steep and nothing would have stopped on the stove. The drawback to hot food and tea from another thermos highlighted a problem that all women sailors know… going to the toilet in foul weather gear is almost impossible and even when squatted it was all I could do to prevent being thrown off the seat. Back on deck I made a mental fortune from my invention of drop-seat foul-weather pants.

All nights end, assuming you live through them, and at 7:30 am I was on the VHF radio to the Swansea harbour master asking permission to enter. There were two locks to traverse getting into the marina but being close to high tide made it easy and an hour later Molly was secure in the berth she'd been allocated and I had the kettle on for a fresh brew of tea to warm me before crawling into my sleeping bag…

“Ahoy Molly!”